Sasha Piton

Irish-French-American Sasha Piton has travelled widely outside the US but has recently settled in Dublin. In her new series for The Journal, she shares the insights of a new arrival on a country she’s trying to call home.

PICTURE IT. DUBLIN city centre 2026, two full iPhone batteries and Google Maps not loading on either. I found myself wondering… could I get us home?

My mum is in town and once again I find myself an inadequate tour guide for Dublin.

This day, I decided to show her the places new friends have shown me, just for fun. We aren’t exactly the museum family even though we’ve travelled over the years. We like a guided tour to get our bearings and then tend to congregate where the people are and spend time on a terrace at 3pm for an afternoon glass of wine, a snack and a scratcher Lotto ticket.

But we walked around Trinity College, of course we had to make a stop in Carroll’s gifts since that is my mom’s last name and her grandparents hail from County Clare. Her college best friend is from Limerick so the last time she was in Ireland was in 1978.

We went to make a stop at the Temple Bar to show her the quintessential red pub that’s in many photos when you search Dublin on the interwide webs. And it was when we went to leave that neither of our phones were working to guide us back to the train station.

For most people, this is not a big deal but as a woman who lived in a smaller city in Idaho for nine years and used Google Maps to get around for five of those…

I truly am not joking when I say I have no sense of direction.

And my mom has never been to Dublin and we haven’t done our guided tour yet to get her bearings. The map at least loaded after a few minutes but with no icons. I could see where we were and I could see the Liffey so I felt pretty confident in getting us to the Tara Street station.

As we were getting on the train, my mom said “Wow, it’s good that you know where you’re going!” and we both laughed because I responded, “I know!! And that’s not a very common experience for either of us where I know where to go!”

As the train pulled away from the station, I was reflecting on the knot in my brain I wrote about last week. It doesn’t untie all at once, but it’s happening in real time, one small proof at a time. A turn I trusted, before the map could tell me. A station I found without the screen telling me.

I’m not done untangling it, but it’s happening in the middle of living my life.

I moved to this new country with five suitcases (two of which were filled with crafts and dog food) and my two dogs in tow. I came here to fully embrace island time, to learn public transportation and enjoy being a passenger princess on the trains and buses.

Letting go of the safe space of a car

Who knew that what I now call “noodle girl time” – the time I spent in my car, by myself, letting all my freak flags fly – was an important piece of how I thrived back in the States. I have had a car since I was 16 and I have always loved being in my car. Stressed? Go sit in my car. Social battery dies? Leave in my car. New album from my favorite artist? Listen in the car. Learning all the sound effects in my favorite Super Nintendo game? Do it in my car.

It’s a place to sing, drum, and practice talentless beatboxing. I didn’t realise until taking public transport for three months that my car was the place that I prepared my nervous system to go be with people and decompress when I left people. For 22 years that wasn’t a personality quirk—it was scaffolding to help me thrive and it was gone.

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Artists and creatives are cared for

I’ve started to notice it’s not just about having permission to be the weird noodle in public. It’s bigger than that. When I tell someone here what I do for work, I don’t get the polite, slightly skeptical nod I got in the States. The one that means “content creator” translates roughly to “person who hasn’t found a real job yet.”

Here, people light up. They ask what I’m working on like it’s a craft worth taking seriously, not a punchline. When I was touring so many towns looking for housing, I loved asking women about their jobs. Something these women and these towns had in common? People don’t live to work and from the outside it feels like there’s something for everyone. Artists, creatives, forward thinkers are important and cared for. There are grants for artists to give them freedom to continue their craft.

Rarely is an employer expecting you to work 10-hour days, no one views you as a cog in a wheel whose job is to be as efficient as possible – not only at work, but when you unload the dishwasher or go grocery shopping. And your lunch breaks are actual breaks! Here, there’s a culture that doesn’t need you to prove your worth through output before it decides you’re allowed to exist in it.

I gave myself permission this week to be the weird noodle that helps my nervous system. Nothing crazy, but choosing a spot on the DART far away from people so I can practice my French out loud. Or tapping my fingers when I have my headphones on, swaying in place when I get overwhelmed.

I love my home country, but it’s very common to wear burnout as a badge and sacrifice yourself in the name of the American dream.

Many of us are waking up to the fact that YES America is full of possibility, but the dream they speak of comes at a very high cost. And one that we’re not willing to pay.

So instead we pack up and find our communities elsewhere, many of us trying to connect with our European roots. My joy is being here, building new scaffolding with joy and intention. And somehow in a city I still don’t fully know, on a train I found without a map, I’m settling in. Not into a place, but into myself.

Sasha will be back with more insights into her adopted home next week.