Stephanie Chase: The Belfast I’ve come back to is not the one I left behind.

Posted by Jim on August 14, 2026

The Belfast I now live in is a city filled with hope, laughter, and unity.

Belfast was reclaimed by the people for music and dance during the Fleadh last week.

By Stephanie Chase
August 14, 2026 at 6:00am BST

If you’d asked me five years ago if I would ever be back living in Belfast again, I probably would have told you it was unlikely. I’m someone who left as soon as I could.

At 18, I joined the Irish diaspora in London, not planning to ever come back home permanently.

When I tired of London, I ended up in Liverpool and then Toronto before deciding to return to Belfast for ‘a few months or so’ after more than 15 years away.

This was only because I wanted some time to think about my next move.

However, not long after arriving back, I decided to stay put.

I never hated Belfast but I did think it was a hard place to grow up in and not somewhere I could see a real future.

I was lucky enough not to grow up during The Troubles. My memories of the times before the Good Friday Agreement are limited to seeing the army on the streets, something I thought was totally normal until I moved away.

Although I am part of the generation who supposedly ‘never had it so good’, the peace we achieved never seemed to give way to real progress or prosperity.

Things always felt a little run down and neglected and a bit behind the UK and the rest of Ireland.

The pain of decades of fighting seemed to be always hanging over us and that trauma was passed down to a generation who didn’t have the tools or support to deal with it.

Then there was the unique question of identity. For me, I was born in Ireland and am Irish, but there was a fear of being too outwardly Irish while having to accept you were ‘technically British’.

I often felt things would be so much easier if I’d been born in the south or even across the water, instead of somewhere stuck in between.

But it wasn’t just issues of national identity that made the north seem strange and isolating.

I grew up with gay friends who struggled to come out for fear of rejection from their families and communities.

I knew that women here had different reproductive rights than those living in England, Scotland, and Wales.

We seemed to be forever crawling behind, as if we had been frozen in time during the Troubles while the rest of the world marched on.

But the Belfast I’ve come back to is nothing like the one I left behind.

Of course, there’s a lot of issues that still need to be fixed.

We desperately need better mental health support. We still need to be free from religious zealots influencing our politics, and we need to do a lot more to protect women from violence and abuse in the home.

But where we have made progress, the changes are startling.

Now I see many thriving LGBTQ businesses in the city and a yearly Pride parade that seems to only get bigger.

I see young people being able to live their lives authentically and express themselves fully.

At some point we awakened from the deep sleep the Troubles had left us in and started moving forward.

I now see Irish identity expressed loud and proud, with the Fleadh last week being the culmination of years of progress surrounding Irish language and culture.

One thing I have realised since coming home is that Belfast has always had thriving places of community.

In west Belfast’s Gaeltacht Quarter, the language, culture, and poetry has always been there if you want to find it. But now it seems as if this spirit has travelled through the city.

The Fleadh showed people in Belfast what our city could be. Yes, the lack of cars was great but what was better was celebratory spirit that flowed through the streets.

Our city’s heart only grows bigger when it is worn on our sleeve. We are at our strongest when we come together to sing, dance, and have a pint with friends.

Three decades on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, there are many promises left unfulfilled. But the bright future we were told we can have is here and it has been built by the people, not politicians in Westminster.

A lot of ink has been spilled over the Irish unity question in recent months and talk of making a new Ireland has grown louder.

But this new Ireland already exists. It was on full display at the Fleadh and it’s inside every city centre bar on a Saturday night.

Change does not happen quickly, but when all the small steps forward are added up, they make a giant leap.

The Belfast I now live in is a city filled with hope, laughter, and unity.

I left Belfast to find a home but now I’m happy to say I’ve found one, right back where I started.