Inspired Action From a Place of Unimaginable Loss

Catherine McBennett is easily one of the most inspiring people I have ever met.

In November 2005, Catherine lost her daughter Niamh to suicide.
In the middle of the most devastating loss a parent can experience, she saw something that needed to be done. There was very little support for people at risk of suicide in the Mid-Ulster area where she lived.

So, just a few months later, she did something extraordinary.

She set up the Niamh Louise Foundation.

The foundation was officially established on 2nd February 2006, what would have been Niamh’s 16th birthday. Its purpose was simple and powerful: to support people at risk of suicide, and those who had been affected by it.

Last Saturday, Jules and I had the honour of attending a gala ball to celebrate the foundation’s 20th anniversary.

I first met Catherine seven or eight years ago, back when I was still working as a therapist. She asked me to provide supervisory support for her in the work she was doing. When I moved into coaching in 2020, the nature of our conversations changed, but we kept working together.

Catherine leads a small team of remarkable people who run the day-to-day services of the foundation. From the very beginning, she was clear about one thing. She didn’t want the place to feel clinical. She wanted it to feel like a home.

That’s exactly what she created.

Even now, twenty years later, every time I walk into the foundation, I end up sitting around the kitchen table, talking with Catherine or someone from her team. It feels human. Warm. Real.

At the gala ball, Jules leaned over to me at one point and remarked how young so many of the people in the room were.

It wasn’t just a room full of people supporting a charity. It was a room full of people whose lives had been touched by the foundation. Young people who had lost loved ones.

Young people who had lost loved ones.
Young people who had been at risk themselves.
Young people who were still here because someone at the foundation had sat with them, listened to them, supported them, been with them.

Day in, day out, Catherine, Seanna, Jenny and Grainne (pictured above along with Jolene who chairs the foundation’s board. Catherine is second from right) sit in conversations most of us would struggle to imagine. Conversations with people who are at real risk of ending their lives. Conversations with parents, brothers, sisters and friends who are living through the most unimaginable grief.

I often tell Catherine how extraordinary she and her team are, and how important their work is. There are still huge stigmas around suicide. Not many people are lining up to volunteer or work in this space.

But there were people in that room on Saturday night who simply would not have been there without the work of the foundation.
People who might never have grown up.
Never have married.
Never have had children.

The impact is literally generational.

I wrote recently about the butterfly effect. The work Catherine and her team do is a living example of that. The impact of what they’ve created over the last twenty years is impossible to measure.

Impossible to measure in the number of lives directly supported in Mid-Ulster.
Impossible to measure in the awareness raised in schools.
Impossible to measure in the mental health training delivered to local businesses.
Impossible to measure in the quiet, unseen moments where someone decided to stay alive.

When I think about it, I’m in awe.

There are, without question, thousands of people alive today because of Catherine and her team. There is no number big enough to place a value on that.

And the fact that the foundation has done all of this without government funding makes the story even more remarkable. This entire effort has been funded through grants and the generosity of people from the local community.

Catherine doesn’t just lead the team. She advocates constantly for better support services. She speaks to local authorities. She lobbies for change. She is, to my knowledge, the only person in Northern Ireland with deep expertise in psychological autopsy.

The work I do with Catherine means a lot to me. I get to be a coach, counsellor, mentor and trusted advisor as she leads her team, makes big decisions, supports people through deep pain, and works with a volunteer board made up of people who, in some cases, were once supported by the foundation themselves.

Over three years ago, when I created my own document, one line came to me:

“I am a trusted advisor for people who are radically disrupting the planet in a good way.”

I wasn’t thinking about Catherine at the time.

But now, whenever I recite those words, she often comes to mind.

She is, without doubt, one of the most inspiring people I have ever met. And she is most definitely disrupting the planet in a very good way.

If you’d like to learn more about the work of Catherine and the Niamh Louise Foundation, I’d encourage you to take a look … https://www.niamhlouisefoundation.com/

Much love,

Peter

It’s Never Personal

I Know How Good It Will Be for Them

We Choose the Level We Play At