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Career U-turns: ‘I’m exactly where I am supposed to be’
Дата публикации: 18-08-2026 05:01:00
Two mothers turn to ‘life-changing’ creative craft to find inner peace – and themselves
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Six months into motherhood, Orla Ó Regan felt an overwhelming need to leave life in Dublin and return to her native Co Cork.
She had been struggling with what was only later diagnosed as postnatal depression. In hindsight, she believes she had antenatal depression too, but that wasn’t picked up either, “even though I did stress I was not feeling good”. She was told: “That happens; it’s just part of becoming a mother.”
“Once I had Jonah, I wasn’t myself really. I wasn’t diagnosed, again, within the first six months, even though I was crying out for help to see what was wrong with me,” Ó Regan says.
At six months, she could take no more and believed she was in no fit state to return to work as a project manager in the construction industry. “I just knew that I wasn’t me, I was turning in. I felt I needed to cocoon. I was just listening to my body saying, ‘we need to leave this life as we know it and get down home’. I just couldn’t handle decision-making and stresses.”
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All she wanted to do was to look after her baby and “to feel good again”.
After moving back to her parents’ farm in Mallow, Co Cork, she met “a wonderful doctor” who diagnosed postnatal depression. Once Ó Regan started medication and attending a “great therapist” recommended by the doctor, her recovery began. But “it was very tough”.
She set up a studio in an old hen house on the farm to do some creative art, as “that was all I could do at the time”.
Looking back, she says, “That was the greatest therapy and medication of all – and that turned my life upside down.
“I always say that through that darkness came the light, and an inner life which I would have probably craved, pre all of this. I always loved art.”
[ When faced by a crisis, there is nothing worse than feeling you have no controlOpens in new window ]
She had been studying part-time at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin while working, before she and her husband, Bjorn Ludick, started their family.
Regaining her health in Mallow, Ó Regan believed she needed “a little slowdown and a freedom in my life at that stage”, which the art world could provide. “There were people buying my art and it was feasible.”
Over the 10 years since, she has built up a successful ceramics business, Orla O Visual (orlaovisual.ie), crafting words in delicate porcelain. She selects meaningful or motivational sayings, including bespoke ones requested by customers, and embeds them, letter by letter, into sheets of porcelain, which are then inked and glazed.
For Ó Regan it is a labour of love as well as a business, and work that brings inner peace.
“I just go into this little world where nothing can disturb me. I feel like I absorb the words like mantras. As I hand print the letters, I really pay attention to the words and it’s quite an emotional process. It just switches you off from the world entirely.”
Bespoke commissions are often from or for people going through difficult times, who want a memory enshrined or a special gift for somebody. As an empath, she says, “I can really feel the emotion of it all.”
Ó Regan also holds workshops and will conduct one in Fota House today, August 18th, as part of Cork Craft Month, which runs until August 31st.
Amid the busyness of life, more people are looking for “hands-on” opportunities to try crafts of all types. Aside from the obvious benefit of having to put your phone down, craft-making is linked in studies to reduced stress and anxiety, higher self-esteem and better problem-solving.
“It’s just so beautiful to watch because you can see how their focus flips into the creative world and they tune out of life for a while,” she says of workshop participants. “I always end the session with, ‘Continue to feed your soul,’ because that’s the advice I was given in my therapy sessions when I wasn’t well.”
Life is an “emergency”, she says. “I’ve been there and it’s hard.” We need to make time for ourselves, especially mothers. If we don’t feed our soul, “we’re just dropping into the darkness again”.
As a member of Cork Craft and Design, she values the connection with fellow artists who understand this way of life and the isolating nature of the work. “People may look at a life as an artist as an easy one, but it’s not, it’s just different. You are entirely responsible for its success, which is a huge pressure, and you can never turn off. Then throw family life and being a mother into the equation as well, making it an extra-tough role. Maybe people don’t see that element of it.”
Jonah is now 11 and the couple have since had a second son, Jacob, who is six years old. “It took us five years to consider having another child because it was a tough journey.”
We juggle life a little differently to the nine-to-fivers, but it’s a lovely way, and the boys see we’re both working with our passions
— Orla Ó Regan
There was no repeat of her depression. Instead, she felt the birth of Jacob “released everything. It was just a strange feeling that all the complete darkness finally left me in a way”.
She does not know if having a natural birth helped the second time. She had needed a Caesarean for Jonah, who was breech (presenting bottom or feet first in the uterus). Although with Jacob, she had the complication of giving birth during the 2020 Covid lockdown to deal with and not knowing if her husband would be allowed to attend. “It was really scary. The anxiety levels did climb a little at that stage. But nothing, thank God, after that.”
Ludick was there for the birth, but had to leave soon after.
The family now live in Dromore in Mallow, not too far from her parents. Ó Regan works into the early hours of the morning, if necessary, so she can be there for the boys as needed during the day.
The money that came with her old job was “amazing”, she says, but “the priorities since have changed”. She is still occasionally offered work in the construction world, but “I have closed that door”.
Her husband is self-employed too, as a sports coach. “So we juggle life a little differently to the nine-to-fivers, but it’s a lovely way, and the boys see we’re both working with our passions,” she adds. “Hopefully that will instil in them, down the line when they’re choosing their life path, that passion is important.”
Two weeks of walking the Camino de Santiago alone was a huge turning point for Sanja Ivcic in 2024 after several turbulent years of family life.
“You wouldn’t actually believe that one walk can change everything in your life,” she says, emotionally recalling the 250km journey she made from Porto to Santiago de Compostela.
Two years previously, she had separated from her husband. Then, in 2024, she received an eviction notice because the landlord was selling the house in Carrigaline, Co Cork, where the family had lived for eight years.
“We couldn’t find a house and the prices were horrible,” she says of her desperate search for a new home for herself, daughter, son and their dog.
She had moved to Ireland in November 2014, just over a year after her native Croatia had joined the EU. In her early 30s and keen for the family to see life from a different perspective, she came ahead of her husband and their children, Lorena and Noah, who were 12 and seven respectively at the time. Staying initially in Dublin, she availed of a free tour offered by her hostel to visit other cities around the country.
As soon as she saw Cork, Ivcic knew it was the right place for her family, who joined her the following summer. Having worked in a variety of retail, cleaning and factory roles here, she got “the best job in my life” in 2019 at a logistics company, where she still works.
The Camino trip gave her time to reflect. “In those moments, something changed. Not just because I stopped smoking,” she says with a laugh. On the road alone, but meeting people from different parts of the world and hearing their stories, she resolved to try to do something new in her life.
For a long, long time I was simply surviving as a mom and working full time. I was taking care of everyone else, but I don’t think I ever stopped to ask myself what I enjoy doing – to let the creativity into my life
— Sanja Ivcic
Happily, the threat of eviction was lifted when a member of the landlord’s family bought the house and told Ivcic she could stay on as the tenant. In a new, calmer frame of mind, she started to explore what she could do in addition to her full-time job.
“I know I’m artistic because I know the way how I’m putting the flowers in my vase and the way how I’m cutting the cake that I made. The way I am choosing my clothes and my jewellery,” Ivcic says.
Having watched countless social media videos created by makers of soaps and candles, she bought her first wax melter in the run-up to Valentine’s Day last year. “Me and the kids made the first candles. They were horrible, they didn’t burn.”
But she persevered, creating not only scented candles but extraordinary floral bouquets out of soy wax, which she now sells through her own part-time business, Candlelight by Sanya. “It’s more than a business. It’s where my mind becomes quiet when I’m creating, and everything else disappears. For a long, long time I was simply surviving as a mom and working full time. I was taking care of everyone else, but I don’t think I ever stopped to ask myself what I enjoy doing – to let the creativity into my life.”
When she runs workshops, she likes to see other people enjoying using their hands to make something. “I think this creativity just quiets the mind – not because you’re trying to escape life but because you’re completely present.”
Every candle she creates has a story, she explains. “I often know exactly where it’s going.” Maybe it’s a bouquet for a woman recovering from surgery, a graduation gift for a sister, or in memory of a loved one.
“I just love the stories because I think every time somebody buys something from me, it’s for something special.”
Making candles has become her way to relax. “I’m exactly where I am supposed to be.” And being accepted as a member of Cork Craft and Design has given her visibility, confidence and new connections. Her creations are stocked in six shops around Co Cork.
[ The importance of understanding and accepting our feelingsOpens in new window ]
For now, she is content to pursue her craft at a table in her kitchen, while continuing to work her 9-5 job.
“I don’t have a man in my life, that’s not important. Yes, I put lots of the love in my kids, but there is a love that you have to put somewhere. The energy has to go somewhere, and I think this candle business came out of it. I found it in myself and I just pour [it] into these candles.”
She was an ordinary woman with a full-time job, raising two children and just getting through each day, she adds, before the Camino taught her to slow down.
“The candle-making helped me discover who I was when I finally gave myself permission to create,” she says. “That’s why I believe creativity changes people. It changed me.”
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