S01E03: Siobháin Hooper - Celebrant and Poet

Siobháin Hooper is a wedding celebrant and poet, and someone who has spent most of her adult life being very good at telling other people's stories. In agencies, at Air New Zealand, and now helping happy couples tie the knot in Wānaka, she has shaped narratives for brands and people. Her own story, she kept to herself for a long time - partly out of habit, partly because she was too busy, and partly because she wasn't entirely sure she'd found her voice yet.This conversation, recorded at Dublin Bay on the shores of Lake Wānaka - named by an Irish surveyor in 1863, and the place where Siobháin had her children's naming ceremony - traces the slow unmakings that have changed that. Giving up alcohol on New Year's Day 2022 set off a cascade she now describes as textbook: therapy; cold water dips at dawn; a marathon in New York; a memoir writing course with the Irish Writers Centre at 5am; and a poem written in a mice-infested mountain hut that became, without her quite planning it, an agenda for the rest of her life. She talks about what it took to stand on a stage at a slam storytelling night and speak about a mid-flight miscarriage, and a child who seemed to know something he'd never been told.There's also the daily reality of officiating other people's love, and the friction involved in reading vows about making time for each other when your own marriage is deep in the everyday trenches of kids and logistics and who's doing the school run. The particular loss associated with living on the other side of the world from your own culture: the music that makes her foot tap regardless; the family gatherings she can't get back for; the Irish news she checks before the New Zealand news every morning. And the serendipitous thread that connected her to D’Arcy - a Kiwi who once got off a bus outside her school in Navan, County Meath, and the man she eventually married.We close with Siobháin reading Bom Caminho, Portuguese Tarts - her beautiful poem about five women, a walk in Portugal, and what it looks like when people are truly there for each other.Web: thecelebrant.co.nz Socials: @siobhainthecelebrant (Weddings)@from_siobhain (Poems and spoken word) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theunmakingpodcast.substack.com