Show Notes
Erin McGathy is an American podcaster and comedian who has found her home in Dublin, since moving here in 2016. During her teenage years, she lost her mother Susan to cancer at the young age of 42. A seminal period in Erin’s young life. Last year during the run up to Mothers Day, Erin shared an incredibly open account on social media of her sometimes-beautiful, sometimes-complicated relationship with her mother, and how her illness managed to further these feelings.
“She told me that she knew I would do great things, and then she apologized for "being a bad mother." I still don't know why she said this and it's painful to think about, but I think she meant she wished we'd known each other more as I was becoming my own adult person. My mom was very elegant, womanly and measured; I was so clearly not heading in that direction, I remember my mother being noticeably disappointed in that, and even a little worried for me. In her weaker moments, she voiced that she was scared that no one would love me because I wore sports bras, didn't brush my hair and ate too much; I wasn't the type of girl that a boy would ever "choose". She later apologized for saying that, but not putting her expectations for herself on me was a struggle…”
On this week’s podcast, she chats with Sasha about coming to terms with those feelings, years down the line. She also discusses her relationship with her now, and how the grief she felt manages to manifest in different ways all those years later. Erin is the founder of Mob Theatre Dublin, and can be heard on podcasts This Feels Terrible, Human Conversation and Harmontown. Her stage performance Al Dawes Fucking Loves You also received critical acclaim at this years Dublin Fringe Festival.
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More from Grief Encounters
Séamas O’Reilly is a Derry born writer for The Observer and The New York Times, who speaks to Sasha and Venetia about his mother Sheila, who passed away three weeks before his sixth birthday in October 1991. Driving back from the Belfast hospital on the night of her death, his father was faced with the mammoth task of raising 11 children as a loan parent for the first time.
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This week’s guest, Justin Caffrey and his wife Beatrice have gone through something no parents should ever have to deal with in their lifetime. The loss of a child.