S2 E1 : Ruth Smith (2021)

The Family of THINGS with Helen Shaw

The Family of Things : Season 2 E1 : Ruth Smith Released April 2 2021

The Family of Things is a podcast about life, and how we chose to live it, hosted by Helen Shaw and created by the award winning independent podcast producers Athena Media. All conversations in Season 2 have been recorded remotely due to the pandemic.

Website: www.thefamilyofthings.com #TheFamilyOfThings

Ruth Smith is well known to radio listeners for her weekly RTÉ Radio 1 show Simply Folk but Ruth is a woman of many hats and talents. She is also part of the female singing trio ‘The Evertides’ with her singing sisters Ruth McGill and Alma Kelliher and her creative work includes writing poetry and fiction. She was born, as Ruth says, a middle child in a family running a busy and bustling Portumna pub in Co. Galway, she grew up performing, doing turns in the pub playing fiddle and became an accomplished pianist.

She went to Trinity College Dublin to study drama and theatre, she still has an occasional life on stage as an actor, and today she lives in East Clare, with her husband, fellow musician Fergal Scahill (of We Banjo 3), and their rescue cat and two dogs. In this episode of The Family of Things Ruth shares an often deeply personal journey of self-discovery and how a turbulence time in her late twenties, and early thirties, when her first marriage ended, and she felt lost, helped her find confidence in her own voice, and the power to use it for a positive purpose.

Psychologist Tony Bates wrote of this episode : 'Powerful. Searingly honest and healing'.

You can find out more about Ruth follow her on twitter twitter.com/theruthsmith, so you can see her haikus and you can hear The Evertides music on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/3KORys5YygyWKuTocK1mbB?autoplay=true In the episode Ruth uses the Irish word 'altramas' - which means to foster, to take care of someone, to nurse, so an altramaí is a foster person, foster parent, in the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. The music you hear in this episode includes:

The Evertides - Silence Falling, in the opening & Mayfly in the closing

Billy Joel - Goodnight My Angel Sung by Ruth

Mary Keane/ Mary MacGabhann - Whispering Hope (Ruth's Aunt)

Julie Feeney - Life's Nudge

You can hear, and buy, the songs Ruth's Aunt Mary recorded to raise fund for St Francis Hospice here: marymacgabhann.bandcamp.com/releases You can hear Julie's performance of the song performed live with Cormac de Barra for the Pantisocracy show 2017 here: https://audioboom.com/posts/6166686-pantisocracy-performance-season-2-e-4-julie-feeney-life-s-nudge

Ruth reads The Philip Larkin poem ' This Be The Verse' and you find the text here : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verseThe Family of Things is an Athena Media independent podcast production.

The host, and producer, is Helen Shaw. The digital editor is John Howard. The theme music is 'The Old Haunt' by Ana Gog - composed by Michael Gallen. The Family of Things is an independent podcast without other sources of funding. If you like what we do and want to support the creation of Season 2 consider becoming a member of our Patreon community for just a euro a month.

Help make things happen. www.patreon.com/tfot

Episode Transcript: https://www.happyscribe.com/transcriptions/ba128f78e0c94c06ab33fd5760b5ca97/edit_v2

The title 'The Family of Things' comes from a poem by Mary Oliver 'Wilde Geese' https://www.vanderbilt.edu/olli/class-materials/2017Summer.MindfulnessWk1.pdf