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How To Fall Apart

47 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratings

When Liadan Hynes’ marriage fell apart someone told her that things might never be ok again, this is a podcast that sets out to disprove that. A podcast about picking up pieces, where she talks to people about how they coped or didn’t cope when life went off the rails. About the things that helped them put it all back together. And about the fact that we are all dealing with the same things, so sharing is caring, as her four year old daughter tells her.

Society & Culture
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Episodes

Sophie White on Recovery

February 16, 2024 22:32 - 25 minutes - 23.2 MB

I spoke to the author Sophie White about recovery from addiction, about the decision to stop drinking, the first year of sobriety, and why sometimes the later years are even more challenging. The first half of this episode is available to everyone, the second half is available to paid subscribers of my Substack, How to Fall Apart, where you will find more episodes and some of my writing. I would be absolutely delighted if you wanted to subscribe. https://open.substack.com/pub/howtofallapart...

Finding Love In An Online World with Dr. Nicola Fox Hamilton

January 14, 2024 16:13 - 54 minutes - 50.1 MB

Dr. Nicola Fox Hamilton is an Online Psychologist and in this episode we discuss her fascinating findings on how we behave online and how we find love amidst the endless swiping. If you enjoyed this conversation and would like to hear more, or read the How to Fall Apart column, you can go to my Substack, How To Fall Apart.

Betsy Cornwell on Finding Home

January 02, 2024 18:54 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MB

I talked to author Betsy Cornwell about being a single parent, finding a home for herself and her son, about creating your community, burnout and financial pressure as a single parent, and her beautiful NYTimes Modern Love essay

Life After An ADHD Diagnosis with Sooby Lynch

December 15, 2023 12:10 - 51 minutes - 47.3 MB

How To Fall Apart is a podcast about picking up the pieces. This is our first episode in quite awhile, so maybe just a reminder, this is a podcast of conversations with people who have been through something challenging, about how they coped, and also the times that they struggled to cope, and what that felt like. From now on I'm going to be putting this podcast out first and foremost through my new substack, also called How to Fall Apart, where my writing will also sit. Most episodes with...

Sophie White on putting herself on the page

November 26, 2021 14:09 - 1 hour - 95.4 MB

In this episode I chat to Sophie White about her beautiful collection of essays, Corpsing. We chat about how often times, personal work can begin as one thing and transform into something else, the need to protect the truth and still portray the truth, the tension between needing to create and needing to mother and the process of writing such personal work. 

Lynn Ruane on putting herself on the page

October 13, 2021 16:32 - 1 hour - 90 MB

I’m lucky enough to get to work with Senator Lynn Ruane regularly through her column for rogue, and she is one of the most emotionally intelligent people I’ve ever met. We talked about the experience of writing her 2018 memoir People Like Me, about revisiting traumatic experiences, and learning how to protect yourself in the present when revisiting the past, about the responsibility that comes with writing about other, especially your children, and also when you are writing about experiences...

Doireann Ní Ghríofa on putting herself on the page

October 01, 2021 07:06 - 1 hour - 83.1 MB

Episode one of our latest series of How to Fall Apart - the putting herself on the page series This series was inspired by a conversation Liadan had with writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa, in which Doireann talked about being asked of her book A Ghost in the Throat, it is very exposing, to write about yourself so honestly, how does hat feel? Doireann explained how she feels that in asking that, what people really mean is are you ashamed, to be be seen so fully on the page. To present such an hones...

Holly Carpenter on depression

November 17, 2020 19:42 - 42 minutes - 58 MB

Liadan talks to Holly Carpenter about her depression, about retreating from life when you’re struggling, how friends can help in those moments, toxic positivity on social media, the effect of modelling on her body image, and finding it hard to reach out when you’re struggling. Tw- this conversation covers eating disorders

Living with loss

October 23, 2020 14:58 - 1 hour - 99.9 MB

This episode of How To Fall Apart with the Irish Cancer Society aims to be a support for all those who are living with loss. I speak to Irish Cancer Society night nurse who talks about the support she offers families in those final hours. Orla Judge talks about how the pain of losing her mum is easing over time and Tríona McCarthy opens up about the loss of her sister ten years ago and finding the things that helped her cope. 

Living with loss | HTFA with The Irish Cancer Society

October 23, 2020 14:58 - 1 hour - 99.9 MB

This episode of How To Fall Apart with the Irish Cancer Society aims to be a support for all those who are living with loss. I speak to Irish Cancer Society night nurse who talks about the support she offers families in those final hours. Orla Judge talks about how the pain of losing her mum is easing over time and Tríona McCarthy opens up about the loss of her sister ten years ago and finding the things that helped her cope. 

Coping with grief and living with loss | HTFA with The Irish Cancer Society

October 21, 2020 14:53 - 1 hour - 86.9 MB

Conor Ferguson talks about his wife Keelin Shanley; meeting as teenagers, their life together, her memoir A Light That Never Goes Out, how they coped with her breast cancer diagnosis, and managing grief. 

Living with and beyond breast cancer | HTFA with the Irish Cancer Society

October 16, 2020 14:48 - 59 minutes - 82.1 MB

This series of How to Fall Apart with the Irish Cancer Society aims to be a virtual support group for this currently affected by breast cancer. We will talk to women who have themselves received a cancer diagnosis on coping with treatment, living with cancer and what happens in the aftermath. We will also speak to a number of health professionals – GPs, consultants and nurses, for advice on different stages of the process.

Living with cancer with Trina Cleary | HTFA with the Irish Cancer Society

October 14, 2020 15:00 - 37 minutes - 52 MB

This series of How to Fall Apart with the Irish Cancer Society aims to be a virtual support group for this currently affected by breast cancer. We will talk to women who have themselves received a cancer diagnosis on coping with treatment, living with cancer and what happens in the aftermath. We will also speak to a number of health professionals – GPs, consultants and nurses, for advice on different stages of the process.

The treatment episode

October 09, 2020 17:51 - 1 hour - 84.2 MB

This episode looks at the impact of breast cancer treatment, and the ways in which women learn to cope. Aisling Reilly, Aileen Murphy talk about their experiences, and consultant oncologist Dr Cathy Kelly explains what to expect.

The treatment episode | HTFA with The Irish Cancer Society

October 09, 2020 17:51 - 1 hour - 84.2 MB

This episode looks at the impact of breast cancer treatment, and the ways in which women learn to cope. Aisling Reilly, Aileen Murphy talk about their experiences, and consultant oncologist Dr Cathy Kelly explains what to expect.

Evelyn O'Rourke on receiving a breast cancer diagnosis when pregnant | HTFA with the Irish Cancer Society

October 07, 2020 14:46 - 35 minutes - 49.4 MB

In 2010, two days after she found out she was pregnant with her second child, broadcaster Evelyn O’Rourke was diagnosed with breast cancer. In the second trimester of her pregnancy she underwent chemotherapy. We talked about how she created a support about her, ‘outsourcing’ parts of her life, how she dealt with the fear, what her husband said to her that helped her get through, and coping with anxiety in the aftermath of cancer

The diagnosis episode | HTFA with the Irish Cancer Society

October 02, 2020 15:29 - 22 minutes - 30.9 MB

This series of How to Fall Apart with the Irish Cancer Society aims to be a virtual support group for this currently affected by breast cancer.  We will talk to women who have themselves received a cancer diagnosis on coping with treatment, living with cancer and what happens in the aftermath. We will also speak to a number of health professionals – GPs, consultants and nurses, for advice on different stages of the process. This episode features insight from Dr. Doireann O Leary, Helen Cod...

Sarah Donovan on her breast cancer diagnosis | HTFA with the Irish Cancer Society

September 30, 2020 15:00 - 1 hour - 93 MB

 The first episode in our new series, How to Fall Apart with the Irish Cancer Society. Over eight episodes, we will speak to a number of women about their experiences of cancer, from diagnosis, through treatment, to coping with the aftermath. In this episode Liadán speaks to mother of two Sarah Donovan who was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer at the age of thirty-seven. Sarah underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as well as double mastectomy. After discovering she had the BRC...

Life after cervical cancer with Anne Nally

July 28, 2020 07:33 - 1 hour - 131 MB

Anne Nally was twenty-nine years old and twenty-nine weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with cancer. We talked about how she coped with the treatment involved and the multiple symptoms she continues to suffer eight years later, as well the new Life After Cancer treatment centres she is involved in. Anne is one of the group of Irish women whose smear test was incorrectly read, and she talks about how she had tried to come to terms with the fact that her cancer would have been preventable, ...

Life after Burnout with Daniella Moyles

July 03, 2020 20:11 - 52 minutes - 72 MB

Daniella Moyles talks about coming back from a breakdown, the behaviours that led there and learning to live slow. 

Sophie White interviews Liadan

June 23, 2020 15:49 - 1 hour - 96.5 MB

In this special episode of How To Fall Apart, Sophie White steps in as host as Lia becomes guest. The friends chat all things book related - from writing process to boundaries to the flower dress renaissance.  How to Fall Apart is out now.  https://www.easons.com/how-to-fall-apart-liadan-hynes-9781529381214?gclid=Cj0KCQjw0Mb3BRCaARIsAPSNGpWiOK8UiP8xp7fc8icA_G8h8YEURzaVkuTYUIk-z0DxKEMYHM43IE4aAq4SEALw_wcB

Life after direct provision

June 15, 2020 16:34 - 1 hour - 99.2 MB

Ellie Kisyombe talks about grief and trauma in the aftermath of nearly a decade living in Direct Provision, how she is coming to terms with the lost years, and the new home she is building for her family. Liadán also spoke to Katie Mannion, Managing Solicitor with the Irish Refugee Council, who talked about some of the issues being experienced by people living in Direct Provision, and some of the ways we can help people currently in the system.

The mother episode

June 08, 2020 19:50 - 1 hour - 85.5 MB

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

Bonus Episode: Stefanie Preissner on loss

May 24, 2020 18:28 - 1 hour - 90.1 MB

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.

The Grief Episode

May 24, 2020 18:23 - 1 hour - 95.4 MB

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 l...

The mental health episode

May 15, 2020 13:00 - 59 minutes - 81.8 MB

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...

How to support in work

May 05, 2020 15:38 - 1 hour - 82.5 MB

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.

How to Support Single Parents

April 28, 2020 13:11 - 53 minutes - 73.2 MB

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. We spoke about how to manage the issues facing single parents including loneliness, financial fears, and co-parenting challenges, and also how single parents might be in some ways uniquely equipped...

How to Support Children at Home

April 14, 2020 12:50 - 1 hour - 89.5 MB

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,...

Life after ADHD

January 17, 2020 19:45 - 1 hour - 85.9 MB

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...

Life After Losing A Loved One

January 06, 2020 12:33 - 47 minutes - 64.9 MB

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.

What about when Christmas Isn’t the most wonderful time of the year?

December 19, 2019 14:26 - 46 minutes - 63.7 MB

We spoke to Jen O’Dwyer co-host of The Creep Dive and Mother of Pod, Soobie Lynch, @standingbythewall and all round creative genius, and Esther O’Moore Donohoe, host of podcasts the 80% and Esther is in Bits,  about when Christmas isn’t all joy and festivities, and it feels like the rest of the world is having the time of its life. We talked about when a family member is ill at Christmas time, about separation- both your own and your parents, about wanting to create new traditions or not wa...

Life after going freelance

November 08, 2019 15:27 - 1 hour - 109 MB

We did our first panel! Aisling Keenan Sarah Rickard and Dawn Nolan talked to me about freelancer fear- what it is and how to deal with it. We spoke about making the decision to go freelance (or having it made for you by redundancy), anxiety and the ways in which freelancing exacerbates that, the isolation of working on your own, talking about money, valuing yourself, the never-say-no freelancer mentality, not getting paid, being self employed and single parent, and always being on.

Life After IVF

November 05, 2019 14:24 - 56 minutes - 77.8 MB

In this week's episode, boutique owner Mary Greene talks about her 10 year journey to conceive. It's an unconventional story with many highs and too many lows but an eventual surprise ending. 

Life after becoming a single parent

November 01, 2019 16:23 - 31 minutes - 43.8 MB

My guest today is Zoe Desmond, the founder of Frolo, the single parent networking app. Zoe became a single parent two years ago when her son Billy was one. At the time she really struggled with the sense of isolation from not knowing any other single parents, the loneliness and the sense of otherness. After finding nothing online that would help her meet others in a similar situation, she went on to create Frolo. The app launched five weeks ago and is now both a source of advice and an insti...

Life After Miscarriage with Yvonne Hogan

October 10, 2019 07:50 - 40 minutes - 56 MB

Editor and journalist Yvonne Hogan speaks about losing her baby when nineteen weeks pregnant. “Grief is a physical thing, you can’t think your way out of it, you have no control over it,” she said in our interview. “Until something bad happens to you, you don’t realise bad things can happen. I just thought you got past twelve weeks and that was it.” We talked about the exhaustion of grief, about the decision to have another baby, figuring out just how to deal with this loss, how to talk abou...

Life After Your Child’s Diagnosis

October 01, 2019 17:30 - 50 minutes - 69.9 MB

Stylist Paula Hughes talks about her daughter Kayla being diagnosed with the rare degenerative brain disorder Rhett syndrome. About chasing a diagnosis, advocating for your child, how they taught Kayla to communicate, looking after your marriage while also caring for your child, raising a second child within this situation, about still finding the joy in life, and about how their daughter’s love of food led Aura and her husband to create their food delivery business Kayla’s Kitchen.

Life After Alzheimer's with Sophie White

September 05, 2019 16:13 - 52 minutes - 71.9 MB

Someone recently asked Sophie and I if we ever run out of things to talk about, the answer is no. When we originally sat down to do an interview for HTFA, we chatted for nearly three hours. So we kept this second half for this week, when Sophie's first novel, Filter This, comes out. Sophie talks about her dad, Kevin Linehan, who died in 2017 after a long illness with alzheimer's. About when a loss takes place not in one moment, but over a number of years. Of what it is like to grieve for so...

Life After Breast Cancer with Georgie Crawford

August 09, 2019 16:15 - 1 hour - 94.1 MB

Georgie Crawford was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017 when her daughter was just seven months old. A year after her treatment finished, she talks about coping with her diagnosis and her treatment, about mothering through sickness, and the aftermath of cancer-living with fear, the guilt and shame she sometimes feels around food, setting up her hugely successful podcast The Good Glow, and how the experience of having cancer changed her totally.

Life After Suicide

July 20, 2019 14:51 - 58 minutes - 80.8 MB

Our new episode of #howtofallapart is up now. Trigger warning, this episode is a conversation about life after suicide. I spoke to my friend make-up artist Eilis Downey, who two years ago lost her sister Lyn, who died by suicide.  “Knowing Lyn was to love her,” Eilis says. They had lived together, worked together and hung out together. In the aftermath, she said that she didn’t know how to be herself without her sister. But Eilis faced into her loss in a way I think is totally awe inspiring...

Life After Loss with Elizabeth Gilbert

July 08, 2019 15:42 - 56 minutes - 77 MB

With her book #eatpraylove @elizabeth_gilbert_writer essentially wrote the manifesto for what to do when your life goes off the path you had expected it to go on. Here she talks about how her biggest mistake back then was thinking that she needed to stop going after one year. And that our lives don’t end in tidy happy ever after packages. We talked about her grief over the last year, in the wake of the death of her partner and best friend Rayya Elias, of how depression is often caused by blo...

Life After Your Body Breaks Your Heart

June 30, 2019 13:21 - 1 hour - 94 MB

Journalist Elle Gordon was born with cerebral palsy and later developed hip dysplasia. She talked about feeling other, about the grief around letting go of expectations, on why acceptance is a process not a destination, and about talking honestly about living with a disability.

Life After Cancer

June 20, 2019 19:00 - 1 hour - 114 MB

Our newest episode of #howtofallapart is up now with my brilliant friend and colleague journalist and author Emily Hourican, whose new book The Outsider is just out. Five years ago she was diagnosed with HPV mouth cancer. We talked about her husband David kept everything going so she could let all the balls drop, her treatment which involved her bolted to the table in a mask she compared to the man in the iron mask (swipe), about being self employed and having to keep going (she wrote an inc...

Life After a Break-Up

May 30, 2019 12:54 - 57 minutes - 78.4 MB

Tv presenter Cassie Stokes talks about coping with the recent break-up of her relationship, speaking publicly about grief, coming out, and being “the gay one” on Xpose. How to Fall Apart is presented by @liadanhynes and produced by @talltalespodcasts

Life in Direct Provision

May 24, 2019 09:01 - 53 minutes - 72.8 MB

Founder of Our Table, activist and Social Democrat candidate Ellie Kisyombe talks about living for almost a decade in Direct Provision, in a life over which she has virtually no control. About the strength she draws from the memories of her family and her life in Africa, overcoming depression, the importance of your own home, raising children within the Direct Provision system where they do not even have a kitchen table to sit down at, and the difficulty for teenagers integrating their life ...

Life After Your Marriage Falls Apart

May 23, 2019 11:23 - 1 hour - 85.4 MB

Author and head of social media for everymum.ie Kate Gunn talks about how she put life back together after her marriage fell apart, about how grief can feel physically painful, how to mind your children through this process, learning to live without another adult, living with a spouse suffering from depression, about building a new home, dealing with panic attacks, and introducing your children to a new partner. How to Fall Apart is presented by @liadanhynes and produced by @talltalespodcas...

Life After a Nervous Breakdown

May 19, 2019 07:13 - 1 hour - 94 MB

Author, journalist and podcast Sophie White talks about having a nervous breakdown in her early twenties, how recovery from mental health issues is an ongoing process rather than a one off thing, what to do when your sense of who you were deserts you, when depression looks like someone who is highly functioning, and post natal depression. How to Fall Apart is presented by @liadanhynes and produced by @talltalespodcasts

Guests

Elizabeth Gilbert
1 Episode