Tracy Martin did not begin writing So Not Me as a novel. The book started life as memoir, an attempt to make sense of a life divided sharply into before and after. Listen to the radio show here (June 15) Martin was eighteen, preparing for her Leaving Certificate, when a car accident changed everything. Her boyfriend was killed instantly and she sustained spinal injuries that left her paralysed from the chest down. “It absolutely fractured my life completely,” she says. “It’s like the girl before, the girl after, and the girl stuck in between.” The accident came on top of an already difficult childhood. Martin’s father died when she was three and a half and her mother died when she was fifteen, leaving her to navigate grief and survival from a very young age. “I was one of those people who kind of suppressed everything and just kept moving,” she says. “I was really good at shutting things down and getting on with it.” There was another layer to the trauma that she had carried privately for decades. At the time of the accident she was eight weeks pregnant. During the early weeks after the crash, the pregnancy became her […]
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Wishing Well – The Zoo Man Who Helped Change How We Care for Elephants
Gerry Creighton has spent a lifetime listening to animals, not simply hearing them, but understanding them. Listen to the radio show here on June 9th The former Operations Manager of Dublin Zoo, and now an internationally respected elephant welfare consultant, speaks about elephants with the familiarity of someone discussing family members rather than exotic creatures. He talks about their moods, their memories, their relationships and their grief with an emotional precision that only comes from decades spent in their company. Creighton’s own story begins just a few streets from Dublin Zoo itself. Raised in Dublin’s inner city, he grew up within walking distance of the zoo where his father worked first as a lion keeper before eventually becoming General Curator. Animals were not something observed from afar in the Creighton household. They were part of daily life. “We regularly had lions and tigers at home, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans,” Creighton recalls. “I shared my bed and my bottles and my food with monkeys and primates. We weren’t the only primates living there.” For a child growing up in Dublin in the 1960s and 70s, it was an extraordinary upbringing. While classmates brought stories about mechanics or builders, Creighton arrived in school […]
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Making a Difference – Michael and Julie McKeever: Building Solas Healing Cabin in Wicklow
Michael and Julie McKeever, founders of Solas Ceremonies, have built something that sits slightly outside the conventional definition of a business. Set on elevated ground near Arklow, with views towards Tara Hill and the Irish Sea, their work combines ceremony, community and a steady return to older traditions. “It’s really a love story,” Julie says. “We met through a meditation class, we had our careers, and then we found this house where we could see the sea. After that, everything followed.” Listen to the radio show here (June 8) Both came from structured professions, Julie from teaching and Michael from engineering, but the move to Wicklow marked a shift in direction. During the Covid period, when isolation became widespread, they recognised a need for connection. “We said, wouldn’t it be lovely to have a safe place where people could come, talk, connect and receive healing,” she explains. That idea developed into Solas Healing Cabin, a dedicated space designed for small group work and individual sessions. The emphasis is not on scale, but on consistency. “We built it for the community, and the community is it,” Michael says. The therapies offered range from Reiki, where both are trained to master level, […]
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Wishing Well – Sarah Searson Creating Space for Artists to Thrive
Sarah Searson has spent her career working with artists and organisations. shaping their ideas into something lasting. She has held senior leadership roles in education and local government. Her career has been focused on developing arts and cultural resources and infrastructure throughout Ireland. Her work involves exhibition-making, art commissioning, cultural programming, and policy. Listen to the radio show here (May 26) “A cultural producer works with artists and organisations to make arts happen,” she works closely with artists to help them define their ambitions and understand how to move towards them, while also working with organisations on long-term strategy and planning. Her work sits between creativity and structure, which she sees as essential because artists are often expected to become experts in areas far removed from their own talents. “The expectation that you can do everything is kind of ridiculous,” she says, pointing out that artists, like many small business owners, can easily become overwhelmed trying to manage every aspect of their work alone. Ireland’s arts scene, in her view, is in a healthy place, however this can only be maintained with continued investment. She points to strong attendance at cultural events, the growing recognition that the arts contribute to […]
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Making a Difference – A hospice can mean love, hope and joy
Kerry McLaverty, CEO of LauraLynn Children’s Hospice, is clear about one thing from the outset. The word hospice is often misunderstood. Listen here to the radio show on (MAY 18th) For many, it carries an immediate association with death and final days, but that is not how LauraLynn operates, nor how McLaverty describes the work that takes place there. “You couldn’t be further from the truth. Ninety-five per cent of the time is spent on making really happy memories.” The hospice supports children with life-limiting conditions, but the emphasis is not solely on end-of-life care. Instead, it is about creating space where families can step away from the demands of constant care and spend time together in a different way, with the practical burdens lifted. “They can come here, they can switch off and just focus on being families.” That shift matters. Families arrive carrying a level of responsibility that rarely eases, and the service provided at LauraLynn is designed to absorb that pressure, allowing parents to rest and siblings to reconnect in a setting that is structured, supported and deliberately warm. The facility itself is based in Leopardstown, but the reach is national. Community teams operate across the country, […]
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Warrior – a film worth fighting for!
Yesterday, Katie Joan Maguire’s passion project came to life in a Private Showing – Warrior – at the Lighthouse Cinema. Played to a packed audience, the film had a devastating punch when exploring the issue of undiagnosed chronic illness. At the event, Katie said: “It has been a long two years getting our film from page to screen. Couldn’t have done it without our fantastic cast and crew. My hope is that through this film those sitting across from someone with an invisible illness might understand that just because something can’t be seen, doesn’t mean it’s not real, and for those in Jenny’s shoes to hopefully, finally be understood and know they are not alone.” Lorraine Fox, actor in the film, said: “Warrior is a film full of complex emotions, which truly touched my heart. I’m extremely grateful to be part of the stellar cast, and so proud of Katie for bringing Jenny’s’ story to the Big Screen. This film will certainly resonate and touch the heart of every viewer who watches it.” Siobhán Dunne who plays the lead role of ‘Jenny’ said: “I was blown away by the lovely reception the film received and so touched to hear how so […]
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Making a Difference – A Life Between Heartbeats: Eimear Byrne, Arklow, and the Price of Time
Eimear Byrne does not present as someone defined by illness. She is a primary school teacher, rooted in her work, her language, and her town. Yet her life has been shaped by a medical condition that now demands something extraordinary, not of her alone, but of the community around her. Listen to the radio show (May 11) At the age of ten, Byrne was diagnosed with a connective tissue disorder and underwent her first open-heart surgery. It was, by any standard, a difficult beginning, though she speaks of it without embellishment. “That was quite difficult as a child, but I recovered and got on with life,” she says. Life did resume. She trained as a teacher, returning eventually to the very Gaelscoil where she had once been a pupil. Irish is not inherited in the Byrne household, but it has become central to both Eimear and her younger sister Niamh, chosen rather than assumed. “We ended up going to the local Gaelscoil,” she explains, “and I’m actually back in the school I went to.” There is something circular, almost poetic, in that journey. Teaching through Irish is not simply a professional choice; it is cultural participation. Niamh followed her into […]
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The Wishing Well: Ciaran Casey – Leadership Is Not What You Intend but What Others Experience
Ciaran Casey has spent more than three decades working in leadership across sectors and geographies, yet his central argument is disarmingly simple. Leadership, he suggests, is not something a person possesses. It is something that happens between people. Listen to the radio show on here (April 28th) Casey’s book, Leadership in Tune: Cultivating Impact Through Connection, which will be published on May 27th, reflects both his professional experience and a period of deeper reflection. Having moved into leadership development in recent years, he found himself revisiting ideas he had encountered throughout his career, this time grounding them in lived experience. What emerged was a growing curiosity about a persistent gap. “I have never met anybody who set out to be a bad leader,” he says. “People come into leadership with good intentions, and yet the experience in the workplace does not reflect that.” The data supports his observation. Levels of engagement remain stubbornly low, with only a minority of employees fully invested in their work. Trust fluctuates, and organisational change often fails to deliver its intended outcomes. For Casey, the explanation lies not in a lack of effort, but in a misunderstanding of what leadership is. “We have a gap […]
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Making a Difference – Rachel Grace and the business of making a life in music
Rachel Grace has done something many musicians spend years trying to achieve. She now makes a living entirely from music, not from one narrow strand of it, but from the full working life of a modern independent artist: recording, live performance, session work, teaching, choir direction and the steady administrative labour that sits behind it all. It is a practical achievement, and one that says as much about discipline as talent. Listen to the radio show here (April 20th) Grace is from Wexford, where music arrived early and stayed. Her grandmother, she said, was the main influence in a family that listened to music but did not play it professionally. She was taken to sessions as a child, sat in with musicians while still very young, and learned guitar and banjo in the process. School helped too. Her primary school had an orchestra and assigned instruments to pupils, which is how she learned saxophone. Guitar came first, then piano. The piano, she said, won because of how it sounded. “I discovered the piano and how lovely and depressing it sounded, and I switched.” There was little ambiguity about the ambition. Grace said she had wanted to be a pop star […]
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Wishing Well – Eleanor O’Reilly On the Purpose of Language
For Eleanor O’Reilly, purpose sits at the centre of everything. It is there in the classroom, where language is both subject and tool. It is there in her writing, where discipline matters as much as inspiration. And it is there in the way she speaks about creativity, not as something decorative, but as something necessary. Listen to the radio show here (April 14) O’Reilly is an assistant principal at Gorey Community School in County Wexford, one of the largest schools in Ireland, with close to 2,000 students passing through the building each day. She teaches English and Classical Studies to Leaving Certificate honours level, and she also teaches creative writing to Transition Year students. For her, the connection between those disciplines is obvious. Classical Studies draws on ancient literature, mythology, architecture and archaeology. English is rooted in literary study. Both, in different ways, are about stories and how they are made. “I love teaching both subjects,” she says. “Teaching is very creative, and that’s what keeps me going.” That sense of creativity has not dimmed with time. After 26 years in the profession, O’Reilly still speaks about teaching with energy and clarity. “Every day is different, every class is different, […]
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