{"id":497581,"date":"2026-06-13T09:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T09:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/497581\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T09:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T09:40:09","slug":"dearbhla-mescal-west-cork-is-my-happy-place-its-a-gift-i-never-thought-id-have","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/497581\/","title":{"rendered":"Dearbhla Mescal: West Cork is my happy place, it’s a gift I never thought I’d have"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, a photo just doesn\u2019t capture a person. She smiles from newspapers, on the arm of her son Paul<\/a> on a red carpet; at a book festival to discuss her bestselling poetry book, Finding Joy.<\/p>\n

And then we chat, first on Zoom. Sitting in her living room, the family home behind her, fairy lights on the windows, there is an energy, even through the screen.<\/p>\n

In her element in West Cork<\/p>\n

But when we finally come face to face, as our photographer meets her to capture her in her beloved West Cork, Dearbhla Mescal is, we agree, fully charged. In person, that energy is electric.<\/p>\n

I join them at the end of the shoot and, as we sit on a bench just minutes from Mizen Head, she glows.<\/p>\n

This is, she admits, her happy place. The West Cork home that has become her haven belongs to her son, the Oscar-nominated Paul Mescal.<\/p>\n

He was the one to introduce his family to the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe knew where he was looking to go,\u201d she says. \u201cHe found this house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dearbhla grew up in Greystones, so the sea and the water were central to her childhood. When Paul was 18 months old, they moved to Maynooth, to a semi-D with a green that gave the family a beautiful, grounded start to life. They are still there to this day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is where everything has happened in our lives, everything,\u201d she says on our Zoom chat, motioning to the living space behind her, from the cosy couch to the framed photos to the fairy lights that adorn the window. \u201cEvery communion, every confirmation, every debs \u2014 it was all here.<\/p>\n

\n I\u2019m lucky I\u2019m able to go to West Cork. Because I came from Greystones, I came from the sea \u2014 here we are landlocked.\n <\/p>\n

But much as she loves West Cork, and the sea that cocoons it, relocating is not on the cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a community here that supports us, and I think because I have the facility to go and disappear for a little while to a place like Cork, there\u2019s a gift in that for me, a gift that I never thought [I\u2019d have] because we would never have had a second place ever in our whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DearbhlaDearbhla Mescal: I am in my element in West Cork. Picture: Chani Anderson<\/p>\n

In West Cork, there is a chance to recharge.<\/p>\n

\u201cI open the gate, I close the gate, and I go down to the beach,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s just wild. I wear shorts and my bare feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m completely in my element.\u201d She pauses.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn. My. Element,\u201d she repeats, beaming as she emphasises each word for effect. West Cork will do that to you, we agree.<\/p>\n

It will be her base in July again when she talks at the West Cork Literary Festival.<\/p>\n

She only visits, she stresses, when Paul isn\u2019t there. She respects, first and foremost, her children\u2019s privacy.<\/p>\n

Somehow, Dearbhla Mescal straddles this fine line \u2014 she is, she says, a natural sharer, and she talks with pride and ease about her three children \u2014 Paul, Donnacha, and Nell (currently carving out a successful music career in London).<\/p>\n

But, understandably protective, she gives little away. \u201cI think any mother knows that there is the off button, where we sort of kindly just say I\u2019m just not going there. I mean, I\u2019m obviously three children\u2019s mothers, and my life was mothering, so it\u2019s a bit silly to say you\u2019re not going to talk about what it was like to be the mother of three children while you were working full-time, managing to be a wife, a sister, a daughter, all of the other things that are going in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can be grateful for Dearbhla\u2019s open personality. It\u2019s thanks to the fact that she is a sharer that we have her beautiful book of poetry. This is the reason she\u2019ll be visiting West Cork in July, to be interviewed as part of the West Cork Literary Festival.<\/p>\n

Writing ‘Finding Joy’<\/p>\n

The book began, she writes in her introduction, when she was on the sidelines of yet another match, supporting her children on the field.<\/p>\n

She met another harried mum who asked in exhaustion, \u201cWhen is it our time?\u201d Her immediate response was to say \u201cnot now\u201d, but she later chided herself. She decided to go in search of daily joys \u2014 she made it her focus for 28 days in the hope that it would become a habit. It became the focus of her Facebook page, later her Instagram account, and today, over 27,000 people follow @dearbhlam<\/a> for a daily dose of positivity.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, it was the springboard for Finding Joy, the book curated from decades of little notes made over the course of a busy life with three children and a full-time position with An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na.<\/p>\n

Her cancer diagnosis in 2022 adds another layer to her words, but this isn\u2019t, she says, a book about cancer.<\/p>\n

\n The least interesting thing about me is that I had cancer\n <\/p>\n

She laughs and talks openly about her treatment, about the fear, the claustrophobic feeling, as if her world had closed in and she was wearing horse blinkers in this strange new world of hospitals and consultants and treatment regimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still processing what cancer means to me,\u201d she says. \u201cI like to see the full vista, so the fact that my whole vista was narrowed down to just this was <\/p>\n

really quite scary.\u201d But this is not, she repeats, a book about cancer.<\/p>\n

At its heart, she says, this is a book that is all about, as the title suggests, finding joy, and discovering it no matter what busy life stage you might be mired in. <\/p>\n

During our conversation, she touches upon all of life\u2019s milestones \u2014 motherhood, career, her three-decade-long marriage to husband Paul. There is a lightness of touch, and with it a lot of laughter, but there are also silences \u2014 often, in her search to find the right words, she closes her eyes. Every word is thoughtful, considered, sage.<\/p>\n

In her introduction, she writes of pushing the front door open and stepping through a mire of football boots, sorting mounds of built-up washing.<\/p>\n

I tell her this rings true for my life stage, and how the book sits beside my bed, her words of wisdom a balm at the end of yet another chaotic day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure you\u2019re driving bedraggled and trying to figure out if there\u2019s enough petrol in the car to get you to the arsehole of wherever you\u2019re going,\u201d she says, recalling her own days of GAA runs. \u201cYou drive in the car, and you\u2019re willing it to go, and you\u2019ve got a car full, because it\u2019s your run date … And then you see, as you\u2019re driving through these villages, you see other families, and they\u2019re sitting in coffee shops.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t do shoulda, coulda, woulda”<\/p>\n

Not that there are any regrets. Instead, she feels like the life they gave their kids instilled in them the life skills they needed to succeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t do shoulda, coulda, woulda,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m now at the stage where I\u2019m seeing the results of the life that we created, and what I mean by that is … Paul, he can take the director\u2019s notes, he can take the criticisms, because he\u2019s been on winning teams, he\u2019s been on losing teams. He\u2019s had managers he probably didn\u2019t get on well with, who put him in different positions that he didn\u2019t like to play, and part of our ethos was you play the position the manager gives you, and if the manager doesn\u2019t choose you, you\u2019re the best water boy there is on the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

She talks with pride about her middle son, Donnacha, and how, on a trip to Japan, he was surrounded by friends he had made on GAA pitches.<\/p>\n

Dearbhla is savvy about the sudden interest in her family \u2014 she is circumspect, and yet remains open.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m probably more cautious than ever to take on new friends, to take on new people in my life,\u201d she says. \u201cI have two children who live in a public space.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when Paul did his interviews and talked about who his parents were, or who his family were, it made us interesting. And then me continuing on my little path of just writing away, people got interested. I suppose, initially, it was like, how do you create this child? There was no creating of the child. Each of my children chose their living as adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of her poetry centres on the idea of letting go. She talks poignantly about an empty nest, of a match on TV in the background of a sport-obsessed house, with no one there to cheer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a grief to a quiet house,\u201d she says simply.<\/p>\n

\"DearbhlaDearbhla Mescal: I\u2019m probably more cautious than ever to take on new friends, to take on new people in my life, I have two children who live in a public space.\u201d Picture: Chani Anderson<\/p>\n

But letting go also gave her children freedom. There was never a traditional path they had to follow. Her daughter Nell left school to pursue her career in music, and, while a career in sport might have been taken for granted for Paul, an opportunity to act during transition year opened another door his parents made sure he was free to explore.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a complete believer in transition year. I didn\u2019t have it growing up,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s the making of your child.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is also a big believer in \u201cduvet days, in days where you get to switch off and listen to your own head space\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a big exam person,\u201d she continues. \u201cI don\u2019t get stressed about exams. I don\u2019t get stressed for my children in exams, because my view is you\u2019re going to graduate. Take the Junior Cert \u2014 I want you to do it so that you get to be part of the school community, with everybody getting all excited outside the class. I want them to have that part of life. But if you fail it, does it mean you\u2019re not going into fifth year? Of course you\u2019re going to fifth year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when Nell decided that she was going to walk away from school, she was making it as a very educated person in one way \u2014 she knew in her heart what she was going to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Paul, TY for me was where he was able to be two things \u2014 sport and find the stage. If he didn\u2019t have that, I have no idea if he\u2019d ever have found the stage. There\u2019s the sliding door moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Paul\u2019s school, Maynooth Post Primary, hadn\u2019t said everybody attend, everybody auditions … I mean, he went to his first audition in GAA shorts, and they took their dirty boots off. I literally dropped the gang from the pitch out. They left their boots in the car to do their first audition, and they ran in their socks. All these guys … I was left in a car with smelly boots,\u201d she says, laughing.<\/p>\n

Through the smiles, I think of Dearbhla\u2019s poem, A Hope, and the wisdom within its lines.<\/p>\n

A Hope<\/p>\n

\n by Dearbhla Mescal\n <\/p>\n

I hope
The whispers you make
To the universe
From your own heart
Blow gently
Across your soul
And let you roar
Into your dreams.<\/p>\n

Finding Joy\u00a0is published by Eriu. Dearbhla Mescal will be at the West Cork Literary Festival<\/a> on Saturday, July 11, at 4pm in the Maritime Hotel, where she will invite people to join her on a journey of reflection and renewal through a tender and uplifting collection of poems and heartfelt musings.
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