"However you do perceive God, God is good." From Jane Noodle and the Universe Belt
About Emer
The story of my 'life experience' - the one that folks find interesting anyway - begins in 1988, a thousand years after the Vikings came to Dublin. I was a wild and feckless thing, breaking my mother's heart, selfish as only a nineteen year old girl can be. When I found myself pregnant, everything changed. I withdrew from my social circle, hung around with my parents and genuinely considered the life growing inside me. The boy responsible was a cad, and ran off with something between his legs - maybe it was his tail, I don't know; it might have been his honour. I gave that baby up for adoption, a heartbreaking decision and I carry the pain of that loss every day. My story was told in the TV3 television programme Adoption Stories and I spoke about it in a TEDx talk in 2017. During lockdown, I wrote a book about my story and how I made peace with the pain.
As distraction from my heartbreak, I found myself helping out backstage in the local amateur musical society where I found both my future career and husband; within a couple of years, and with the encouragement of creatively minded souls, I began to direct plays, musicals and opened a drama school. Nothing has given me greater joy than to see the transformation of a person through creative endeavour. Over time, the performance mattered less and the process became the key to growth, confidence and empowerment. My niche, as it came to be organically, was building confidence in people of all ages, abilities and persuasions, using drama only as a tool to carve out the core of a person's true inspired path. The fun and the laughs and the entertaining performances are a bonus. I began to write plays around the strengths of each of my students - where they could shine and make people laugh or think or cry. Once I discovered the power of this - both my ability to do it and the benefit to the individual, I wrote voraciously.
Writing plays led to writing...well, everything really; short stories, essays, articles...but the book I wrote in 2020? That stayed on my desktop where I took it out every so often and talked about self publishing it. Then, one glorious day, my son - the baby boy I gave up for adoption so long ago - contacted me and changed everything. The book had a new ending. And you can read it folks, because I've published it, at long last! Get yourself a copy of Jane Noodle and the Universe Belt - A Birth Mother's Tale here and don't forget to come back and tell me what you think!
As distraction from my heartbreak, I found myself helping out backstage in the local amateur musical society where I found both my future career and husband; within a couple of years, and with the encouragement of creatively minded souls, I began to direct plays, musicals and opened a drama school. Nothing has given me greater joy than to see the transformation of a person through creative endeavour. Over time, the performance mattered less and the process became the key to growth, confidence and empowerment. My niche, as it came to be organically, was building confidence in people of all ages, abilities and persuasions, using drama only as a tool to carve out the core of a person's true inspired path. The fun and the laughs and the entertaining performances are a bonus. I began to write plays around the strengths of each of my students - where they could shine and make people laugh or think or cry. Once I discovered the power of this - both my ability to do it and the benefit to the individual, I wrote voraciously.
Writing plays led to writing...well, everything really; short stories, essays, articles...but the book I wrote in 2020? That stayed on my desktop where I took it out every so often and talked about self publishing it. Then, one glorious day, my son - the baby boy I gave up for adoption so long ago - contacted me and changed everything. The book had a new ending. And you can read it folks, because I've published it, at long last! Get yourself a copy of Jane Noodle and the Universe Belt - A Birth Mother's Tale here and don't forget to come back and tell me what you think!
