Becoming a mother changes everything, as your whole perspective on life shifts
"It broke my heart that Sean would never know his nephew", says RTÉ sports broadcaster, Jacqui Hurley.
Tears briefly well in her eyes and in her heart I imagine a conflict between great joy and great sadness.
Jacqui’s first child Luke was born two years ago, three years after her younger brother Sean was killed in a road accident. He was just 25, a life incomplete. That tragedy doesn’t define Jacqui Hurley, but it does inform her life.
Today she is, she admits, “very much an open book” and so it seems as she talks about wanting to have more children, her fears of the Zika virus and seeing her own parents rebuild their lives.
In a way you need to map out your life. You need to ask yourself ‘where do I go and where do I need to be by such a time’.”
Last March, in a newspaper feature titled ‘The Women Breaking Down Barriers in Irish Sports Media’, Hurley (along with Máire Treasa Ní Dhubhghaill and Marie Crowe) talked about the pride, prejudices and practicalities of being female in what was traditionally a male preserve.
"When I go away to the Olympics I will be away for 23 days and I have never been away from my son for that long,” she says. “Plus on top of that you’re thinking about the Zika virus and the worries that come with that as we would like to have more kids. The reality is that as a woman there is so much more to contend with because to a certain extent you have to plan your life around the Olympics and the World Cups and so on."
Donal O'Donoghue
