EXTRAordinary Women Episode 7 - Joanne Begley

Welcome to Episode 7 of the EXTRAordinary Women podcast!

This episode features Joanne Begley, an end of life care practitioner and author of "For after I've Gone".

Joanne shares her journey, her community involvement, and how she balances it all as a proud mom of two with a supportive husband. 

Don't miss this inspiring conversation about:
✨ Community involvement
✨ Balancing family, career, and community work
✨ Joanne's lessons and experiences.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Extraordinary Women. I have an absolutely fascinating and fantastic woman here with me on this episode from my hometown of Shannon, County Clare. Joanne Begley, you are very welcome. Thank you for having me to be very honoured to be on your podcast. I'm delighted. Absolutely delighted. And thank you for being a supporter of the podcast as well as I really do appreciate that. Not at all. It's great to listen to all the women's different stories. Brilliant. Well done. Getting to hear your story today. So I'm just going to introduce you to the listeners. People will listen to this, of course, who know you but I'm hoping that there will be a wide range and reach of people who listen to this and who'll be very curious to know, okay, who is this lady? Joanne Begley is a businesswoman and entrepreneur. She's an author. She's an end of life practitioner care practitioner. And she's very much involved in the community here in Shannon, which most people who know Joanne will know that, because I see her active in so many committees, and I don't actually know how she gets the time to do this, but we will find out. And she is proud mum of two to Aoibhinn an Eoin and I know she has a fantastic supportive husband as well in the background somewhere, so I do indeed. Great. So yeah. So Joanne, we were talking a little bit before we started just about the purpose of this podcast, you know, and is it really has been for me about helping so-called ordinary women to maybe take a step towards being extraordinary and by listening to stories like yours. So I'd love to just maybe start go back to your beginnings there. You know, you were from Shannon. You grew up here. Tell us a little bit about what it was like for you growing up, going on school and things. Yeah, I am from Shannon originally. All my life. A pure Shannonite. Out and out. my mum is from Belfast, so she would come down to Shannon in the troubles with my dad is from Ennis. I have two brothers and a sister and we would have lived in the Finian Park in Shannon, I would have went to school in Saint Aidans where Ger Loughnane was the principal at the time, and then I would have went on then to St Patrick's Comprehensive School there. After then I didn't go to college. Then I started working where every good story starts in Supermacks, giving out snack boxes. I learned an awful lot working in that role with Pat McDonagh was astounding man. I was training coordinator there as well, and from there I kind of moved into a nursing home in Carrigoran, working as an auxiliary nurse there. And I loved the role, but I was quite sensitive. I got very attached to patients and I, I was very upset if I took a long weekend off and came back and somebody had passed away. And so I left there and went into retail. I was a retail manager for the brand, the Bestseller. They have like Jack and Jones, Vero Moda and I was manager for NameIt in Shannon. Okay, the kiddies clothes shop. So there I would have kind of been a buyer kind of merchandiser. You would have travelled to Denmark to buy collections and that was a great role. And then I decided that I would go back and train in college. I always had a passion for disabilities and end of life kind of talk. So I went back to the Open Training College as a mature student and I did a four year honours degree in social care in disability. Wow. Okay. So. Right, well, that's you know, some kind of work history and work experience. And I don't know about you, but what I love, especially about like we're I think we're we're a similar age and a lot of women our age or people our age would have had going back to the job in supermarkets like we all probably. And I actually wrote a blog about this recently about the value of working in a customer service role at some point in your career. And you mentioned Pat McDonagh there. He's a legend here in Ireland. Yeah, Yeah. So tell me, just what do you think? Because, you know, you said you learned an awful lot from that. It's something I'm very passionate about, like customer service and having a service mindset. What did you think were the big lessons that you took from your early work career there in Supermacs? Pat was a great believer in having a good team behind you as well, and knowledgeable people at the front desk or behind the grill or even on the floor. He was really good at creating good teamwork. Yeah, and he was he was good to get stuck in as well and come down and roll up their sleeves and get in behind and flip a burger if he had to, himself and Una They were just lovely people. They looked after staff, they looked after us for a kind of Christmas night outs. they were just really good to work for I enjoyed going in there Yeah, I was I worked in the oakwood Cos and like that. The owner at the time, like Ted Germaine would have been there, like on the floor with me. Yeah. Like, I mean I was half terrified, obviously. Not that he was just the boss, he was a brilliant person to learn from as well because you're learning from the business owner about how to mind customers. Yeah. Yeah. And from the top down. Yeah, yeah. I went, I forgot to say earlier I would have been a bar manager in the olde lodge in the last four years as well before I had to run and not know anything. Sorry. And at the time it was, it was run by the Lion family. So I knew that I had the open and it was run at the time by Howard. Howard, I don't know if you remember Howard that lost his life there cycling by the clearing. yes, I heard Flannery and his wife on. Yeah, I learned so much from them about the operational side of things that you wouldn't see. Yeah. The stuff to order and about budgets for staffing. So we can only allocate that much. And yeah, I was very interested in learning from people in the field. I know and I think that's at that age. I think this is just for me like a message to anyone younger who might be listening to this. Like there's such value to be had and jobs that seem a bit menial, you know, because you are actually learning what we call transferable skills. You know, as you said, how do you organise stock? Like, how much stock do we need, How do I talk to customers and do this? And yeah, so phenomenal. Well, I just I just wanted to touch on that. And obviously, you know, your connection to Shannon is very deep rooted then. So yeah, you know, we'll talk a bit about the community work in a while and I am very passionate about Shannon as well, so I love to see the work that you're doing there really, you know, take my hat off to you because I know it's not easy, but one of the things I want to go back to as well was like, So you took us on your career trajectory. And at some point then you kind of said, right, I'm going to go back to college and I'm going to retrain. And you said you've always kind of had an affinity for supporting, you know, people with disabilities. And the end of life kind of piece. I'm just curious, like, what do you think, drew you towards that? I'm just always been kind of surrounded. It's like there isn't a family that hasn't been touched by a disability. or a death, So I've always been interested in kind of how we leave this world. I actually did my thesis in college on End of Life. It was called Quality of Life Trumps Quality of Death for People with Disabilities. A lot don't get a choice in their wishes for end of life. Some of them are wards of court, so a lot of decisions are made for them. So I wanted to explore that. So I did my thesis on that. And after that then I suppose going back to my interest in disabilities, when I worked in Carrigoran, I came across the man from Six Mile Bridge called Frank Keogh. He was a mechanic in John Browns, in Cratloe and he he got a thing called Locked-in syndrome. I don't know if he's ever heard about it. It's like a double stroke. So he went to bed with a headache, woke up, and he could only communicate with his eyes. So he went to the rehab place in Dun Laoighre for years, and then came to Carrigoran. And I ended up becoming very close to him and just understanding him. He talked with a board that like it was bright yellow, green, light blue. And then red was a So you'd start with the vowels. I.O.U. So you could go in and he'd blink for a red and you'd go through A, B, C, D, and he could just be asking you a question. Or so I really kind of connected with him with a good laugh. I'll never forget my first day in Carrigoran, and I showed up a little bit, hung over. I was 18 and very naive. He spent, he spelt up, Go get a glass of milk and I just it was just and in the front of my book about him telling me drink milk when I was hung over. But he was just good fun. Yeah. I created a really good kind of bond with his wife and daughter and we always kind of chatted about, you know, I want to leave a letter for Caroline and Marie. Will you help me with this? I would. I had always said, Yes, I would when I ended up leaving Carrigoran on and Frank was moved to rest free to Cheshire Homes and nurse in Newcastle West, which is more independent living suited his needs and his aid of his age I suppose. And then he suddenly got pneumonia and passed away. And I always kind of thought, God, I never got to do that for Frank, And I kind of just it was a little bit of an itch I couldn't scratch, you know, So okay, that was fine. And then I suppose then in 2018, I wasn't feeling very well and I was diagnosed with an incurable brain condition called Chiari malformation. So for anyone that doesn't know what that is, it's like a herniation of the brain. So your brain is too small for your skull or your skull is too small for your brain, and it's protruding into your spine. So basically for the next so I was having headaches. I started a pilates class. I couldn't understand why I couldn't do any of the balancing And I was getting phenomenal blackouts, loading a dishwasher. And any time I laughed, I got a really bad headache because it's called the laughing disease. When you laugh really hard, your brain shakes. What's the name? Can you repeat the name called Chiari malformation? So Chiari malformation. So it's it can be an acquired injury, I guess maybe from all the rollercoasters that I was on with my children for years. Or you can get it maybe through an accident or it you know it could just be like mine an incidental find. I started getting headaches in my thirties. It doesn't kind of manifest till your thirties. So I went to my GP Ronan Flynn, I just I'm just not feeling well. I feel like my eyes are going to pop out of my head. And I went for an MRI on the August and I had a fantastic neurologist in Barringtons called Peter Bores, and he just said, You have Chiari malformation and you have to get a bit of brain surgery. Okay, there's no cure for it. So it's a progressive disease. It's very debilitating some days. But I don't let it stop me because I always say if if my gin and tonic hand works, I'm fine. I have to have some outlet in life. Yeah. Life is for a living. And that's why I'm so passionate about everything end of life. I've had two brain surgeries in Cork. The first one I had in September 2018, and I got a thing after called a Physudermanindoseif. So it's like a big leak at the back of your brain, which causes more problems as well. So they try to wait for ten months to see what that disappeared, that didn't disappear. And I went in for another surgery of the October of the following year, and they left it for another little while to see. And I, I got a recurring leak. And when you get a Suderman your brain thinks that you have a tumour, so it kind of fights your body all the time to protect you. So in the end there, I have a second opinion. Some Dublin there was not really anybody in Ireland could do, and I came across the Chiari malformation Foundation in Barcelona, they believe going in through your brain. So what they do in Ireland is they go through the back of your skull. It's called a decompression depressurised They remove a big part of your skull. And Barcelona didn't believe in that concept because they think that's very invasive. They go in through your coccyx bone and up through your spine. So they believe your brain is attached to your spinal cord and they go in through your spinal cords. Cut it and it bounces back up like a bungee. Okay. So I decided I would take a risk and go there. And I have VHI thank god and I the surgery was over 20,000 and I thought VHI would pay for it, VHI would pay for it if the neurosurgeon signed it off but the neurosurgeon here in Ireland wouldn't because it's a pioneering surgery. And it was kind of tough So my godchild in Shannon Claire Louise Lagan ended up setting up a go fund me. And I think in 24 hours I raised 24,000. So that's why I, I give back to my community because I, I just feel passionate they were there to dig me out of a hole. So that's why I gave a lot of my time. It's yeah, I kind of said when, when we raised the money, it was like, well, I will give back to as long as I'm here. And so as well, that's kind of where I'm coming. So like I, I have an interest in end of life. I won't be here forever. I have to have my ducks in a row for my two kids, my wishes and my diary that I have out at the moment. I'm like, I'm not sad about it. I'm not, It is what it is. I am very proactive. We talk about death and dying around our table all the time. Like when I give talks on this, I always say like talking about death and dying is not going to like talking about sex is not going to make you get pregnant tomorrow. Talking about death and Dying will not bring inevitable death closer to anybody in this life. So it's really important to kind of change the narrative around it. And I think a song like come on, there, Clearwater Clearwater Revival, and Eoin will say, is your funeral song Mom. It's just it's it's a natural conversation, but it takes off a lot of pressure off them to know my wishes when when my time comes. So cutting a long story short, I had the surgery in Barcelona. It took me a long, long time to recover. I got a lot of infections. When I come home to Ireland and I ended up caring for a friend of mine's Mum was diagnosed with motor neurone and I was bored off my tree. If anyone listening to this knows me. Knows I hate being idle. I do not like sitting down. For more than 10 minutes. I actually met a friend of mine Carol and I said, I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm actually just bored. I have nothing to do. I have no assignments to correct. I've no I have no minutes to write up. I just I dunno what I was doing. But I don't like being idle. And yeah, so I mess with Carmel and I just said I'm bored. I'll sit with you two nights a week. And. And we just become and kind of really close. And she had expressed her wishes to, I don't know if motor neurone, you know, you lose your voice when you have motor neurones and she wants to do something for her children. So I looked on the market Denise and I could not find anything. There were a lot of books out there that you could give now, but she wanted to leave something for after. So any time I go on duty with her should be, Give me a job. Sir, Can you assign that to go to somebody or can you do this job for that person? And I'd always say it was always kind of is this for now. Or for after Carmel. So that's why I came up with the idea for After I've Gone. So when we were researching all these books, we were looking at books, nah that question doesn't sue No I don't like the look of that book. I look I just buying five, four, a five diaries and we'll design the questions. So that's all you need to do when I come in. She used to have a thing. I don't remember if you saw what Charlie Bird had the eye gaze, I saw him using it on social media, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I go in and if I was cooking or a bit of dinner, I'd say work away on that question and you know that tears there'd be laughter. But I learned so much about her. So I would a wrote the books, the answers for her in the books and gave them to her children. So after she passed and in the July I just thought, you know, I'm going to develop this. I'm going to there's nothing like it. I just I saw the massive need for it, especially after doing the thesis as well. And yeah, I just kind of got involved then with them that new Frontiers programme in TUS the old LIT and that's kind of run by Enterprise Ireland. So I went in there and you do a couple of months programme on your why, Why are you doing this. What social problem are you solving and designed it and they give you food for thought because as somebody not having a business before you so many think about, yes, I did. I did the new Frontiers programme for a couple of weeks. And then I was asked by social entrepreneurs Ireland to go on their ideas academy. So that was up in Dublin and that was for a couple of months and met some really fantastic people. I think you know Tristan from FASD? Yeah, yeah. He was on the same programme as I was a still a really good friend. I love Tristran and you just meet people, bounce off ideas. It's great people just trying to solve social problems in society. So I did that for a couple of months and then I did the HSC sparks programme where you kind of go on and try and get the HSE to fund it, but because I'm a business and it wasn't freely available to patients, I couldn't get funding for that. And then I did The Seeds Programme Seeds program then with the Irish Hospice Foundation as well then okay. And I was lucky enough to be picked for the Arnotts. They do an initiative every year called Pitch. Yeah. So I have picked for the pitch, the Pitch 23 initiative. So I got invited up to Dublin, yeah to Arnotts and it's in the townhouse at the top of Arnotts And you. it's like Dragon's Den. You go in there's four phenomenal women sitting there and purple velvet chairs and they're just like, Well, it's like, Do I can stand you, introduce yourself who you are. And so I did that in July. And then in September of last year I decided, right, I'm going to launch for after I've gone. And I did. And I launched this in Hope Cafe here in Shannon. And I was ..think. I didn't really want to launch and I had a business mentor. I was like, No, just put an ad on Amazon, say nothing to no one. I, I can be quite shy sometimes. I like I'm passionate about doing something like news, but when it's something to do with a heart-felt project, it's it's hard to be kind of vulnerable. Like, isn't it your kind of people that. Yeah, yeah. So I launched this in Hope Cafe. I didn't think I thought maybe ten or 12 people came and it was over 200. It was a phenomenal night. I keep saying to everybody it felt like I was at my own funeral because it was so much love in the room. It was Madge O Callahan interviewed me. I had music from Katie Thesby and Blaise Phelan and my Dad and It was just a beautiful, night it was lovely. And since then, Denise, it's just been a massive roller coaster of. Yeah, busy, busy, busy. And that's how kind of my business came off the ground. And It's a phenomenal story. So. So like, basically, you, you've been inspired by, by a few different things, but you know primarily about how we approach, you know, death and how we deal with the dying and yeah. Have you ever read the book on Death and Dying by. I think it's Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. I don't know if. Yes, yes, yes. That's yeah, I would have, I would a referenced her a lot in my thesis yeah. Because I do talk about that in some in terms of the change that her theory around, you know, how grief the stages of grief is, how we deal with change in life as well. So yeah, and since I published the book, I kind of thought, you know what, I, I want to try and become more knowledgeable in the field as well. If, if you're selling products on a certain topic, you just kind of want to support or research and stuff. So I'm trying it to be a death doula I don't know if you've ever heard of them. So I have heard do you wanna tell our listeners that as in in America, they have like a birth doula I know this, it's kind of common in to Ireland now where, you know, you get a supportive man or woman to support you through birth and stuff. And so the death doula would be the same. It's about how you leave this world and, you know, kind of get your getting your affairs in order, I suppose. The Irish Hospice Foundation have a fantastic document called the Think Ahead. It's a pack where you'd buy it and it's kind of it's it's like the business side of of dying where youd have passwords and stuff people don't think to leave behind and Yeah and it kind of it stops the stress of the families like a lot of conversations around death and dying happen at a time of crisis and if somebody has had a stroke, I don't know what they wanted or like a lot of a lot of healing conversations can be had around death and dying. So, like, I try it. Yeah, fantastic. Because I know even for us, like we lost my mum over over 20 years ago from cancer, a brain cancer and she'd been sick for a long time and period, periods of remission and different things. But there's some, there's things I wish I was able to talk to her about. You know, we, we did have times before she passed and looking back like I'm thinking, I wonder what was what was really going through her mind. You know, I mean, she seemed to be kind of had come to terms with it towards the end. But, yeah, you know, I think for people listening, not to be afraid of that. I think, yeah, the feedback I'm getting from testimonies and stuff is like just so the, the idea, the book is this the person who and I'm not targeting as or marketing it to people palliative care, end of life. It's for everybody to know you should be writing down your wishes or memories. Core memories are really important. The book is divided into two, so the first half is about the person. Like, did you get into trouble as a child? What was how much was bread and milk? You know, like simple questions. What did you do? for fun? Did you have a favourite teacher who was your first boyfriend girlfriend? And then the second half of the book then is it's developed as like, what's here? Here's where you should go if you're missing me. This is my bucket list. This is my favourite restaurant to eat. Here's something you didn't know about me. Can you please finish this off for me? And so it's like it's keeping that forever bond between the person who has passed and the person that's here. But it also has a dual purpose in that it helps the person leave. And like my tagline is for all the things left unsaid. So you would kind of like from speaking with families that I've worked with to know this, my God, that's why my dad never brought us there, or that's why this happened. So, yeah, you know, it's. Yeah, Pandora's box closed for people. It is. Yeah. I mean, know. So in terms of yourself then, right, so this brought you into the world of entrepreneurship. You've been on a lot of mentoring programs and I know myself how, how rewarding that can be, but how challenging that can be when you're trying to bring an idea to fruition and you get all the right questions, but it can be very challenging. So, you know, one thing I always ask women on this, you know, I know there's going to be somebody listen who like is obviously in awe of what you're doing. And for me, I think women need to see more women ordinary, quote unquote, who are doing extraordinary things. So what advice? I mean, you're obviously very driven, right? And very self-motivated. But what advice would you give to somebody who might be listening, who has like a an inkling of a creative spark about something in the back of their mind, And they're kind of like, God, no, that's just silly now. You know, I'm just going to put that forget about that. Like, have you any advice for other women who might want to do something extraordinary I think take the risk? You know, life is about risk. Risk is not fatal. It's important to take that risk. If you don't balance that out with the risk of doing nothing. If you have this idea, just go with it. It's important. Like, I keep thinking I keep going back to my why. And my why is like, I got in this. I got into doing for I've gone to make a difference, not make a million. And that is my sole purpose. That's like if I if I sell one book today to hospice in Australia, my job is done today because that's what why I wanted it. I wanted people to get the benefit out of it are not going to be driving a Land Rover and that's okay, you know what I mean? and not everybody's your customer. So I think it's important to if you have the if you have the idea, you just have to drive on with it find the strength from within somewhere and just drive it. I'm sorry, greatness of network and just reach out and just figure out right who can link in with that one. I would be a bit cheeky, I suppose, in terms of approaching people. What like how, how can I get this done? And like, I would have sent my book to Charley Bird and Vicky Phelan when I was when I first was doing the first draft, because you need to do feasibility studies, you need to change questions. And I sent it to Charlie and Vicky and one of them came back and said I had a question in it, What is your death row meal? And as two people that were at end of life came back and said, We don't like that. question Can you put in change it? Like what will be the last meal? You know what I mean? Just kind of changing words like that. So Charlie would have sent me a lovely letter back at the time, and then I was lucky enough to be invited to meet him last December. I don't know if you remember, Kevin Sinfield was doing the seven of seven marathons up in Dublin. yes, he was running for Rob Burrows, so Motor Neurone invited me up to meet Charlie and Claire a And it was lovely. It was lovely to say I'm the one who sent you the book. And yeah. And so now I'm kind of aligned with Motor Neurone Ireland and the Irish Hospice Foundation, the Marie Keating Foundation. So yeah, it's networking is so important. Yeah. I thought that you were had an awards earlier on this year as well and the network Ireland's limerick for the year in the network year of the year category wasn't that right Along with yourself. Yes. I cannot wait I cannot wait to see you win in September. yeah. Yeah. Network. It's like it's important to be involved with Network Ireland. And I'm also in the Club Women's Network. You know, it's great to bounce. It's a very lonely place sometimes being employed like my mam would have been self-employed. She just retired there. Actually, she had a play school for 35 years. in Shannon, my dad a self employed, musician So yeah, we've always they've always been our biggest cheerleader. So it's really like it's, it's a lonely place being self-employed, you know, because you're like, why am I doing this? God, I didn't get a sale in today. And I'm, I wouldn't be one of these. Fake it till you make it people. I am quite honest. Yeah. I didn't get a sale today. That's okay. You know, it's Yeah, it's not for everybody and I, I have to understand that. I can. I'll tell you a funny story. I did a holistic fare one time thinking, okay, this might be an avenue I could explore, and a man came up and asked, What are these books about? So I was giving him the whole spiel and he just said to me, oh my god, the only thing I'm leaving them is my overdraft. And he walked away. I just thought, okay, you have to understand that not everybody is your customer everybody really important? Yeah, not for everybody. And that's okay. But look like, you know, I think if people really are honest with themselves, you know, I mean, and that's not going to happen, obviously. But in this lifetime that everybody gets to a state of awareness where they realise actually everybody could do with this book and this is actually a really good idea for everybody. Like, as you said, everybody's encountered death, everybody, we're all going to face it. But I think it's a beautiful thing rather than something to be afraid of. You know that. Yeah. Yeah 100% So I've been invited down to one of the women's sheds then down in Tralee or Killarney in September, and to give a talk on it, because I qualified recently with the Irish Hospice Foundation to become, a think ahead champion. So that would be just where you go and how people that are struggling to fill out their forms or have courageous conversations. It's just, you know, it's yeah, I did a talk recently in TUS and for Jennifer Stritch for her and grief and lost students and one of the students just said like I really want to have this conversation with my parents How do I just sit down and have a cup of tea? And I said, What if you don't? You know what I mean? The fall out of that will be worse because you'll be going I should have asked mam for her brown bread recipe or, you know, so I think just once you just break kind of just change the narrative. That's what I'm trying to do daily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you're kind of trying to change the mindset around embracing. Yeah. End of life discussions, whether or not you're. Well, we're, you know, we don't know do we. We don't know when that's going to be. So I'm not in terms of your own health, then you're obviously in a good place right now is that fair to say. today is good, other days, if I say me and I might look like I've come through a bush backwards or I just try and get up and get on with it. And I've never seen you know, I've never seen all the signs like, you know, the power of makeup. But yeah, I do find that the heavy weather now gives me headaches, I can tell you, if there's a storm coming four days before it comes, because my head will come out through my ears and. And yeah, look, it is what it is. There is no more help. I pray every day somebody will invent a cure to keep my brain up and not fall out. So I'm. You're taking there I'm when in the grand scheme of things, there are a lot more people worse off than me. And I'm lucky to be breathing every morning, have two fabulous children and a great husband and a lovely family and fantastic friends. So life is for living, in my opinion. Well, you're an inspiration to many and just on the community work. Finally, just to talk a little bit about that with you, because it's something, you know, we can raise awareness of here as well. For Shannon, what kind of community committees are you involved in and is there anything you'd like to particularly talk about? I'm involved in a few. I'm on the board of the Family Resource Centre. I'm the Secretary of Shannon Community Partnership, which is the new advocacy and development body for Shannon. So we formed in November of last year and that's going strength to strength. You know, it's just trying to get the different strands of the community together to get what we need. For Shannon. Shannon can become the forgotten town sometimes. So we're fighting for services, increased services, better facilities. And yeah, we meet kind of every kind of quarterly with, with groups in Shannon, we have a Shannon community network where we just try and link people, get all the sports groups together, try and get funding for them. And so I really enjoy that. And then I'm secretary of the Shannon of Mná Le Chéile at the Shannon Women's Shed, which is absolutely brilliant craic. And from going to the the Women's Shed forums, I'm I'm the youngest person at it but. I don't believe in it. Just being for retired people, it's for all the women that want to just get out of the house, get a safe space. So we're actually just looking for a premises. We've been working out of the Family Resource Centre for the last year and we're booked out solid weeks in advance. But we use the women in our community that have a skill, so if somebody does mindfulness will use her. If somebody is does macrame with a new stem and somebody does sewing will use them and then they get a ricochet effect then of business afterwards. So it's just about empowering women, scaffolding women to actually see that. Yeah. And what other. I'm on the Shannon Athletics Club for funding. I like getting everybody a bit of money. I'm I like filling out forms. It's a bit weird like that so I do I like getting people what they're what they're owed, you know, if you can get a funding stream to improve your, your area too. And I also I'm yeah, I'm also part of the Ukrainian core group as well. Then first as volunteer on the community integration team and I think I think that's it any more I think I'll be divorced as well as as I said before I like to give back Denise it's not just looking for parts in the back or just about giving back to my community because Shannon is a phenomenal place when somebody is in trouble and they need help, they just band together and they're just so, yeah, it's that's why I do what I do. Yeah. Yeah. It's a special place, I suppose. Finally, then, for for you. Like your vision for yourself, for the next, for the rest of this year into next year. Have you anything else up your sleeve or are you happy to kind of progress with the book sales? I actually when I brought the book out, I was only ever going to do a parent edition, but I had to be mindful when you're doing your market research that not everyone is a parent. So I developed a sibling addition, a friend edition and a partner edition. And yesterday I got an email going, Well, I'd really like a grandfather addition. So look, when I find time I'll try and develop that. But yeah, there is big plans for for after I've done and I want to kind of develop an audio section on the website where somebody could leave a message that could be posted to somebody at a loved one like their birthday. Or a grad. Or a wedding. Yeah. And so, and as with technology, you know, that takes a long time and stuff. So yeah, I look for after I've gone it's a slow burn it, it has to kind of gather momentum and kind of just change beliefs and I ship globally You know what I'm delighted that it's in Australia and England and America and Portugal. So it's, it's yeah, it's everywhere and so on that note, finally. So if someone like me listening now to this podcast that's gone, maybe I should have a look at that book, you know, and is brave enough to kind of, even if you don't know anyone who's, you know, at their end of life and like what edition, I know there's a few different versions and like, where's the starting point for, say, someone like me who, you know, I'm just like, right, I want to read this. I want to buy this for myself. So it's a journal Yeah, yeah, it's a 200 page journal. So there's prompts in it. So like, as I said, the first section will be all about you. You should fill it in. But I also, when I was doing it, I wanted to involve people in the community in it as well. So I would have worked with a lot of local artists to put a piece of art in, just so it's not all writing that there's a nice quote in there from Donna I don't know if you've heard of Donna Ashworth. Her book is here beside me on my bookshelf I love her. Look, as long as I said before, I'm a bit cheeky. I did reach out and say, Look, I have this idea. There's not a like on the market in the world. Could I have a few of your pieces? And she was like, Absolutely. I know what you do. There's I just of Donna's pieces. And as Christie Hennessey was to put it, well, his daughter, Hermoine was putting a song and it like people were just so good to give their stuff there Orla Carr artist from Kilrush has a few pieces or Nell Stritch, you know. Nell from Network Ireland she has a few pieces. And so I worked with a lot of people because I wanted this to be a kind of a collaborative thing. But it wasn't just a journal you would read and read, but then you could pick it up and read a nice little poem. And if you were having a bad day. So again, so by if you are a parent, you have the parent edition. If you want to leave one to your sibling, your friend, your partner, but they all have different questions. You're not going to ask a sibling the same question you'd ask your parents. You know, you might help them, but there's the parents one. There's one for parents, There's one for parents of children, I presume, is there? Yeah. Yeah. And I am working like from when I started this, I, I did say I wanted my fifth edition would be a child to parents edition because. Yeah The children lose their lives, but it's very case sensitive, and I'm working with lots of different multidisciplinary teams on that, so I want to have that right because it needs to be age appropriate and stuff. So that's, that's in the works. That's the fifth edition which you buy as per the relationship. You want to leave it and at the start of the book it tells you like who you would nominate to handle it for after I've gone so I could leave the legacy for after I've gone. And you can. Yeah, because even when, you know, when you start a business, you have to like, meet people and say, What am I going to price it? God. You know, you look at journals online, what's to do here? And I don't want to rob people. And so I met with a guy called Price Mentor, and he had just recently lost his mom. He's the price mentor. So he tells you how to value your time and everything. And he just said my he said, you don't know what I would give for my mum's brown bread recipe. So he said, You know, it's priceless. It really is. Yeah, it is. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely fantastic. I don't know for anyone that's in Shannon, I can see that it's stocked in Eason and Shannon down the road It's stocked in Easons in Shannon and it's in O Mahoneys, and it's an angel times. I just got it in Nano Nagle in Cork.. Get this It's. Yeah. So you can buy it online. Online or on the websites. Yeah. www.for after I've gone. Right. It's okay. Well, Joanne Begley, you are an extraordinary woman. Thank you so much for being on my podcast and it was absolutely fantastic to talk to you today. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. You're very welcome.