HUGG Champion, Niall, shares his story of hope after suicide.

Hi folks, my name is Niall. I’m 49, married to my wonderful wife Fiona, and Dad to my “little buddy” Noah.

I was 14 when my absolute hero of a dad, Bill, took his own life.

He died at 42, and a huge part of me died at 14. He was simply everything to me. He was my world.

My love of Tipperary GAA and Toyotas comes from him. Although my memories of him have unfortunately faded over time, he is still very much a part of me.

I just loved heading to a match on a Sunday with my dad. I was lucky enough to see my journey with Tipperary be a great one, running along with him to Semple Stadium to watch Tipp v Cork. What special days they were. I’m now bringing my son, and although he doesn’t share the same love I had, it’s still nostalgic for me—and that will do just fine for now.

When I was 13, my dad and I were in a woods near home called Glengarra. He was a builder and had this green Toyota HiAce van. We were driving up a wooded laneway, and he stopped and said, “It’s your turn,” then got out. In I jumped, and that was when he taught me how to drive. Bumping and jumping this big old van down through the woods was one of the happiest days of my life.

I’ve owned around six Toyotas in my life, and as I write this, I’m searching for an old Toyota to be my daily car. You can’t put a price on nostalgia.

Sometimes I meet people who knew him, and I love to hear, “You’re the head off your father.”  When I was 14, I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to believe he was gone. I suppose I parked my grief at that time. Due to circumstances, I had to leave my home and move to a new town. Maybe this helped me put life on hold—no one knew me. I made friends through a new GAA club and just ploughed on through my teenage years, kind of forgetting about everything. My father was always there, but I had buried the grief and moved on. It was everything—the stigma of suicide, family fallout, teenage life—and I suppose, absolute denial.

It wasn’t until my early 20s, when I met Fiona (my wife now), that I started to try and process my life and somehow understand what had happened to me.

I did try various types of therapy. Something would happen to trigger me, and I would go to the doctor, get a recommendation for a therapist, and go get “fixed.”  I think I was very flippant about therapy. I would say, “It’s not for me,” and go through the motions, but I don’t know if I ever really committed to it.

Life passed on, and I just dealt with things as they happened. My wife, Fiona, has been my absolute rock—it really is true that behind every good man is a great woman. We had our son, Noah, in 2015, when I was 40. Life couldn’t have been better.

My dad died at 42, and I had a sense of dread approaching my 42nd birthday. It’s hard to put into words how it felt to pass my dad’s age and still have so much life left to live. I get so sad when I think about what he never got to see. How lucky he would have been to know Fiona. How much better life is with Noah in it. It really hurts me when I think about the day he died. My everlasting thought is, “Why wasn’t I enough? Was I not worth living on for?”

I now know that I was more than enough. Unfortunately, my dad wasn’t in a good place and made an awful decision, which he believed was the best thing for him.

I think suicide is the most horrendous ending imaginable. It’s so blunt and just destroys so many lives.

I try to live a positive life now. I have so much to be grateful for, and HUGG has now become part of that life. I heard about HUGG on the radio one day and said I would give them a try. I am so glad I did. I once said therapy didn’t work for me—I was wrong. It’s the type of therapy you engage with that makes a difference.

Therapy isn’t always one-on-one. In HUGG, we have our group. It’s not group therapy, as our groups are peer-led rather than facilitated by therapists, but being part of the group is deeply therapeutic. We chat, laugh, cry, celebrate, and commiserate. We do it all while looking out for each other. I have gained friends for life in my HUGG family. I never realized it, but until I got involved with HUGG, I had never spoken to anyone bereaved by suicide before. Amazing, I know—but I just hadn’t.

We all have our story, and what I find is that all our stories connect. But you see extra connections through the similarity of your story, and that really helps me.

I think 2025 me is a better me because of HUGG, and I am eternally grateful for that.

Thanks for reading.

Niall xxx