How To Fall Apart

In our latest episode of How to Fall Apart, the Support Series, sponsored by Dunnes Stores, the Mothers' episode, @liadanhynes spoke to a number of mothers about how they are coping since Covid-19 began. How are they balancing career with no childcare, are they managing to mind their mental health?

We spoke to @jenniemcginn @nataliebcoleman and @sashahearts

This week we have a second episode, an interview with writer, actor and broadcaster Stefanie Preissner. Stefanie's beloved Nana Eileen Keary passed away last September. In this interview, which took place in two parts, just before Covid-19 restrictions and several weeks into social isolation, Stefanie discussed the nature of grief, our current collective grief, and what it is like to grieve in isolation.

This week's episode of How to Fall Apart, the Support Series, sponsored by Dunnes Stores, is The Grief Episode. Liadan Hynes spoke to Elle Gordon, who lost her father Trevor Gordon, about experiencing the final weeks of a loved one's life as a family in isolation, and the support offered by neighbours from a distance,

to Siobhan Cullen whose mother Eileen O'Neill was the third person to die of Covid-19 in the country, on her mother's final hours and how hard it is to move through grief in lockdown, to clinical psychologist Nicola McGlade who spoke from her own experience on how grief changes over time,

and clinical psychologist Dr Tony Bates on the difficulty of grieving in a world that for now feels fundamentally unsafe. She also spoke to Brian Dowling, host of the podcast Death Becomes Him, on what he has learnt about grief from his guests.

This week in the mental health episode, we're covering what's often called reactive depression; depressed feelings caused in reaction to a specific situation, something a lot of us can relate to right now. @liadanhynes spoke to clinical pyschologist Dr Tony Bates @jigsawYMH and Gillian Roddie @evidentiallyyou about how they coped with their own experiences of depression over a number of years, and chartered psychologist Aisling Leonard-Curtin about how to help someone you are living with who might be suffering.

This week's episode of How to Fall Apart, the Support Series, sponsored by @dunnesstores is The Work Episode. We talked to psychotherapist Jason Brennan, psychologist Aisling Leonard-Curtin and @MuireannO_C @FionnualaJay and @aislingmkeenan

about dealing with the current stresses within the workplace, managing the lack of boundaries and switching off when working at home, and the impact on mental health when we lose a job.

This week's episode of How to Fall Apart, the Support Series, sponsored by Dunnes Stores is about single parents. @liadanhynes spoke to Zoe Desmond, founder of @FroloApp Karen Kiernan of @1familyieland, Sam Dunne of @treoir, as well as clinical psychologist Rachel Warman, herself a single parent.

The first episode of How to Fall Apart - The Support Series, sponsored by Dunnes Stores is live now. For this six part series we’re asking the experts for advice on how to cope with the challenges we’re all facing. This episode focuses on children - how this affects them, how we can support them. We spoke to clinical psychologists Dr Tony Bates, Dr Nicola McGlade and Dr Olwyn Finnegan, as  well as clinical psychotherapist Dr Joanna Fortune, sleep consultant Lucy Wolfe, and parents Kate Gunn, Sophie White, Jackie Lynam and Helen Steele. We covered small children to teenagers. Huge thank you to everyone who spoke to me for this, and to Dunnes Stores.

Our guest this week is designer, artist and mother of three Helen Steele. Helen talks about having ADHD, how even from the first day of school she felt like there was something different about her, about the anxiety it caused which subsequently led to her developing an eating disorder. She talked about how sport and art helped her cope, about having a baby and isolation in motherhood after she moved away from Dublin, about her fitness range for Dunnes Stores and how for her exercise is about the mind rather than the body, and how she coped with a divorce after she and her husband separated several years ago.

My guest on this week’s episode is Nadia Forde. We talked about her parents separation when she was seven, her subsequent estrangement from her mother, how she coped when her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and letting go and accepting that their relationship might never be what she had hoped. We also chatted of course about Nadia’s experience on I’m A Celebrity, body shaming and her own path to motherhood. Thank you to Nadia for her honesty, humour and openness.