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Ever since she was a book-loving young girl, Helen Cullen wanted to be an author. However, as she got older, the idea became more intimidating and the path appeared less clear cut.
“I think I had this idea that real writers were born and not made. That if it was something I was meant to do, it would have just happened automatically. That it wouldn’t feel so hard for me to get started and I wouldn’t struggle with it. So it took me a long time to get going and in the end, it was only the fear of never trying to write something that overcame the fear of not being able to do it.”
The apprehension of not attempting to accomplish her dreams led Helen to undertake a six month writing workshop. “I hadn’t written a word before this,” she explains. “I had never tried to write a short story before, or poetry. I wrote a lot of letters, kept journals sporadically over the years, but I was really afraid of fiction and didn’t think I could do it at all.
It’s scary how easily it might not have happened
“So it was a jump into the unknown, but the first thing I ever wrote ended up being the first chapter of my first book. So once I started, I just kept going. It’s scary how easily it might not have happened. I was so scared of it – I probably could have spent my whole life being afraid to start.”
Alongside wanting to be an author, Helen liked the idea of working in radio, which she thought was the more attainable option. So, she studied communications in Dublin City University (DCU) and subsequently worked in RTÉ Radio for 10 years.
After this she moved to London, working in public relations. She and her partner Damien then moved home to Ireland temporarily for a year, where they renovated a cottage on his family’s farm. When Helen got a job in Google in London, they moved back.
After writing her first book, The Lost Letters of William Woolf while working full-time, Helen got a two-book publishing deal and started writing full-time. Her second book, The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually, was released this week.
Mental health
The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually is set on the fictional island of Inish Óg, which is loosely based on Inisheer, the smallest of the Aran Islands. A native of Portlaoise herself, the location was inspired by time Helen spent on Inisheer in the Gaeltacht as a teenager.
The story centres on the Moone family and how they try to put themselves back together when wife and mother Maeve dies by suicide.
Effectively, in Ireland, mental illness was taboo for such a long time and it still is taboo for a lot of people
Helen didn’t particularly intend to write a story that deals with mental health struggles and the impact mental health illness has on a family unit – she says it was just how the story unfolded. But she believes it’s important that we normalise speaking about mental illness.
“Effectively, in Ireland, mental illness was taboo for such a long time and it still is taboo for a lot of people. We really should talk about it in the way we would talk about any other illness, if someone had broken a leg or another physical illness.
“For a long time, it was unheard of to talk about mental health struggles you were having. Especially mothers, who suffered from post-natal depression. It was dismissed as being ‘baby blues.’”
Irish mammies
The role of the Irish mammy is often held in reverence, but Helen challenges this idea somewhat in the book. She believes the Irish mammy is seen as an almost mythical figure, but this actually highlights the lack of autonomy Irish women had in the past.
“The danger with the caricature of the Irish mammy is where the idea of the Irish mammy is an abject thing. We don’t think about these women as being individuals with their own agency, power and purpose.
Irish mammies have so much more autonomy, subjectivity and have broken away from the shackles of what was expected in Ireland for a long time
“I think for a long time in Ireland, historically certainly the church and the state really held hands in this idea that the only role for women in Ireland was to take on this mythical Irish mammy role. It was held as sacred, but only in a way that supported their idea of what the role of women in society should be.
“I feel like, obviously, we have come such a long way in recent years. Irish mammies have so much more autonomy, subjectivity and have broken away from the shackles of what was expected in Ireland for a long time.”
Helen feels it’s important mothers have the choice to work or stay at home – it doesn’t matter which, but they should have the choice.
It’s also interesting, she says, to look specifically at the mother-daughter relationship – how women want other women to have agency and purpose, but it’s difficult to look at our own mothers in that light, as the sacrifices they made often translated to very happy childhoods for us.
At the moment, Helen is well on the way to writing her third book and in October is starting a PhD in creative writing. For someone who was afraid to write for so long, Helen has a lot to put across in her books, and she doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
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