As the year softly exhales its final days,  I wrote on the top of a blank page, "2022 was the year I..." and here's what unfolded. 2022 was the year I bought my first home.

This is a tale of my journey to find a place I could call Home. And it evolved into a solo journey, because we chose not to buy a house together as a couple for reasons as tangled as a delicate gold chain tucked away for safe keeping at the bottom of a jewellery box. Precious enough to keep, too intricate and complicated to unravel at the time. That single, silver, jagged key to the front door finally rested in the palm of my hand some two years later than planned, but at exactly the right time.

 It's January 2022, I'm pacing back and forth inside the window of my rented house in Ardfert - a small, bustling village near the sea in Co. Kerry. Beyond the glass, bare trees lean away from the harsh north easterly wind. My hands tremble and my dry mouth makes soft smacking noises as I practice my speech one more time. To ground myself, I focus on the tiny buds furled into themselves on the tips of the branches that tap at the pane. Ever the optimist, I take them as a sign of future hope. After years of searching, it is finally time. I heave a deep breath in and call the auctioneer to make my offer on what I hoped would be my first home. "I'd like to place a bid on the house near Kilflynn please, the one in the forest". He interrupts my tumbling words….

But that was neither the beginning nor the end. This story was born back in March 2017, when I originally set a goal to buy my own house in three years. After fancy-career redundancy in Dublin and a lure back home to Kerry I barely understood but could no longer ignore; I drove a white rental van southbound down the M50 to Tralee. Packed to the roof with my clothes, high heels, books, my dog Molly and a quiet intention of becoming a self-employed yoga teacher. I squashed myself in next door to my parents in my granny's old cottage with its half door, brown beauty board clad, thick stone walls and a toilet seat so cold the back of my thighs froze to it every night. 

At 36 years old and living a wee bit too close to the family homestead, I made an appointment with my bank's mortgage advisor - the only piece of advice I remember was - get an accountant and come back in three years with your business’ annual financial accounts. By the weekend, I had registered my business name Ebb & Flow, hired an accountant and began to save the money I earned from teaching newly established yoga classes in my local town of Tralee. I walked around to cafes and hair salons handing out leaflets, taped up posters in supermarkets, set up a new Facebook page. 

Between learning how to boost posts and the demands of algorithms, I taught yoga at 7am in an ice cold, bare studio down a quiet lane. In the evenings I rolled out mats on the sticky carpet of a hotel conference room floor. I taught beginners in a vast community centre in the village beneath swaying volleyball nets. I espoused the benefits of relaxation and deep breathing above a gym alongside barbells and free weights. Ballybunion to Ballyheigue, Ardfert to Banna, gyms, hotels and church halls all over Tralee - I was there, spreading the good word of Yoga. 

When I'd saved enough, I moved out from my Granny's nest and into a house in Ardfert, where I paid my rent and bills on time to show the bank I could be trusted. I indulged just a very small limit on my credit card and my accountant kept my taxes in order. I worked five nights a week, mid-mornings teaching one-to-ones, ran yoga events at weekends. Work consumed my life, just as it had in Dublin's corporate world.  "No I can't go, I'm working. No, sorry I can't go away for the weekend, I have classes" . Holidays were camping, my furniture and clothes mostly second hand. I sacrificed and saved. 

But I'm no martyr! I still had lots of fun and plenty of holidays and meals out, but I worked harder to rebalance the flaithiúlach times. I was tired, stressed and so close to burn out on numerous occasions over those first few years. It was a hamster wheel that I'd spun with my own hand and I felt I couldn't get off. My colourful vision board hung above my desk, ever present and always a reminder of why I was working so hard. I stared daily at the little white house with its winding path at the centre of the board. And every now and then, I take up the time of patient auctioneers or drive winding bothereens around the area I hoped to live in, in the hope of making my dream a reality. 

I tried to imagine walking in the door of that single glazed bungalow in Causeway village with mustard swirling carpets or the cottage in Ballyard, on the outskirts of Tralee, that supported the neighbours shed, with more sky overhead than roof, after the tiles blew away over the decades of neglect. This research and exploration proved to be a valuable part of my learning process as I eventually came to understand what I truly wanted and what was important to me. I grasped the value of land, location, road frontage and the price of septic tanks! 

Then in March 2020 Covid swept the globe and I switched to working online with a slow and painful resistance. At first I hated teaching yoga online, I missed connection, I missed meeting people in class. I missed my life and my thriving business I'd worked so hard to forge and foster. I worried about Ebb & Flow and what would become if it and me. 

During those pandemic years, I had less classes to teach than before and more hours of sitting in the garden during lockdowns to worry about that, but also unexpected time to dream. I decided to start looking properly at potential homes. I began my search close to where I was renting, and through blatant nosy wanderings up and down laneways, I fell in love with a deep walled farmhouse high on a hill overlooking Ballyroe and tracked down the owner via the neighbours. I failed to get in through the locked, electric eight-foot gates to ask if he might sell it, so I phoned him, reminding myself 'if you don't ask, you don't get'. Naturally, quite surprised, he said he'd think about it. I called twice more and received a polite and similar response, before sadly conceding it wasn't meant to be. 

I traipsed around looking at houses advertised for sale on Daft. I peered into dank sheds pretending to be houses, derelict cottages hidden under ivy blankets not listed on Daft. Lone, crumbling, lichen covered stone wall gables for €90,000, just plain fecking daft! Local estate agents knew my voice I called so often. I blushed, trying to keep the embarrassment from my tone "Hi, this is Maeve here...again". 

I even recorded a video clip for a casting call to RTE's Cheap Irish Homes in the hope that the encouraging presenter Maggie, could magic a home for me out of the previously unexplored and hidden ether.  I practiced my pitch, smiled widely and pressed record over and over again as the dogs clambered on top of me on the big red bean bag in my front room. But apparently my desire to live within twenty minutes’ drive of the sea and family, wasn't very realistic within my budget - another door closed.

I went to view a house near Lixnaw. The blonde bobbed auctioneer handed me the key and with her hand on her 8-month-old pregnancy bump, backed away a safe distance towards her sleek black Mercedes. It was lopsided, the roof bowed in the middle, I wasn't keen on stepping inside either. Half-heartedly I tried to convince myself it might be fixable, despite having no knowledge of construction. So a favour was called in - hope rose and was as quickly dashed when an engineer friend declared there was subsidence, it was sliding off to the right and back towards the earth from where it came. Nursing disappointment but armed with newfound knowledge, I viewed another house in Ardfert shortly after. It was deemed to be of the same 'money-pit' ilk. 

The rain belted down diagonally on a wild, cold evening as my dad's builder friend braved a look at three room, stone vernacular cottage with black mould seeping through the walls, perched atop a bog in Lisselton. With a 30 year absence of electricity, he swung his torch around and resolved that it was "cheaper to knock". I had neither the budget, nor the heart to level a historic building and begin from earth up. The very thought made my chest tighten and breath quicken. 

There was the cream, single glazed bungalow with some unanswered questions about boundary lines. Though it ticked many of the boxes on the list I had loosely gathered in my head, I never bid because I assumed it and its several acres near Ballyheigue’s Kerry Head would sell for well over the asking price, but the hammer dropped several thousand euros below. Another lesson learned. For two years, I viewed houses with sporadic bursts of energy, without any clear idea of what I truly wanted, then got dispirited or so overwhelmed, I gave up for a while. 

Estate agents wanted to know if I had mortgage approval, I usually and unconvincingly said it was 'in progress'. Without it, I knew I was wasting everyone's energy. And so it was time to get in the arena. In January 2021 after a naive and embarrassing meeting with a bank for which I was unwittingly very ill-prepared, I got some timely advice and elicited help from a mortgage broker. I began gathering reems of bank statements, accounts, documents, rent receipts, invoices to lay at his feet. It was a long 10 month labyrinthine process of having to prove my trustworthiness to faceless brokers, underwriters, banks and insurance companies. And honestly doing this alone and as a self employed person, made it all the more challenging. I learned you don’t tell the bank how much you need or would like (ha!), they tell you how much they might give you. And friends, there is always a canyon of a difference! Then there were the delays due to Covid, delays due to losses of income due to Covid. Fucking Covid! 

By now my search had ramped up, I was serious and I was all in. I had a list of areas, houses, budget, prices of materials and work gathered in my little beige notebook labelled "House Stuff". Getting a little desperate, I peered in through the long-time boarded up door of a house overlooking a beach close to my family home. Wowed by its high ceilings and Velux suntraps, I was curtly informed by the agent that it was for "cash buyers only". 

Or the one I thought was my dream home, cocooned by brambles on 0.nothing of a sandy acre beside the beach I whiled away my childhood building sandcastles on.  I trailed after the engineer as he marched around the garden's tumbling stone walls, etching down measurements in his notepad, the butterflies in my tummy somersaulting in full flight. My fluttering hope was stamped down dead when the owner changed his mind because his son, who likely hadn't set foot inside in its 20-year dereliction, decided he wanted to keep it for himself. Then for a while I thought I'd build a log cabin on a little plot way up the back of a field, only to be advised there was slim hope of planning permission.

Or the house everyone else around me said was too remote, or the one with too many trees shadowing the house, too far, too many midges, too something... always something.  And the months and years of my dream of owning my own home ticked by.

Gradually, I realised I had to stop listening to the opinions of those around me, though well intentioned, they didn't know what I needed, they didn't understand what I wanted and saw the world through their eyes, not mine. I slowed down and I finally began listening to my heart to figure out what was best for me. 

The small white house in the woods first came on my radar in late October 2021. I explored around it in all weathers and hours from the bird chirping sunrise to the silhouetted trees of night. I chatted to neighbours, investigated everything I was unsure of, I took my time making one of the biggest decisions I had faced. Carefully overturning each stone, as I knew I'd found my future home. I call the auctioneer to place my bid...And I shared above, he interrupts my tumbling words with a cold firm, "the sale had closed a few days ago, sorry you're too late". Shocked, I stammer out "but, but.... you didn't tell me there were others interested". My pounding heart plummets, a wave of nausea ripples over me and with eyes threatening to overflow and spill down my pale cheeks, I hang up. I drown my sorrows in gin that night and retreat like a wounded animal, nursing myself with the clichéd balm of 'what's for me won't pass me'. 

In the days that followed my disappointment, I dragged myself to view a farmhouse in Lerrig, that was so damp, even the walls wept in despair. I revisited a sloping two-story tipping forward on its limestone base at the edge of a local village. Though I loved its original dark brown chipped staircase and the red sacred heart over the front door, at the top of my budget, it needed major renovations and had a garden of Japanese knotweed to contend with. On a grey afternoon, I leaned on a galvanised gate gazing absently at the neatly stacked rows of silage bales wrapped in black plastic obscuring a view back towards Abbeydorney, in a four-acre field that was being sold subject to planning. I was close to giving up. 

I convinced myself to look beyond my love of old houses and viewed a cavernous new build near Ballyheighue’s wild coastline with triple glazing, a gym under the eaves and a price tag well beyond my means or comfort levels. There was the red brick holiday home in the sand dunes that on paper was made for me but was so white and minimalist, it felt devoid of any remnants of a soul. I looked at and considered ruin after bungalow, and I felt only weariness and sadness for the loss of the little house in the trees near Kilflynn.

After a few weeks I conceded that I needed to move on and let it go. So I drove the winding, pine tree lined road back to the land I had lost and ducked into the woods through the concealed opening by the hawthorn tree. I followed the path worn by my boots over the previous few months. I was here to say goodbye and make my peace with the loss, yet as I gazed through the branches back at the gleaming alabaster gable wall, a quiet voice inside was whispering 'don't give up, this is meant for you'.

Putting my trust in that, and ever the dreaming optimist, I began to visualise it every day in the weeks that followed, I saw myself in my mind's eye, with keys in my hand walking through the front door. I meditated on it, I envisioned it, I imagined it so often I could feel the imprint of the cool jagged key in my hand. For dreaming was all I could do.

In the strangest, destined twist of fate, the little white house in the woods came back on the market. Without hesitation, I called, calmer now, I placed my bid, held my breath and waited. I stared hard at my phone over the next three days, it sat beside me in class on my yoga mat, it lay in bed alongside me, I took it to the bathroom, it was never out of my sight. As I sat at my desk answering emails, the screen lit up. My solicitor in a measured, smiling voice said my bid had been accepted. I cried, tears rolled down my flushed cheeks. Tears of happiness, pride, relief and release. I had finally done it!

With a clammy hand I signed the contract under the watchful, kind gaze of my patient solicitor. I became a home-owner not long before my 41st birthday this year, in May 2022. Some two years later than planned, but at exactly the right time when I was ready to listen to my heart and had a clearer vision for my life that lay ahead.

It's been a few months now since I unpacked the last box in my new home and I can still hardly yet dare to breathe the words... My home... I whisper it so softly to myself, as if the notion is a butterfly and saying it too loudly might make it flutter away. "My home", I practice murmuring it as I wander through the woods at twilight, catching glimpses of the warm glow from the freshly painted sage green windows through the trees. As if rolling the words, "my home", around in my mouth will make them feel more familiar, more real. 

It isn't the old rambling, stone farmhouse by the sea that I had sketched and pinned clipped magazine pictures of to my vision boards. It doesn't have a cobbled stone yard or drafty sash windows. And it's so compact and small I had to rehome many of my possessions, like a sheep shorn of their heavy fleece and that in itself felt like a fresh start. And yet it's everything I want and need right now. These are all compromises I was willing to make, because I found a place of respite and safety, that is manageable for me (I never wanted a large mortgage or the pressure that I perceive is saddled to that). What was sacrificed, was balanced by the unique beauty of this place. My little white house is like heartwood, nestled in the centre of the trees, solid and central to my life now. Protected by pines, larch, ash, sycamore and hawthorns, the wild, tranquil land wraps itself and me in a leafy green hug. And though we are nearing the end of this tale, this is really just the beginning of this new time in my life. 

I wrote this for myself, as a keepsake for my wobbly days - a reassurance that I can do anything I set my mind to. It's a mala or meditation bead I thumb with a mantra - 'I deserve this and I am so proud of myself'. A reminder to dream big, listen to my heart and stay focused on my needs. A story that demonstrates our paths are not linear, nor time bound, but invites me to trust that. I understand now why it had to be this way.  Why three years, became five, why there were so many undulations and detours.

This scenic route gave me extra time to develop clarity about what I wanted and what is right for me. Breathing space for us to finally take the enmeched gold chain from its box and begin to untangled it slowly and painfully, only to find it was broken and we did not have the tools to fix it. Some days my heart feels sad and heavy that our precious gold chain could not be repaired, and though I no longer wear it, I keep it wrapped in softness as a memory to treasure. The extra time allowed me to make choices with this insight. The choice to buy my first house on my own. I needed that time. Everything has led me to this beautiful, wild place I get to write my new chapters in.

I share it in the hope that it may give you some comfort if you are on the journey to finding your own home too. Know that it is complicated, unique and the path may be as knotted as a delicate gold chain tucked away at the bottom of a jewellery box. If you're brave and patient enough to hold it in both hands and roll it around curiously, gently, the clasp - the key to the next twist and turn will appear right there in front of you. It may not unfurl as you expect and you won't always get it first go, but the next step will reveal itself when it is meant to. Trust divine timing, often only in hindsight will we understand when and why things happen as they do.

Thank you for reading. I wish you the best of luck on your own path to home ownership, be patient, stay focused and don’t give up, you will find your home when the time is just right 🍀

Oh before I go, I mentioned my vision board above and how dreaming, manifesting, visualising and planning all helped me find my home. All of this began in a Vision Board Workshop some years ago and I’m delighted to invite you to my own upcoming “Create your 2023 Vision Board” taking place on 29th January 2023 at 7.30pm live on Zoom. If you’d like to learn more and join me for the most inspiring, motivating and postive evenings you can have visit HERE for more info and tickets (just €23). Hope to see you there!

Ps. Buying the house was one big huge leap and this journey got me to the point where I stood in the open front door, then came the renovations, the fall of walls and a heap of stress. There was alot more involved in what followed and help needed in the next stages, but that’s all for another day perhaps and a lot more distance.

Pps. It took a village of professional experts to get to that moment when the single, silver, jagged, little key finally rested in my open palm. Patrick O Brien Financial Services, Daniel Walsh Kerry Mortgage Brokers, Bernadette Costello of Foley & Associates Solicitors, Conor O' Donovan Engineers and James Sugrue Design and John Keating who helped give houses the once over in the early days. A very special mention to the temenos torch bearer, who lights the way ahead. Thank you all for your professional expertise and personal kindness. 

Photo credits: Karen Lunnon Photography