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mary Tierney

@marestierney

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🩷 Girl mom x2
✍🏻 sharing tiny snippets of my grief.
🐝 hubby TT 24.02.23 | Dad 05.03.23
👩‍🏫 Lecturer & COO @vacious.ie
💪CrossFit | Hyrox & chats

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Being a young widow is shite!

You were an absolute pain in my arse Tierney.
But it was so worth it.

Happy anniversary…Until forever remembers us.x
🤍🐝

Also, so happy I found a video of him dancing. I didn’t think I had one. Just a nice reminder of one of our many running jokes.

#17 #ustwo #grief #griefjourney #youngwidow by @marestierney

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a year ago

My absolute favourite VACIOUS piece to date 🍋🫒🌊♠️

I love it so much I took one of each!! So here’s a treat for you beautiful ladies…

20% off across our Vacious Cami Range!

Code MARY20

🤫 Don’t tell the boss she said I could have 10%😂

#Ad #ownbrand by @marestierney

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a month ago

If I could have one wish on your birthday it would be to watch you and our girls make a wish together before blowing out the candles on your cake.

Then you’d make a loud dramatic joke and about choking on the smoke of so many candles, but they’d laugh because somehow you always had a way of making the cringe something they found funny.
I had 25 years with you but they had no time at all.
They were the loves of your life and you were the happiest version of yourself with them.

For every single one of us who love you and miss you, we had you for far longer than the three of you had each other. That is the pain that lies at the core of my grief, ye deserved so much more time together.
I’ll carry a sadness the rest of my life for the years stolen from you, but I can still find gratitude in the love that has shaped our children in the short time that they had with you. It wasn’t enough but you got to spend the rest of your life with them and they’ll carry the intensity of that love for the rest of theirs.
Our hearts hold and remember every part of you, your laugh, your smile, your hugs, you truly do live on in them.

Happy birthday my love, we love you, we miss you.

Best daddy ever.
Your little bit more.
M,I,J xxx by @marestierney

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a month ago

Scoop sisters 🤣💙❤️ same scoop different snatch @vacious.ie launching tomorrow midday!

#brandowner by @marestierney

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a month ago

Bessel van der Kolk wasnt wrong when he said “Trauma is not the event. Trauma is what gets stuck in the body when the event was too much, too fast, or too soon.
Nine days separated the deaths of my husband and my dad. I speak only from personal experience but I know that my body carries grief just as strongly as my heart.
The somatic impact of this loss has utterly floored me. Its not that I stopped looking after myself, I was catapulted into a state of fight or flight, which short term is ok, but 3.5years later and my nervous system is a living record of all the loss it’s endured. My body has been quietly paying for all that I have had to carry on doing just to keep going. Now don’t all jump on the peri bandwagon I know hormonal havoc is at play but try being a widow too(ladies I salute you🫡).
Truth be told right now I feel calm, inside! Outside has taken a hit, maybe that’s what my heart and mind needed. Understanding the duality of my experience with grief has encouraged me to take a more balanced approach. I don’t need time, or promises of better days ahead. I don’t recover from a headache by thinking my way out of it. In the same way that I can’t tend to my broken heart by taking something for the pain.
The “body keeps the score” because it’s paying attention and is so perfectly wired to the workings of a broken heart but it isn’t designed to stay in that state, permanently doomed. Our bodies carry a wealth of information if we can get out of our heads long enough to listen to what it is trying to tell us.
My system is shattered but I breath a little deeper. My jaw relaxes now I realise I’m smiling while out for a run instead of pounding the roads hips burning, knees aching, teeth clenching all the while my mind racing. Emotional pain is felt the moment shock leaves but it’s physical manifestation takes time.The two things are often so far apart no one really puts them together when it all starts to happen. There is a lonliness in that for the person who knows their body is in pain because they died and we had to carry on. I can’t compartmentalise the losses healing must be all encompassing and good days should never be the exception.
Can you relate? by @marestierney

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a month ago

For us, everything after him feels like being out of step with the world.
Entirely and irreversibly changed but we move with it, because what else can we do.

I finally switched off completely on this trip, something I’ve been reluctant and fearful of doing, even 3 yrs later. I turned off the phone, I slowed right down, ate breakfast alone while the girls slept in and just sat with my thoughts, no distractions. Jesus does it hurt to face that bloody empty chair!
We missed him and the holiday we would have had with him, but we also laughed about all the funny things he used to do and we talked and laughed again. We were lucky to meet up and spend time with some of my best and oldest friends and it was amazing, because my girls are amazing!

I don’t want a simple holiday post to turn into a grief share but honestly right now has been the hardest period I’ve experienced since losing Tom and dad. I think it’s because I’m in a place at the moment where everything is fine.
Not better, just fine. That’s a lonely place to be. I’ll try explain that another day.

The girls won’t be this young forever I know better than most that nothing stays the same. It does feel like being out of step with everyone else but the three of us are stepping out together. (I remember Toms greatest mentor used that phrase once when he asked my dad if Tom was ‘stepping out’ with his daughter all those moons ago😅❤️).
They can still smile and be kind to each other and everyone around them even after all they have lost, so ya I’ll take my lead from them. They can teach me the steps as we go.

Don’t lose what you have to what you have lost.
Always & forever x by @marestierney

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3 months ago

Once in awhile you just have to stop.
Stop questioning, rationalising,explaining what doesn’t need to be.Just allow yourself to lean into something that feels so surreal it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. When we do that, when we stop asking the questions that let doubt creep in, for that brief inhale of breath there is nobody there but me and you, just us two.

We had the best time @michaelbuble gave everything to make it a pretty special memorable night. We loved every second of it.

Thank you @magsfloody2222 for the most generous gift you made it happen!
The signs came at us like at full force last night TT pulled out all the stops😝 so happy for Isabel to feel that too💫

Sometimes that thing you were so afraid of can be the one thing you needed more than anything else.xx

#michaelbublé
#signs
#grief
#loveandloss
#youremyeverything by @marestierney

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3 months ago

Yes there are things I still want to tell you, but…
If we could have just one chat, what might we say?
We could finally talk about this crazy thing that happened! Isn’t it stupid, when you died I wanted to talk to you about it the most.
We might agree how unfair it is, how shocked we are, how sorry I am that I couldn’t save you, how sorry you are that you couldn’t stay. But we know this already.
I would fill you in on how much the girls have grown, how we are doing as a trio, how you have remained in everything I see in them that belongs to you. But you would tell me, I know Mares, I’m here. I haven’t missed a thing.
I’ll probably tell you how angry I am that you were taken so young, so quickly, without warning, but would a long goodbye make a difference to you going?
We would frown at the tears we spilled for the fights that felt bigger than us but mean nothing at all because we know better now.
You would tell me to do all the things I whisper to you that I am too afraid to share with anyone else. I can’t do it without you. Without a missing a beat “Mares you already are.”
I’d cry that our lives together are over now. You’d joke that you’re enjoying the rest, but then your eyes would show me that you’re sad too because we had so much still to do.
We might dwell on the dreams we had, goals we spoke of, risks we wanted to take, the joy of watching our girls become everything they deserve and know that we did that together.
The world kept turning without you. I feel like I need to apologise for that. I had no say.
You might apologise for taking the version of me I knew so well with you, but then I would remind you that we were each others to keep. I live with an indescribable loneliness now but encourage my broken heart to remain open, I owe that to us.
I wouldn’t be able to resist asking, what’s next for me? But given all that’s happened I simply don’t want to know. So instead I would ask one request, keep showing up in the sudden warmth & gut feeling I am so certain of it needs no explanation. I know it’s you.
I cry because I still have things I want to tell you, but you just smile with a knowing of what everything after you, will be x
#grief #widow by @marestierney

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3 months ago

A little of the whirlwind that is Ms Julia Tierney.
12 Years of loving you.
Our kind funny girl, forever your daddy’s little bit more xxx
Happy birthday, love you to the sun & back🤍 by @marestierney

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4 months ago

Time.
I’ve taken some thoughts that have been living rent free in my head lately and put them to use over on my substack. Link in Bio🧡

There’s an emotional irony in that people seem to identify grief as something that gets easier with time. Well! Let’s just start by saying that’s a load of shite!
That’s not to say that I haven’t taken this hand I have been so bizarrely dealt by the proverbial set of balls and carried on. But to carry on doesn’t translate to living a full and happy life, it simply means you carry on. I have every hope that I will build something wonderful again in this life, it will happen. I will start to live when I stop being led by the passing of time.

On any given day. Grief will take you wherever she wants. In the space between where reason hesitates and uncertainty navigates, trust your heart. x

If you haven’t already please subscribe. I’d love for you to read this piece, comment and share some thoughts of your own. Link in Bio x by @marestierney

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5 months ago

Doing the things that make it a little easier, with the ones who make me smile xxx taken in Liscannor by @marestierney

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5 months ago

I only just realised this is 4 years ago today🤍 4 years!

How can a year slip through my hands now like sand, and a morning coffee without him feels an eternity?

I wonder, would grief show up or behave differently if we could change or find a way to reset our perception of time?

Life doesn’t have to stay frozen in time as it moves at high speed around me. In this space of liminality there can be room for growth, it can be an opportunity to learn how to weave those memories into the present and carry them without the burden of looking back. Always looking back.

Some passing thoughts from something I’ve been writing about lately
#time

We had so much fun that night, it will always be one of my favourite memories. xx by @marestierney

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5 months ago