The deep green hedgerows around us gleam with hawthorn, draped in early-summer white blossoms like a procession of traditional bridal gowns.
What connection with the usual themes of Live Loudly Donate Proudly blogs? Simply, there is every good reason for recognising and enjoying the best of beauty when it appears around us, and the free gifts that enhance our lives.
Good stories can do that, and we are, potentially, surrounded by them. Ruth Medjber, (“Medj as in hedge, ber as in teddy”), a Dubliner, started taking photographs when she was three, after her parents gave her a pink plastic camera. Now a professional photographer, Ruth has found herself enthralled by the stories within the portraits of the people she photographs. Sin Scéal Eile, That’s another story, is her podcast project to meet, photograph, and chat with 365 people in 2026. Each person will be someone who considers Ireland their home (however they found their way here) and a new story will be posted each day. The podcast series is heavy with beautiful, fascinating, funny, moving stories. Human stories, told for free, offered to us all as a gift, gleaming brighter than hawthorn blossom.
As Lucia’s Live Loudly Donate Proudly campaign developed, she encouraged each of us to find and believe in our own voice, to use it with courage and commitment for the good. It may include, as it did for Lucia, taking some of our hardest stories, telling them honestly, even rawly, and transforming them into resources for others.
In mid-May, Lucia’s sister, Alice, was bridesmaid for a very special friend. Alice and Lucia had become a foursome with two girls from over the road, Caitlin and Jasmine, when they were all very young. Their friendships grew and strengthened, even as Lucia’s liver condition took us all into the world of transplants.
The youngest of the four, Jasmine, the bride’s sister, gave her own speech at the reception. And what a speech it was. She spoke of the missing bridesmaid, their friend, Lucia, and of all the dreaming and plotting and planning through their years, including the kinds of weddings they all might have wanted. Some of those early dreams became part of the day’s gift, and their friend was as present as she could be.
Jasmine’s words were brave, and it took a different kind of courage to listen, no less so when it was widened to include others who were missing from the day but not from the minds and hearts of others in the room. On the tables, in small gift packages in front of each guest, a purple and white wristband with the reminder to Live Loudly, Donate Proudly.
We are posting this blog on the sixth anniversary of the morning Lucia closed her eyes for the last time. We will forever hear her voice and sense her boundless gratitude to her donors, and to so much more, inviting each of us to open our eyes wide to the beauty that is in us and around us, to the gifts we are given that make our lives full, and the gifts we can be for each other.
Our gift for today, through the kindness of Ruth Medjber and her team, is a link to the podcast with some of Lucia’s story, and a doorway into many more…