Sunday with Miriam, RTÉ Radio 1
A LOT of Donegal people have a compass set to true north… no matter where they go, there is a magnetic pull to home.
So said journalist Kathy Donaghy, who opened her heart – her love of family and home and her experience of profound loss – on Sunday with Miriam.
She and her journalist husband Richard Curran had successful careers in Dublin but they yearned for another life far from the city – one more in tune with nature.
So 10 years ago, they moved with their two young sons back to Donegal.
She told Miriam that she heard some people said she was the woman who played hari-kari with her career.
“On paper this sounded like madness, but our hearts did lead us here.”
But what happened then was that she suffered a series of miscarriages.
There was the scan where the couple learned that there was no heartbeat.
Then they found out she was expecting twins – identical twins – and for a while felt that life was giving back what they had lost.
Life was good again – until one evening when she was offered scones and tea at a meeting and she realised that she no longer felt sick.
Later that night, she knew. “There was this slight hum in my head and I knew they were leaving me… the essence of their being was going from me.
“It was the most profoundly beautiful moment but I knew exactly what it was…” she said.
She is not alone. Many women say they can pinpoint the moment when they know, when the heartbeat stops.
Kathy Donaghy charts her grief and her journey in her memoir Finding My Wild.
Yes, she felt rage at the world and yes, she will never get over the loss but now she is more accepting.
What came across in this interview was wisdom born of experience, her compassion and her empathy.
When a newspaper printed an extract from her memoir, she was inundated with messages from women who have come through the same experience.
She also found joy in wild sea swimming… in the ocean she shed the skins of her grief.
Kathy Donaghy spoke her words with sincerity and true compassion – it will have resonated with so many women and men.
