In this episode of Wild Woman Podcast I talk to writer and now published author, Gerry O’Neill of The West's Awake.
I’d been having a strong feeling for quite a while that it was nearing time to start interviewing men on the podcast. Then just last week I got a message from Gerry about his new book, Unvaxxed Soul and that was that! The time was now.
Make sure to check it out. It will make a great Christmas Gift and just in time.
Buy Unvaxxed Soul
Amazon Ireland - https://amzn.eu/d/fD7Sswq
Amazon UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0G2MQT18F
Amazon USA - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G2MQT18F
In Gerry’s words
I am a full-time writer and publish on Substack under the publication name The West’s Awake. I live in Tuam in the West of Ireland and have recently published my first book Unvaxxed Soul on Amazon. I write on a variety of topics but more recently have been focused on the inner journey and the search for meaning in this ever expanding technological age.
About Unvaxxed Soul
Unvaxxed Soul starts before lockdown, shortly after I quit drinking and working a job that paid the bills but quietly suffocate the life out of me. I grew up in the west of Ireland, half in love with the road and half trying to escape my own head. When Covid landed, the country closed, the floor stickers arrived, and one small medical decision turned into a loyalty test. I said no. That choice blew cracks through family, friendships, work – all the usual pillars you think are solid until they aren’t. It is episodic memoir - each chapter is told from the precise point and time it was originally written in. So I got in the car and quit my job.
Part 1 follows the early jolts and old memories – a village pub in Tuam, a retreat in Doolin, a kitchen-table summit with my mother and son, rooms full of people crying over what the last few years did to them. The tone swings between black humour and raw confession; one minute there’s a fella calling me a cunt, the next I’m staring at my own part in my mess.
Brigid, my battered Peugeot 306, carries Part 2 and the place I drove to - holy wells, lakes, backroads, Nephin, Lough Derravaragh, odd encounters with strangers and the occasional saint’s statue. I’m driving around trying to make sense of the new Ireland – QR codes, quiet shunnings, “for your safety” signs – while some older, stranger sense of guidance keeps creeping in around the edges.
In Part 3, ‘Shadowlands’, the shine comes off. Grief erupts in odd places from empty piers to hospital corridors. Old trauma and ancestral stories rise up beside the news cycle. The book doesn’t tidy any of this away - it lets the hurt sit in the room until it starts to say something useful ( or not!).
Part 4, ‘The Green Mile’, shrinks the map to a short, ordinary road outside my house in Tuam. Nettles, track machines, neighbours, small chats at the gate – this is where the big ideas are tested. Can I actually live slower, truer, with less bullshit, or am I just another person talking a good game online? By the end, the car is broken down in Ballinasloe and nothing grand is resolved. But something has shifted. The book is my attempt to catch that shift on the page – the moment an unvaxxed, former tech worker from the west of Ireland finally starts listening more to the call of his own soul.
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About me:
I am a published author, podcaster, qualified life coach, astrology enthusiast and avid explorer of life. This has all transpired since the breakdown of my old life when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016. It was a terrifying and exciting time as an old chapter ended and a new beginning began to unfold one day at a time.
I learnt so much from that experience - about the nature of life, the nature of me, my potential and my capacity to create a life where everything and anything is possible. It has been a journey of many ups and downs and great expansion into areas of life I never thought possible for me. The adventure and learning continues!
When we are courageous enough to follow our heart and take steps on an unknown path, we discover that anything truly is possible for lives.
It is my passion now to inspire, support and guide and others to their greatest lives using all the tools and abilities that I have picked up along the way.
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Contact me:
Email: odonovanceline@gmail.com
All my links: https://linktr.ee/celineodonovan
Buy my books: http://www.celineodonovan.com/project
Subscribe to my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@celineodonovan
