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Author Louise O'Neill describes how her mother's near-fatal fall on Carrauntoohil in September 2023 gave her perspective after a devastating breakup and a year of grief. Her memoir A Bigger Life is published by HQ on 24 September.
2023 is not a year on which Louise O'Neill shall look back with undiluted pleasure. Her annus horribilis began when a long-term relationship broke up in January, only six months after the couple had bought their first home together.
She was about to turn 38 and the future she thought was hers, marriage and children, all fell apart. What followed was blow after blow. Her sister announced her engagement. A fertility doctor told her she was not a suitable candidate for egg freezing.
She soon began having multiple panic attacks a day. Ordinarily, her work would have been her solace; when she wrote, it was as if time was suspended. But now her words abandoned her. They would not come, no matter how much she tried.
So in April, she decided to take the rest of the year off to recover. As she was self-employed, this was not a choice she made lightly. But her heart was broken and so too, it seemed, was her brain. As befitting a millennial woman who read Eat Pray Love at a formative age, she attempted to recover using every kind of therapy imaginable.
Louise O'Neill's Mountain Ordeal
Unfortunately, even after a five-week trip to Thailand for a yoga and wellness retreat, she did not feel healed. She still felt resentful and sad, and she became afraid that she would be mired in her anger for the rest of her life. That September, her father turned 63. He did not want presents; he wanted the whole family, her parents, her, her sister and her now husband, to climb Carrauntoohil, the highest mountain in Ireland, together.
It was a beautiful morning, but she was tired. The insomnia that had plagued her as a teenager had returned, making every day feel like an endurance test. She threw herself into the back seat of her parents' car, pretending to sleep until they got to County Kerry. She wanted to be left alone with her misery, ruminating on how badly she had been treated and how she was the greatest victim who had ever lived.
It was her first time climbing Carrauntoohil. They ascended through the Devil's Ladder, a steep, rocky gully with loose stones and scree; you could not lose focus, even for a second. At the summit, they ate their sandwiches and took photos at the wooden cross before the descent. She was in a better mood.
Annoyingly, her parents were right that getting outside would help. They were close to the end, and so close to safety, when she heard a scream. She turned to see her mother falling. Twenty feet?
Thirty feet? Fifty feet? She could not tell. Her body picked up speed until she was a blur of limbs and she crashed into a stone boulder with a sickening crack.
O'Neill scrambled to reach her, screaming her name, her sister running behind her. Her father was trying to get to her too. His face was pale and she knew he thought the same as her: that she was dead. No one could have survived a fall like that.
No one except her mother. She moaned as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. Once O'Neill saw she was conscious, she was relieved to see her teeth were intact; she had had them straightened for her sister's wedding, and O'Neill knew she would be devastated if they were affected. But she had an ugly gash across her forehead and she was haemorrhaging blood.
They waited hours for the helicopter to airlift her off the mountain and they were some of the worst of O'Neill's life, wondering if every minute that passed was time wasted, time that should have been spent saving her. What if she had a bleed on the brain? What if she lost consciousness and they had to watch her die?
A Life-Changing Moment on the Mountain
Finally, she was taken to hospital and the rest of the family were guided down by volunteers from the Kerry mountain rescue team. O'Neill had been so hurt after the breakup and that hurt had seemed very important. The loss, the injustice, the things she had been denied, she carried them with her all year. But on the mountain, for those few terrible minutes in which she thought that her mother had died, something shifted.
The things she had been grieving suddenly seemed so small. A house could be sold. A heart could be mended. That which she had thought would break her was, in the end, survivable.
All that mattered was that her mother was alive. She could hear her voice again. She could go home and she would be there, waiting for her. That night, as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she knew it was time to let go of the grief.
Finding the Strength to Begin Again
Not because it was insignificant, but because she was letting it become the most important part of her story. The day on Carrauntoohil gave her perspective. It did not fix everything; she still had to deal with the wreckage of her old life. But that was not the same thing as ruin: she was not ruined, she realised.
Rather, she had been given a chance to begin again. She just had to take it. A Bigger Life by Louise O'Neill is published by HQ on 24 September (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at the Guardian Bookshop.
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