The Kerryman - The Joyes of Life (2025)

13/02/2025

This was a week that was not mine but it has impacted me enormously.

It was a week in which two people in two different parts of the country were taken before their time. I can’t and (selfishly) don’t want to imagine what it must be like for those at the center of these losses.

Yet even on the periphery as I am, the sadness envelopes you. You stand powerless and wordless in a church pew and you watch them walk up to formalise their goodbye. Then you stand up again in a church pew, powerless and wordless and watch them walk back down again to privatise their goodbye, holding their burden in their arms; in their heads and in their hearts.

Next, you do as tradition dictates, you follow the crowd, shuffle for your space so as to offer your sympathy at a time when those in receipt of it have no room for it. Their head is buzzing of what has just happened; leaping to the dreaded finality of what is next to come.

It is part of the ritual, I know; the dignity of the dead and the celebration of lives lived. We are good at funerals – the Irish – so we’re told. In many instances a funeral can be almost joyful, reassuring and uplifting with laughter owning a place. But this week, none of those things could be located; only the bereaved were located, their private grief never so raw and never so exposed.

Was my sympathy-giving more about me than them?

How do those in such acute pain show up for the world when the world hasn’t shown up for them? But I suppose it is not for the world that they show up, but for their loved and their lost. The rest of us just join in. I never quite got “Blessed those who mourn” but I suppose mourning is indicative of how deep we love; a biblical love in truth and when you think about it, even Jesus Christ was taken young and before his time.

Quite separately, over this past week, I had a conversation with a friend who had just encountered a disappointment in life. Not a major disappointment, but still a small loss of hope that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. They said (with permission to repeat) “I know I will rally, I know I will pick myself up, I know I’ll be grand but right now, I don’t have the space or the energy”

We talk about the little wins in life, resilience and hanging on in there, which we do and we have and we will. But sometimes the world stops and we just can’t ignore that. Nor should we.

24/01/2025

"Are we all being gas-lighted at this stage? Are we able to believe in anything anymore? We are told to have a voice, yet when we respond to the offensive, our response becomes the offense.

Everything gets thwarted so best leave it to AI. It seems to me that nothing is transparent anymore, and nothing is true; so much is taken out of context, re-narrated and re-branded to serve personal aims, political agendas and social positions.

And it all seems a bit hopeless.

Looking at the “top table” of Trump’s Inauguration, we saw individuals (chiefly six of them) who control possibly 20% of the world’s wealth and 100% of our information. We have Elon Musk who was the largest donor to Trump’s campaign and who is now allegedly the chief beneficiary of government contracts. He tells us he supports free speech and won’t shut people down on his “X” platform but then he controls algorithms that promote pro-Musk and pro-Trump material on an eternal loop. Apparently he has an office in the West Wing for God's sake. The concentration and the potential for corruption and influence is mad. If the human race is lucky enough to be around in 80 years’ time and we find ourselves reading out of a history book, we’ll be saying that the writing was well and truly on the wall in 2025.

When Bishop Mariann Edgar Buddle said her piece in her sermon in front of the President along with his entourage, did she not just reiterate the Christian values that the Republican Party as a Christian party purports to exalt? How was that politicising religion or faith? It was the politician who went to Church so why get offended by the “house rules”? How can you hold the bible in one hand and a gun in the other? (although it should be said, at crucial moments he doesn’t hold the bible at all).

Jesus Christ said a lot of things that upset a lot of people and got crucified for it. If backlash, vitriol and death threats is the modern crucifixion, then the bishop is facing her own. How nothing has changed. How everything has changed. And so much for free speech. So much for Godspeak. Its “Trumpworld” now.

And it really does feel like he is king of the world. All the world’s innovative, adventurous and powerful minds seem to have surrendered to him; the imperial Gatekeeper of money and power. The emperor’s new clothes have never been so in vogue and the truth never so outmoded.

So, when I saw our own parliament in chaos during the week – talk about the worst first day on the job – I was initially horrified, aggravated and scared. But then I came full circle. Manners might have been amiss, voices might have been too loud, but there was passion, conviction and thankfully resolution. For all the gloss of the US inauguration, I preferred the reality of our own.

We could do better, of course, but is that not a worldwide understatement.

17/01/2025

I feel a bit of a fool for saying this because I have said it many times before but I hate the goodbye. It crushes me every time.

In this whole new world of remote working (I suppose it’s normal now), when our emigrant kids come home, they can stay a little longer. They don’t need to count annual leave or put in holiday requests like the torture I knew back in my office days; they just flip open the computer and they’re at work. The result being that this Christmas went from the last weekend in November to the middle of January. And I loved it.

I had never experienced a long-distance relationship before my kids moved away. I used to look on couples parting at the airport with a wistful naivety; how romantic it all was. I didn’t get the physicality of their pain or the real downer that was happening in front of me.

For me, its that last touch, that last verbal parting shot (that tells nothing of what screams inside of you) and the strain of the neck to catch the last glimpse of them. They are leaving the cosset of home again, to the uncertainty of life beyond.

Many of my friends have documented the same feelings this Christmas, so it is a lovely consolation (if a selfish one) to know that I am not alone.

I have heard it said that love and fear are the two emotions from which all other emotions stem and I can see the truth in that.
The twinning of the two emotions very much hit home when I heard the columnist Roisin Ingle interviewed on Brendan O’ Connor’s radio show, last weekend. It was only then that I learned of her cancer diagnosis. I was winded. I had to listen back to the interview twice, to hear the spaces between her sentences and that of her mother’s. It could not have impacted me more than if it was a close friend. And I heard the fear and the love and I wished and wished that it wasn’t happening to her.

The uncertainty of life

I touched the same fear and uncertainty this week as I commenced the facilitation of another “Survive and Thrive” programme on behalf of the Marie Keating Foundation; a six-week programme, free of charge, rolled out by the Foundation to meet the emotional and wellbeing needs of those emerging from a cancer diagnosis. Just like Roisin Ingle, they recalled their shock but displayed the same desire not to succumb to the fear, opting to master the management of it instead.

And you can.

We all live with uncertainty, no matter the circumstances; wars, wildfires and everything in between.

So, as the last airport drop happened this week, I went through the motions along with my customary inane parting shot. However, my first-born ignored it and said instead, “love you, mind you and Dad and keep safe”, and right there was a full circle moment; him issuing the same instructions to us, that we have long since given to him and his brother and sister. Love and fear co-existing. I was glad I had the wherewithal to remind him of what has now become our family adage; that the best thing about a big goodbye is the big hello to come.

Not a bad parting shot after all.

For details of the next “Survive and Thrive” Programme, please go to [email protected]

13/12/2024

Some years have it, some years maybe not so much, but this year for me, the build-up to Christmas has very much incorporated that indefinable albeit overused concept of “Christmas Spirit”.

I am not trapped in the Hollywood hue here, I have not been over-watching Elf nor have I indulged the seasonal Hallmark movies; it stems more from watching others or to be more accurate, from listening to others.

Working with different groups of young people every day, I have to keep coming up with new ways to get to know them, remember their names (I hate labels on jumpers) and connect with them. So, in the past few weeks, I have asked each group coming through the door, (varying in age from 12 to 18), to introduce themselves by their first name and the thing they love most about Christmas; this can be a childhood memory or an age-old family tradition. I am comfortable in this, as not one student so far has openly claimed to dislike Christmas. I do ask them.

In all the conversations, and I must be up to 100 at this stage, not one individual has cited a possession, a gift or an extravagance as the reason they love Christmas. Their stories are all about experience, feelings and people. It hits me every time. It reassures me every time.

The younger generation can get a bad rap when it comes to being in the moment, wholesomeness and depth. The endless commentary on their alleged addiction to screens, their quest for instant gratification and their lack of focus on what is present and real, misrepresents them. From my experience, the young people I work with, and they come from every social, economic and religious background, their happy place is putting up the Christmas tree, eating mince-pies, going to Granny's, going to friends, running the Gold Mile, jumping in the sea, cooking the meat at dawn on the outside burner with their Dad. I never hear mention, of the latest phone, the latest PS or the go-to cosmetic.

Its heartwarming to observe the group as a student shares their moment; they all get sucked in and are impatient to ask questions of pals they thought they knew. Personas, roles and egos are forgotten as the magic of Christmas brings them all back to their 7-year-old selves when awareness of others didn’t exist for them.

Personally, my own Christmas will benefit no end from all this. I have learned that ham cooked in Coca-Cola is a must, that a sneaky gift-giving session on Christmas Eve is no bad thing and that nothing has changed when it comes to the love of a turkey sandwich come Christmas night.

Ironically, for all this talk of tradition, I myself am facing a different Christmas. We will be down one, for the first time in 24 years. Lucky Australia gets to own the gift of my girl’s presence this year. Still the yearning for the gathering prevails with her brothers launching a new tradition; a global familial initiative that leans into filling the space rather than lamenting the gap.

In fact, same-said brothers have come into their own this year; a new tradition of recent times has been our Christmas visit to see them in their adopted home of London. They had an itinerary of military precision organised, so we walked the legs off ourselves, saw the lights and visited the sights. Yet in our customary round-up chat of peaks and pits of any trip we take together, our near 30-year-old son, cited his peak as our collective return to his modest Clapham flat each night, sitting by his fireside, rehashing our day.

The young people are alright. In fact, they are not too far away from the generations that have gone before them and I mean that in the best possible way.

Happy Christmas to you in whatever form Christmas comes to you.

15/11/2024

"I had the best day in my job this week and that is saying something because I love my job.

In short, I work with children and young adults having the chats, working on their well-being and opening up a toolbox of life skills for them to use in facing their challenges long after they leave the room. No day is the same because each day brings a new group of individuals through the door. Even though each group come in their given uniform, are the same age and run to the same schedule, no student in any group is the same and no group is uniform. They come with their individual vulnerabilities, life experiences and hidden fears.

And hidden is the key term here. They hide so much of themselves.

The biggest challenge I face in my work is the side look of one student to another, the cynical raised eyebrow when someone is speaking and the palpable terror of judgement by their peers. Taylor Swift or Cristiano Ronaldo could walk into the room and yes there would be great excitement - for ten minutes. After that the acute awareness of one another would take over again and become the dominant force in the room again. And it is a force.

But that’s my job. In the short day we have with these young people, we have to pe*****te that barrier, even if it’s just a seed we plant. How that seed takes root, we will never know, we can only hope that it does and that it will serve and sustain them some, in times to come.

The best thing about my job is that not one moment is wasted, superficial or cosmetic. Its real-life stuff with the next generation and it’s my privilege to do it day in, day out. So, for me to say I had the best day in my job this week, is saying something.

This week, we had a small group come in from a school in an under-privileged area. It was the students’ choice to come, hence the small group. Frequently, the duvet is the form of well-being students opt for when the choice is theirs. I had six students in my room, my colleague had seven, in his. And so began our extraordinary day.

There was no bravado, no performance and no sidelong glances from anyone. There was no judgement, no peer pressure and no clowning. They were a mixed group who came out of curiosity; curiosity about the day and curiosity about each other. They didn’t hide themselves or their stories, yet they didn’t seek the stage or look for the limelight. They eschewed their lunch break, to continue the conversation. I cannot put my finger on it but both my colleague and I felt it, even though we were in separate rooms with separate groups; it was as though we were both in receipt of the service we normally give.

I cannot reveal their stories but know that some of those six young people experienced more trauma in their 17 years, than I have in all of my half-a-century. They weren’t even friends with each other, they called themselves acquaintances. They brought their problems to the table but they also brought their resolutions; their motivation was to help one another navigate the storms. This was not a therapy session; this was a resolution drive.

To evidence just one of the many powerful wisdoms they shared with me that day, and I am at liberty to do so, one lad discussed his anxiety at being in large groups. Another lad asked him if he used reason or excuse to get out of those situations. When I asked him to expand on what he meant by that, he said we often use excuses to avoid what we fear – why can we not just give our reason instead? Let's just rip off the band-aid and be real”

Last Wednesday was the best day of my job; a day when I was the only student in the room."

11/09/2024

The Kate Middleton video has brought me back in time and back to words, I can’t believe I said.

“I wish I hadn’t gone”

Those were the actual words I said to my husband as he stopped the car at a red-light whilst exiting the hospital on a dark Friday, in early November 2009, I had just received a diagnosis of breast cancer. I was numb, I was terrified, I was angry, I was ranting and making absolutely no sense. Yet in that moment while waiting for the light to turn green, I wished I had done nothing about that “something” in my right breast; to my demented mind, it would have meant that the whole sorry mess wouldn’t be happening. To me and to others.

When I look back on those words, 15 years later, I still get an awful shock that I said that. I go down the rabbit hole and the litany of “what ifs”; what if I hadn’t gone, what if I had self-diagnosed myself with something minor, what if I had denied it, ignored it and assumed it would go away? And can I say truthfully, to ignore it would have been the easiest thing in the world because I was far too busy living my life to save it.

But I didn’t ignore it. I went through the motions like so many people before me and sadly so many people after me. When I looked at the video released by Kate Middleton this week, surrounded by her husband and her young children, it brought it all back, the rawness, the uncertainty and the total un******ng of cancer. While it brought me back in time, it threw me forward too; it offered us hope and light because there is hope and light post cancer.

Invariably, the images of cancer patients are dark; emaciated, bald, weak and sick. It is a terrifying image and at one time, I was all those things. The few photos taken of me at that time – I cannot look at. They undo me. I suppose, the image of cancer is not one that encourages us to step forward, to investigate and to confront. Yet in denying it, we are handing all the control to the disease; in facing it, the control shifts back in our favour. When I was looking my worst, I was safer than I was six months previously, when I was looking my healthiest.

Despite my words on that dark day, waiting for that light to turn green, I am infinitely grateful I went to the doctor. I get to be the mother to grown-up children that on diagnosis, I thought would be denied me. By being proactive, I get to be an older wife to the man who married a girl. By being proactive, I get to reinvent my life, earn my own money and go away with girlfriends who know the importance of celebrating life.

The hair grows back, the scars heal and the colour returns. However, I will never be the Yvonne I was pre-cancer. It took a lonely while to realise and figure that one out. But I’ve learned to get to know who I am now and that’s ok. I know every cancer story is different and my story is not another’s; too well we know sad stories with sad endings. There is no answer for those. But in an effort to encourage courage in those early days, if signs do appear, please think not of what you have to lose in the immediate, think of what you have to gain in the long-term. Don’t be too busy to save your life and don’t be too scared either; life post cancer can be beautiful again.

October is breast cancer awareness month

23/08/2024

“Will you sit and watch the sunset with me, mom?”

This was an invitation from the other side of the world, at the other side of the day from the other end of the phone; my daughter in Australia.

We are one of the very many whose young adult children have opted to go “down under”. I suppose, Australia must be to our children in the 2020s what the US was to us in the 80s? It has become the 'new' land were dreams have a fair shot at becoming reality.

She talks about the abundance of energy there, its validation and opportunity. She undertook this adventure on her own, but she is no longer alone. If she were to sprinkle the world map with pins to mark where new friends come from, she would cover five continents. She has walked into hostels alone and walked out with a myriad of WhatsApp groups, Insta connections and real-life friends.

The whole backpacking culture has been a revelation to me. From what I can gleam (from over 15,000km away), the back bone of the backpacking community is connection, support, openness and welcome. From my daughter’s experience, and it is only that from which I can work, there is no exclusion, no cliques, no judgement and no hate – not of her and not of others.

Now, it’s not always straightforward. There is frustration, disappointment and impatience. She will tell me her complaints but she never complains. She will tell me her challenges followed up by her solutions. She tells me when she is scared and it is then when I fully appreciate how courageous she is.

She is my youngest child and my only girl and she is so far away. Yet even from Australia, she still rests at the heart of our family. Independent now of their parents, with her brothers both in London, she and them have their own thing going on. The shared sense of humour unique to every family has been sustained and fortified and it pleases me that the sibling connection is greater than a shared house, a shared routine and shared parents. It’s odd, and I have a lot to thank technology for, but there is a new closeness to the family dynamic, a new adult-ness to the family conversation and a whole new grid for slagging (to their great amusement, their father has taken to sending them vlogs since they left).

I miss their physical presence terribly, the noise of them, the tornado of them and the bones of them. Sometimes as we walk up the stairs to bed, its hard to see the empty rooms, empty.

Yet I delight in their adventures, roll my eyes at their doggedness but ultimately marvel at their determination. We don’t interfere and we don’t instruct; there is a real art to keeping the mouth shut and our role as sounding board steady.

But then comes a text from a girl who has chosen to take a rare day off, far from the madding crowd, to catch a sunset on a desert island off Northern Queensland

“Will you sit and watch the sunset with me, Mom?”

And just like that, despite timelines, distances and everything in between, she and me are looking at the same sun, sharing the same moment and all’s right in our world.

11/06/2024

“Everyone here is so nice” - This has been said to me frequently and recently by a number of people who are all very dear to me.

I have two sons living in London but contrary to a “Tale of Two Cities”, it’s more along the lines of “One City with Two Tales”. Their experience and interpretation of the same place are as unique and as individual as their ambitions and dreams. It’s been fascinating to witness and an education like no other.

I have a daughter now established in Australia having done the (apparently obligatory) South East Asia trip, hopping off one group onto another, living on her wits and the culture of backpacking. Her voice has changed. She has changed. She is literally discovering the world. Her excitement makes every phone-call an adrenaline rush and affords me an overwhelming appreciation of a young woman, who I would love to be like. I feel I can say this without apology. She may be my daughter, but she is her own woman now and I love a woman like that.

And it was with such a woman, I had the pleasure of spending a Sunday afternoon recently. A pal of my own vintage who just this past year has jumped into a job in a far-off place, doing far-out things in her own unparallelled way. Doing it, channelling it and nailing it. She would probably murder me for saying all this but again, I do so without apology because I love a woman like that.

Yet the common denominator in all these experiences is the happy statement; “Everyone here is so nice”. Each of them in their own way talk so positively about the people in the part of the world they occupy, and this goes across three continents.

I know this is not everyone’s experience of the world. We all know of the prejudice, inequality, brutality and war. There can be judgement, manipulation, agendas and coercion. We hear about it every day. We get depressed about it. Some of us lose hope over it.

Today, I just felt the need to call out decent human behaviour and the prevalence of it. I truly believe most people are nice, that most people are inherently kind and that most people genuinely look to better the realities of others, even with the smallest of gestures. I might be accused of being a privileged optimist. I am. However, I think most people will get where I am coming from – in a world that can be gloomy there is still light.

Which brings me to my own experience.

I took my parents to the Bloom festival in the Phoenix Park in Dublin. On arrival there, the first port of call was to find ourselves a seat and a cup of tea. In a manner akin to the parting of the seas, a family just happened to be vacating a nearby picnic table. However, before doing so, they set us a place at their table, sliced up a home-cooked apple tart still warm from their oven and gave us all the tips on how to benefit most from the day ahead.
As we watched them disappear into the crowds, my own Dad proclaims

“Everyone here is so nice”

12/04/2024

"Our third and youngest child flew the nest this week. She assured me that she wasn’t leaving my world; she was just off to check out the rest of it. Still, standing before me at airport departures, all on her own, (her expected travelling companion changed her mind), the world was the last thing on our mind. I find that moment hard to relive, so I won’t.

That said, there is a lot to be said for going away. You get any amount of free dinners, spontaneous parties and very cool gifts. You get heartfelt letters, elaborate cards and profound expressions of friendship and love. If nothing else, going away is an extremely validating exercise with no small boost to the ego. So, you would think I would be soaring with pride – I am - or at the very least, be more resilient to the goodbyes – I am not. Having done it twice before, it is still the same pain; physical, emotional and mental. It is not as though this has been a forced decision for any of my children; it has been our kids’ choice to go. I can’t even blame the cost-of-living crises, housing or politicians, because even if Ireland was nailing it, my three would still be doing what they’re doing. We reared them to be curious, so we can’t complain about them being so now.

The rooms in my house have been replaced by the rooms in my head; still over-spilling with the kids, their lives and all their stuff. They each have their own thing going on, nobody’s issue is more important than the other’s; it just goes into whoever’s room it belongs to and gets dealt with. Much like before.

I suppose parenting in its fullness will continue until the baton is passed to that eventual special person that will enter each of our kids’ lives. I don’t doubt that we will always be needed, but maybe not in the same way. And I welcome that. Indeed, one of them may have already found his special person; the other, in a genuine way, makes everyone feel like they are his special person and then there’s the one whose already special person shows how special he is, by letting her go.

But let me not overlook that special person who is the OG; as long as he is around, well then, the nest will never be empty. And that’s worth saying. Not all of us make it through the process of parenting. Not all of us get to see our kids grow up and move out. Not all of us last the course. At one scary stage with a scary diagnosis, I thought I wouldn’t.

So, as we got back home this week, still raw in the goodbyes, the OG and I had a moment. Emotions aside, we realised that our primary shared dream had come true. The dream was always to create a family, watch them grow and let them go.

So how can we not celebrate our kids doing the exact same thing? How can we not be excited for them? And having succeeded in our dream, don't we have every reason in the world to believe that they will succeed in theirs? Whatever that dream might be..."

11/03/2024

‘The Joyes of Marriage Celebrancy’

After working with engaged couples for over 20 years, I thought it was time for me to marry them! So that said, I have qualified as a Professional Wedding Celebrant with the Irish Institute of Celebrants. This is an internationally recognised accreditation. I am open for all weddings, renewal of vows & naming ceremonies. I would be honoured and delighted to hear, write and bring your unique love story to life on this most special of special days. Please private message me to arrange a consultation, so that together, we can make the dream alive❤️

10/01/2024

"This goes out to those who imagine birthdays that never happen, who imagine milestones that don’t come to pass and who imagine lives that don't get lived.

This goes out to those who experience quiet losses that in our own minds are not quiet at all. Funny how so much of our fabric is made up of things that hardly get talked about.

Today, 10th January 2024, marks the 21st birthday of Matthew, our fourth child, who died one day after his birth. Today, I want to talk about him. I think it’s only fair. We threw a fancy dinner for his eldest brother’s 21st, we had a mad party for his second brother’s 21st and for his sister's, we opened a bottle of champagne up a mountain during Covid. So, in the interest of fairness, I feel we need to mark Matthew's 21st… somehow.

But what do we do? It’s a Wednesday; a day in the middle of nowhere in a month where the party is over. We could bake a cake, like I used to do, but you know, I don’t have the heart. We could make it an excuse to go out, but we have gone out enough already and it kind of loses its meaning with regularity.

I have actually surprised myself, by doing this - writing this. I didn’t see it coming. Why should his 21st mean more than all the previous 20 birthdays we have let pass quietly and silently. Surely, after 21 years, his birth and his loss should be diminished, faded and less important. It’s not like we're unique in this void, we are just one of so many who go through this and who get on with it, silently and quietly. It is what it is, as they say.

But I just can’t let my youngest man’s birthday and milestone go unheralded.

For your information, he was a good-looking fella, who looked like his Dad but had a few touches of me in him. He bathed without complaint and he did his best despite all that went wrong. He was perfect. It wasn’t his fault his heart got broken. It wasn’t his fault our hearts got broken too - that was down to love.

So, on a day in the middle of nowhere, everything comes back to you Matthew. In celebrating your 21st, I want to tell you, you are significant, you matter and you are relevant. In this past year alone, in various manifestations, you have showed yourself to me, to be all these things. But that’s between you and me.

Happy Birthday son. You are mine. You are ours. You exist as much today as you did the day you were born. You never went away.

And this goes out, not only to my lad, but to all those who are the fabric of so much of our lives, but who are not here with us. You are not overlooked. You may not be the daily conversation but you are the daily thought. And every now and then, I don’t think it's any harm to bring you up, make you the center-point and indulge the what-ifs of a life that never got to be.

It is what it is."

The Kerryman - The Joyes of Life

13/02/2025

24/01/2025

17/01/2025

13/12/2024

15/11/2024

11/09/2024

23/08/2024

11/06/2024

12/04/2024

11/03/2024

10/01/2024

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