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Making a Difference – Tracy Martin and the Long Road to So Not Me
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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