{"id":35250,"date":"2025-09-21T21:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T21:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/35250\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T21:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T21:57:11","slug":"i-ended-up-in-hospital-after-travelling-it-was-quite-frightening-to-see-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/35250\/","title":{"rendered":"I ended up in hospital after travelling\u00a0\u2014 it was quite frightening to see that"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miriam Hussey recalls being 14 when her mother handed her \u201ca book that would forever change my life\u201d \u2014 Louise Hay\u2019s bestselling You Can Heal Your Life. That seminal work on the mind-body connection has since served as Hussey\u2019s north star; from the get-go it shifted her \u201cwhole perspective on life\u201d and helped her realise \u201cthere\u2019s more to health and healing than just the physical\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hussey\u2019s debut book Light Up \u2014 which looks set to become a classic of the wellness genre in its own right \u2014 is a bible for optimising mind, body, and soul (Hussey says our soul is \u201cthe essence of who we are\u201d), interwoven with startlingly frank anecdotes from Hussey\u2019s own journey to date.<\/p>\n

Miriam Hussey grew up the youngest of five siblings in a busy B&B \u201cright beside Moran\u2019s on the Weir\u201d in Kilcolgan, Co Galway, which over the years hosted such luminaries as Maureen O\u2019Hara and Jack Charlton among its paying guests.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very Irish home,\u201d Hussey says. \u201cWe\u2019d dance for the guests in the morning and then my brothers would be out playing hurling and they\u2019d have Jack Charlton trying to hit a ball against the wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe couldn\u2019t understand GAA at all. He thought we were all crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in the West \u201cembedded a love of the sea and of nature\u201d, and today Hussey lives near the Dublin coast with her husband and Soul Space co-founder, Gerry \u2014 himself a bestselling author and high-performance coach \u2014 and their two young children.<\/p>\n

\"MiriamMiriam Hussey: I always leaned towards looking at that bigger mind, body, soul approach to our health and to our healing. Picture: Gareth Chaney<\/p>\n

Hussey studied pharmacy at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, but the draw towards a holistic view was always there, and she wrote her thesis on complementary and alternative medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I was the only person who chose that. My peers thought I was maybe a bit mad, a bit woo. But I always leaned towards looking at that bigger mind, body, soul approach to our health and to our healing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That approach is brought to vivid life in Light Up, a practical toolkit for holistic health that also documents Hussey\u2019s own journey through challenging times, including struggles with disordered eating, self-doubt, a damaging tendency to people-please, and the challenges of new motherhood. It\u2019s an unflinchingly raw read at times \u2014 why did she feel it important to share such vulnerabilities with her readers?<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my book, I said, \u2018I cannot be the dentist with rotten teeth\u2019. I need to be open and honest and share my story and journey as openly and authentically as I can to hopefully allow other people to do the same and to know that they\u2019re not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are all aware of the \u2018fight or flight\u2019 responses to stress, but Hussey\u2019s book reveals that rather than two, there are actually six \u2014 fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flow.<\/p>\n

A fawn response is essentially a people-pleasing one, and Hussey\u2019s defaulting to this response ultimately \u201cfrayed and frazzled\u201d her nervous system and led to a realisation she was not being her authentic self.<\/p>\n

\"MiriamMiriam Hussey: I cannot be the dentist with rotten teeth. I need to be open and honest and share my story and journey. Picture: Gareth Chaney<\/p>\n

Figuring out the roots of her tendency to people-please has led her to a more \u201caligned and peaceful\u201d path, and she\u2019s chosen to share that journey precisely because she\u2019s met so many women with a propensity to people-please. (She mentions that many of her female clients \u201ccan\u2019t look in the mirror and say something loving about themselves\u201d, and that she primarily wrote Light Up \u201cfor women to find their own light again, because I feel like so many people have dimmed their light [and] are not able to honour their beauty and their brilliance\u201d.)<\/p>\n

In terms of people-pleasing, I suggest that women, by and large, haven\u2019t been brought up to say \u2018no\u2019. How do you get over that?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big thing is creating boundaries. I speak about that in the book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n Boundaries aren\u2019t just physical. It\u2019s more the emotional boundaries that we have to overcome.\n <\/p>\n

Hussey doesn\u2019t portray herself as healed and perfect \u2014 \u201cbecause I\u2019m absolutely not, and I don\u2019t believe anybody is. I\u2019m still on my journey and there\u2019ll be days where I\u2019ll be challenged and triggered, but I\u2019ll use the tools in the book to help me navigate through that\u201d \u2014 displaying the authentic openness that makes Light Up such a compelling, relatable read.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She compares healing to peeling back the layers of an onion, and suggests viewing life\u2019s challenges as \u201can invitation to say \u2018there\u2019s a little bit more healing to be done here\u2019\u201d rather than the negative spin of \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MiriamMiriam Hussey: Boundaries aren\u2019t just physical. It\u2019s more the emotional boundaries that we have to overcome. Picture: Gareth Chaney<\/p>\n

Being overworked, overwhelmed or exhausted can be the catalyst for tipping us back into \u201cold ways of thinking or being that maybe aren\u2019t serving us any anymore\u201d, but compassion towards oneself is key, she says, because those thoughts and habits are coping mechanisms \u201cdeveloped to survive during a stressful period in your life\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hussey struggled with disordered eating for a number of years in her 20s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe eating issue started when I was doing my finals in college. That was a stressful time for me because there was a lot of pressure. I put it on myself to get through the exams and do really well in them. In pharmacy, you\u2019re surrounded by high achievers. So whether it\u2019s conscious or unconscious, you\u2019re in that environment of \u2018achieve\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when I got into that stressful state\u2026 my appetite declined.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then that led me into a tizzy of my worthiness. And [thinking] maybe I\u2019ll be seen and approved for my external appearance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something I nearly clung to as my identity, until I started to unravel that and say \u2018what\u2019s actually going on here? This isn\u2019t normal, and it\u2019s quite destructive\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the book I talk about when I ended up in hospital after travelling and the impact that had on my body, and it was quite frightening to see that.<\/p>\n

\"MiriamMiriam Hussey: In pharmacy, you\u2019re surrounded by high achievers. So whether it\u2019s conscious or unconscious, you\u2019re in that environment of \u2018achieve\u2019. Picture: Gareth Chaney<\/p>\n

\u201cBut also it\u2019s a way of fleeing or escaping the reality of what\u2019s underneath that. For me, that was people-pleasing or that sense of worthiness that I wanted to be seen by the outside world as beautiful, or this or that, because I didn\u2019t feel it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hussey had spent her post-finals summer travelling with friends in Southeast Asia, during which time the already underweight 21-year-old continued to drop pounds and, on her return home, ended up in an intensive care unit with bilateral pneumonia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was travelling and doing all that, I had a moment where I went back to the Louise Hay stuff and I was like, \u2018wow\u2019. It brought me back to actually what\u2019s going on here and what\u2019s really important. And that\u2019s when I went on my journey to meet my amazing therapist who helped me unpack and unravel that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hussey still sees that therapist and views her past experiences through the prism of gratitude \u201cbecause it has allowed me to become a detective of my own soul\u201d and \u201chelped me help other people in that same space\u201d.<\/p>\n

Although Hussey loved her years as a pharmacist, she found herself becoming increasingly frustrated with its limitations, and eventually moved to part-time to facilitate her education in an array of integrative health and wellness practices, and to work as a health coach and yoga teacher.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One day, while filling a customer\u2019s pillbox with almost 20 medications, the penny dropped and she realised she\u2019d be doing \u201ca better job if I got out from behind the counter and started to speak about lifestyle as medicine or preventative health\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"MiriamMiriam Hussey: We have a motto in our house \u2014 fracture and repair. Picture: Gareth Chaney<\/p>\n

Encouraged by her parents, who were \u201camazing\u201d, and her husband Gerry \u2014 \u201cI said \u2018what if it fails?\u2019, and he said, \u2018Miriam, you can always go back. You\u2019re never not going to be a pharmacist\u2019\u201d \u2014 she made the leap to a full-time career in integrative health and wellness, with the duo co-creating the \u201cempowering movement\u201d business, Soul Space.<\/p>\n

She and Gerry are \u201cbeautifully aligned\u201d in their philosophies of life, but \u201cwe are human as well\u201d she says, acknowledging the inevitable stresses that accompany family life, as well as the occasional moments of reactivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a motto in our house \u2014 fracture and repair,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as you catch yourself, go straight over and repair. Have a big hug and a little chat and repair.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n You can\u2019t avoid the fractures, because things are going to be thrown at you. Life is going to challenge you in certain ways.\n <\/p>\n

Hussey has the tools to navigate those life challenges and her mission is to help others learn them too, so that they can live their best lives in every sense. And she\u2019s only getting started.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something I love doing. I love speaking, I love writing. And that\u2019s what my soul is longing for more of. So hopefully there\u2019ll be a sequel or two.\u201d<\/p>\n

Light Up by Miriam Hussey, published by Gill, is out September 25<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Miriam Hussey recalls being 14 when her mother handed her \u201ca book that would forever change my life\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[288,93,61,1693,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-35250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-insight","12":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}