A few weeks ago an old school friend and remarkable photographer and film maker, Ross Mc Donnell, went missing in New York where he lived. After four days his bike was found double locked to a stand out near the water at Fort Tilden in Queens. Sniffer dogs were able to follow his footsteps from his bike, across the beach and right to the edge of the water. Two weeks later his body was found, it is thought he got caught in a bad current while swimming and drowned.
I attended his funeral this Monday gone. It was heart-breaking. Those who spoke about him during the service blew me away with their words. He was a person who had grabbed life by the balls and followed his heart. Who had had remarkable adventures, made powerful art and drawn around him incredible friends. So hard to hear he had died doing the thing he loved the most – swimming wild in the ocean.
The crematorium was directly beneath the Dublin airport flightpath, and after the service, as jumbo jets scraped the sky above our heads, I met with old friends I had not seen for over twenty-five years. It was moving to see how all our faces had changed with time – some hardly at all, some carried each day passed. Time folded and splintered around us. Driving to the funeral I had been listening to a podcast on which presenter Síle Seoige spoke with visibility coach Kate Dwyer. It was a brilliant conversation and I highly recommend you take a listen. Kate spoke about so much that resonated, but one thing in particular really lingered. I kept going back to it as I sat for an hour in my car waiting to leave the crematorium, so big was the crowd that had attended to say their farewell. Kate spoke about the importance of being visible, about not apologising for saying what feels right in your gut and about this as an act of healing not just for you, but for those who see you. She spoke about trusting in the truth of your gut feeling.
Somehow what she had said wove itself into what I had learnt about the life of this old school friend. About how he believed and trusted completely in the truth of what he was doing. I had recently listened to a replay of an interview he had done with journalist Nicola Tallant about a six-year long project of his called JoyRiders, which documented lives of young men who grew up in the flats at Ballymun on the north side of Dublin city. The two talked about the first night he had met these young men, on a Halloween night as bonfires burned and the flats were being demolished. Tallant asked him was he not afraid he’d have his camera robbed, hanging out that way on his own? The question seemed to surprise Mc Donnell, it didn’t seem to be something that had occurred to him. He and the young lad both just had a genuine interest in each other he said, and he’d trusted that. He was doing what he knew he was born to do, and he was visible and open hearted in his doing of it. And others responded in kind. No one robbed his camera, and many of those lads became lifelong friends.
In the podcast conversation I’d listened to earlier that day, Kate Dwyer spoke about how she worked with quite a lot of women who are on paper quite visible in what they do, but simply do not feel right doing it. This resonated deeply with me. In 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic, I set up NuaNua, an online business offering programmes and coaching for mothers helping them to understand the value and importance of their postpartum and their matrescence. It gained a reasonably high profile quite quickly – within a year I was in national newspapers and magazines, I was on national tv and on international podcasts speaking about my work. I felt very passionate about the subject I was speaking about, I think this is why people responded as they did, but something, something I could hardly put my finger on, did not feel right. I did not feel right in my own skin. I knew this within a year of setting up the business, but it is hard to let go of something that rewards your ego, that is helping people and that you have put SO much work into. But I could not shake the feeling that I was not doing what I was here to do. Something didn’t fit. It’s taken years to peel back the onion layers to get the real core of what IS my voice, what DOES feel right in my own body, and to let go of the rest. But what I have discovered is that it is a slower, deeper way of being. It is a way of being that comes from my gut not my head. It is less defined in some ways, but also much clearer. It is what I loved to do more than anything else back when me and Ross had been friends in school, sitting in English class, lapping up the words of our beloved teacher Mr Hamill.
What I want to do is to place words on a page. I want to use words to share what I’m thinking, to work out what I’m thinking, to gather around a hearth with ink and pen. THAT feels right under my skin. It has been really hard to get to here, to get to the point where I feel brave enough to say – this is what I want to be seen for. This is what I feel born to do, this is what I love.
Writer Ursula Le Guin, quoted in Julia Phillips’ incredible group biography of creative mothers The Baby on the Fire Escape, really says it so well:
What you need is the conviction that what you are doing is of real importance and really worth doing, and you have to do it; and that conviction creates the sacred space around you.
And this is what I drove home from Ross’s heart-breaking farewell feeling deeply. How important and powerful it is to really feel into what it is you are here to do. And to then step into that with trust, and with a sense of adventure and joy. I think a lot about the last track Ross walked from where he parked his bike at Fort Tilden down to water’s edge.
I think about the traces of him that hung in the air, that stuck to the seaweed and sand.
I think about the marks he left, the threads he wove, the path he left behind.
I think about how all of us, each of us, across the planet are leaving these traces for others to walk through, weave with, be fed by.
I drove home with a fierce sense of how important it is to find and do and trust in what you feel born to do. There is healing in that for everyone, there is healing in that for more than just you.
This is such a beautiful tribute to your friend, Ross, and contains so much relatable truth. I recently closed my small business, which I loved, but somehow still didn't feel 'right' for me and have started showing up here on substack, loving the spaciousness and potential of it all. Thank you for your beautiful medicine x
Your words resonate so deeply, Layla. I, too, have spent many years wearing skins (like a selkie) that didn't fit, until I realised that writing is what I'm meant to do. Thank you for the gift of your healing words. And deep condolences on the loss of your friend Ross.