Tag Archives: an-saol-foundation

With a Little Help—and Celebration—from Our Friends

24 Saturday Oct 2026

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Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.
Cicero

This week’s news are a little longer than usual. There is —

  • The Coffee Morning on 31 October at 11, organised by our neighbours.
  • The news about Pádraig’s impressive improvements: writing, walking, and doing squats.
  • Tommy’s call for support. He will be running the Dublin Marathon raising funds for the An Saol Foundation (again).
  • Become a Friend of An Saol, invite 10 of your friends to join you, and get your ticket for the fabulous 2026 An Saol Foundation Adventfest TODAY. It will be an incredible evening – we will be joined by some of our Friends Around the World AND the 40 voices strong St. John’s Gospel Choir – singing in the season of Hope and New Beginnings.

Read on.

All of these events and activities are the perfect demonstration of the difference a community can make when people put their mind to it.

This is the power of us – of you!

Keep it up! Together we are creating an alternative. Improving happiness through friendship. Doubling our joy and dividing our grief.

Last Week

Here are some videos from last week. With the help of a specially adapted pencil and some support under his hand, Pádraig was perfectly able to write his name. He walked around 12 metres every day he attended An Saol, without any mechanical support. He did more than a dozen squats each day he used the Andago.

Pâdraig writing with the help of a pencil supporting his hand and fingers, He is doing this himself, with just a little external support for his arm and hand.
Pádraig walking in An Saol with the help of practitioners. He does this each of the four mornings he attends the Centre. He, and the practitioners, are getting better at it every day.
The Hocoma Andago is a device we hadn’t used often enough in the past. It took some time and a repeat visit by a German specialist for us to recognise that there are very many different ways the device can support our clients movements, not “just” walking. Here, Pádraig is doing squats.

Writing, walking, doing squats, strengthening his thighs, buttocks and hips, and improving his balance – it seems as if Pádraig gave the door that had just opened a little a big strong kick.

A Message from Tommy

Greetings – Yes! It’s that time of year again. Despite being around enough to know better, I’m lining up for another Dublin Marathon this Sunday. Apparently, 42.2km is still my idea of a good way to spend a (possibly very wet) Sunday morning!

This year, I’m raising funds for An Saol (again), a wonderful Irish charity that supports people living with severe acquired brain injuries.

As many of you know, my son Sean sustained a severe brain injury which changed his life, and our family’s life, forever. It’s given me a very personal understanding of the enormous challenges faced by people with these injuries and their families.

An Saol does fantastic work providing ongoing rehabilitation and support, based on a simple but important belief: people with severe brain injuries deserve the opportunity to continue developing, improving and living the best possible lives.

I’m also involved with An Saol as a board member, so I’ve seen firsthand the commitment of its team and the difference their work makes.

If you’d like to sponsor my efforts, here’s the link – donate here.

I know many of you have generously supported my marathon fundraising over the years, and I really appreciate it. Hopefully, your generosity will continue to outlast my knees !

Every donation, large or small, is greatly appreciated and will support a cause very close to my heart. Feel free to share with friends and colleagues.

Many thanks again for your support- donate here.

Tommy

P.S. My ambition this year is to finish in under four hours (unless it is wet!)

Celebrate with the An Saol Foundation an
Evening of Hope and New Beginnings!

Join 500 Friends Around the World!

(And make sure you become a Friend yourself. Invite ten of your friends to join you!)

Click here to get your free Adventfest ticket today

But please only book a ticket if you are sure you will be able to attend.

Live On And Prove Yourself

24 Saturday May 2025

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You kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you’re gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper. In the end, it does nothing. Nothing changes. The world goes on and you’re gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself.
Eddie Vedder

I would never have thought of revenge but about demonstrating that you could treat people with respect and help them to live their lives – even with some of the most devastating injuries you could imagine.

I am very hopeful that we will be able to do this. We have gone a long way already and with the realisation of Teach An Saol, a small campus in North Dublin covering a therapy, social, respite, and transitional supported living hubs, we will firmly make this effort part of the Irish health system and the Irish society.

The inspiration, the motivation, and the energy to carry all the hard work with have been doing is, of course, Pádraig, together with so many families in similar situations as ours.

I met families struggling with their new lives via the ZNS Hannelore Kohl Stiftung (Foundation) in Germany for the first time a few years ago. They organise regular meetings for family members, for parents, for siblings, and for the entire families, including their injured members. I have been attending these meetings for some years now, perhaps once or twice a year.

This weekend I have been in Dresden where we were a neurological consultant taught us about the brain and brain injuries. There were discussion sessions with therapists. Hands-on sessions with Neuro ICU OTs about moving our injured family members. And there was a half-day boat excursion going down the river Elbe visiting the beautiful centre of Dresden.

Right in the Centre of Dresden, there was a protest where one to the placards caught my eyes. It read:

“It is the living who close the dead people’s eyes.
However, it is the death people who open the eyes of the living.”

Although the protest was about a different issue, it made me think about what we have been doing, effectively trying to persuade the HSE to allow us to do the work they should be doing themselves. Getting them the land they should have got. Gathering experts to design and plan an entire campus to deliver services that should be delivered by them. A campus and services they themselves said were necessary, should be delivered, and should be expanded.

In return, they have led us into a jungle of never-ending bureaucratic twists and turns where there is no urgency and no end in sight.

Pádraig and those like him want to live although their doctors wanted them dead. They kept their eyes open and opened our eyes.

We won’t kill ourselves and make a big auld sacrifice; we’ll be ending up with more than this paragraph in a newspaper or a TV report.

We’re going to live and make sure that what needs to be done will be done.