Jordyn Lee moved to Amsterdam in December 2025 believing she had found the place to settle down.
By February she had been hit by a car, broken her ankle in three places and was on a flight back to Ireland with screws in her leg and no idea when she would return.
“When the issue started happening, I felt a lot of anger and annoyance and ‘why is this happening to me?'” the 27-year-old told CreatorZine.
“But realistically it could’ve happened to me anywhere and I can’t really dwell on it. The only thing I can do now is focus on my recovery.”
Everything went wrong at once
Lee and her boyfriend had become “absolutely obsessed” with the Netherlands after several visits.
Ireland’s housing costs were pushing them out of their family homes, and Amsterdam offered what Dublin could not: affordable rent, strong healthcare and a work-life balance that actually existed.
The first few weeks brought the expected challenges: a new job, a language barrier, and a snowstorm that was the worst the country had seen since 2021. Then things escalated.
Lee was cycling when a car hit her. She ended up on the road, surrounded by Dutch strangers trying to help in a language she barely spoke.
Her boyfriend was at work.
“Getting hit by the car was probably one of the scariest experiences of my life,” she said.
“I was in a country that I had barely gotten used to, and when you’re without your support and you have no family there, it makes it so much harder.”
She suffered heavy bruising and a bruised larynx but recovered quickly. Two weeks later, she got back on a bike.
The second accident broke her ankle in three places
Lee was cycling to work for the first time since the car crash. Her anxiety was high but she was proud of herself for making the journey.
Then her wheel caught a kerb.
“My bike just toppled on its side. I tried to save the top half of my body because of the first accident, so my ankle then took the brunt of the fall.”
She dislocated and broke her ankle in three places.
Surgery followed: an open reduction and internal fixation, meaning plates and screws that will stay in her leg permanently.
Separated from her boyfriend, back in Ireland
Lee and her partner decided she should return to Ireland to recover, where she would have family and friends around her. He stayed in Amsterdam to keep working.
“My boyfriend became my full-time caregiver as well as working full-time and it was a lot of pressure on him,” she said.
“I feel like he deserves a medal for handling everything the way he did. We both made the decision that it would be best for me to go home.”
The separation has been difficult. “It is very, very hard to go from being with your best friend every day to being separate from him for God knows how long.”
‘We are not sure if I’ll ever be able to go back’
Lee says she and her boyfriend had been building exactly the life they wanted.
They had jobs, new friends and a daily routine that finally felt like it was working. “And then a curveball was thrown at us.”
Her recovery has no set timeline. Whether she will return to Amsterdam remains uncertain.
“It is upsetting because I feel like I did not get a proper experience within the country to see if it’s something that could work for us long-term.”
Despite everything, she is trying to stay positive. “Having a lot of time on my hands would generally present challenges for me with my mental health but since moving, I’ve developed a new sense of resilience. The only solace I try to take from it is that there must be some reason that I am meant to be in Ireland right now.”
Why it matters
The “I moved abroad for a better life” narrative dominates expat content, and most of it ends well.
Lee’s story is the version that rarely gets told: the move that goes wrong through pure bad luck rather than poor planning.
She did everything right. She researched the country, visited multiple times, moved with a partner, found work.
None of that mattered once a car and a kerb intervened. For anyone consuming expat content and building a fantasy around relocation, Lee’s experience is a corrective.
Moving abroad can be transformative. It can also land you in a foreign hospital with a broken ankle and no family within a thousand miles.
Both outcomes exist, and the distance between them can be a single bike ride.
