Comedian Aoife Dunne is living proof that second acts can happen if you start believing in yourself.
When life pulled the rug out from underneath her, it was a pivotal moment. She was 23, and backpacking around South America when the dreadful call came: her mother had died.
What followed, in the inevitable tailspin of grief, was also the aftershock realisation that she would have to pause her hopes and dreams to become the head of the household.
Aoife, who hails from Galway, grew up in a single-parent household (she has since mended fences with her father) with an older sibling who has an intellectual disability, a younger brother, and another who was still in school when her mum passed.
So while her contemporaries were off chasing their dreams and making the most of the 'best years of their lives', Aoife, who is planning to take her debut solo show Good Grief on tour, became a pseudo-parent, but it's a role she tells EVOKE she readily stepped into as a means to process her grief.
'I was 23, and I think, you think at that age that you're such a grown up, and I thought I was such an adult and I look back [now] and I think "Oh my God, we were all children", my brother had just turned 17, he was still in his Leaving Cert year and my other brother had just started college so I think we were just thrust into it,' Aoife said.
She continued: 'I was like, okay, somebody needs to be home making sure Feidhlim gets to school every day, if anything, having the responsibility was maybe an anchoring thing, something I could hold onto because everything felt like it was slipping away from me.
'My dreams, my youth, my family, so I think having the responsibility, as much as it was obviously difficult, I think at the time I didn't think it was because I needed something to hold on to.'
While that anchor kept her tethered to her life, she admits it was also a way of burying her head in the sand and avoiding the risk of having her life turned upside down again.
Aoife explained: 'I definitely feel a big pause button was hit, and I feel like maybe I also kept pressing the pause button, I mean, I think at the beginning, life circumstances did it because obviously mum died and someone needed to be there for Feidhlim but after a year or two, I probably could have hit play again but I think at that point I had just lost all confidence and as well as that.
'I think another thing about grief, when you're too young to deal with it, but I think I was just terrified of being too happy again in case another traumatic event came along so I think I spent a lot of my twenties putting guard rails around me to prevent myself from being fully happy, being excited about my own life again.
'... Actually I was just waiting for the next devastating phone call for many years, when people wouldn't pick up the phone, I would go into a mad panic that they had died in a car crash. I definitely had some sort of PTSD from the suddenness of it all.'
After the tragedy, Aoife, who had ambitions of performing and studied in Galway with pal Nicola Coughlan, found herself working as an English language teacher, but the week-to-week nature of the work left her feeling in limbo. Then the pandemic hit.
What proved to be a limiting time for most people actually ended up becoming a freeing experience for Aoife because, as her work dried up, she was forced to stop and think about where her life was going, but also to address the grief she felt over her mother's passing.
Aoife said: 'I absolutely broke down for the first time in 12 years. I felt like no one could see me, and I felt so free to be like "Oh My God, what would happen if I just let myself completely break down?'
'... people would say, "Oh, you're so strong". I felt like my whole twenties and thirties were just [me] holding it together, but I always say to people, I was holding it together with paperclips and sellotape.'
After finally allowing herself to break down and crying for days, she started therapy and began putting the pieces of her life back together. She also rediscovered her love of performing by way of an appearance at a SeanchoÃche storytelling night in February 2023.
'A lot of it was off the cuff, I made so many people laugh, and my boyfriend recorded it, and I was making comedy content, but I never thought I could do it live,' Aoife said.
As she rediscovered her confidence, she told her boyfriend John that she wanted to write a show about her experience, aimed at helping people come to terms with loss, or whose lives or career paths were interrupted, which she intended to call Good Grief and which she was determined to take to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival within two years.
That's when she thinks fate or perhaps someone else stepped in to let her know she was on the right track.
'The next day we were in Tenerife, looking for a hat... I ended up in the children's section, and I screamed, and John came running over and asked: "What's wrong?" and I was like, "Look", and it was a T-shirt on a mannequin, and on the T-shirt it said Good Grief,' Aoife recalled.
Aoife says she's not a big believer in signs but feels it may have been a message from her mother. Her friends are also convinced that her mother had a hand in bringing John, who hails from her hometown of Kilkenny, her way.
A week later, Aoife was contacted by Katie Boyle, a comedian based in New York who had seen her work on social media and wanted her to perform in the US, and she spent the six months versing herself in stand-up.
The next stop was a move to Amsterdam to write Good Grief, which was picked up by MCD, who suggested a test run a Whelans, but she was convinced no one would buy tickets. They sold out the two shows in seven hours, and she has recently sold out the Ambassador Theatre.
Performing in Galway proved to be somewhat of a healing experience.
'A lot of mum's friends came and met me after the show, and they were sobbing and said "she was alive again in the room. You have brought her to life in every way possible... we see her in you but also in your stories". The more I talk about mym the closer I feel to her.'
Aoife plans on taking Good Grief abroad, including a spell in London, where she already has one person lined up to see it. She recently met Nicola in Galway and says: 'It was so lovely. We hadn't seen each other in two years, so we were bawling, crying, and she's going to come to my show.'
