A New Life: Declan Tarpey tells Fiona Tyrrell he had to learn how to decommission the terrorist before working as a counsellor
A dissatisfaction with his life in his early 30s led Mayo man Declan Tarpey, then managing director of his own engineering company employing 40 people, to flee to Valparaiso in Chile for five months where a Michael D Higgins poem and close encounters with penguins set him on the track to eventually becoming a counsellor.
"Basically I got lost. I was doing well financially with a solid business but I wasn't happy and I went to Valparaiso to get away from work, my family, my support group, everything," says Tarpey.
The move was no flight of fancy. Before he left Tarpey sold up his company. He also was taking time out from his marriage of six years.
A plan to spend a few weeks in Chile turned into a five-month odyssey where Tarpey went through a whole range of emotions from excitement and a new-found sense of freedom, to insecurity and loneliness.
Tarpey describes himself as quite lost and vulnerable at the time he arrived in Chile: "I didn't know who I was. When I went to buy some new clothes I couldn't choose what to wear. I didn't know whether to buy a denim jacket or a suit."
With no Spanish, Tarpey found solace in time spent hanging out with the "non-judgmental" penguins on the beach and a book of poetry by Michael D Higgins, particularly a poem where he doubts his ability to be a good father while on a walk with his daughter Alice Mary and his brutally honest poem about putting his father in the county home.
In South America Tarpey says he learned the importance of honest self-examination. "It was about the courage to face myself and ask questions and not be sure what the answers were."
On his return, Tarpey and his wife agreed to separate and he settled in Galway and started working as a volunteer. He worked in Galway as well as Guatemala and Cuba.
After a few years, realising that he was now working full-time in the caring sector, Tarpey decided to study to become a counsellor. An introductory course in the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology led him to a two-year stint at the Institute of Creative Counselling and Psychotherapy in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin and finally on to a two-year diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy in the Liberties College, which he has just completed.
During his studies Tarpey attended a workshop given by a woman whose father, a Conservative MP, was killed during the Brighton bomb. Her advice to "decommission the inner terrorist before trying to fix others up" made a big impact on Tarpey and put him on the path to Glencree Reconciliation Centre in Co Wicklow.
"If you can't make peace with yourself and others in your own life, how can you ask politicians in the North to do it?" he says.
He eventually became a facilitator on a victim support programme at Glencree. He also facilitates an ex-combatants programme at the centre as well as working on a political programme involving representatives from all the major political parties on the island.
The work is rewarding, but difficult. Earlier this month he facilitated a two-day hill walk with ex-British soldiers through south Armagh to revisit the area "where they shot and were shot at".
The event had many extraordinary moments, according to Tarpey, including a morning tea send-off hosted by a Sinn Féin mayor and an unscheduled drinking session with some local republicans ending in a siege of Ennis dancing lesson. There were of course difficulties in some of the talk and at times "the anger in the room was furious", Tarpey says. "But we got through it."
Tarpey's work is not all about ground-breaking peace and reconciliation. His work also involves dealing with people with less dramatic stories of loss and hurt, but are just as rewarding. He works with Addiction Response in Crumlin, the Living Light Centre in Dún Laoghaire, Ballinteer Community School's School Completion Programme and with HIV patients in Open Heart House in Dublin.
He cites the story of one client, a young former heroin addict, who never got the chance to finish school and is now fulfilling his dream to study horticulture.
"From heroin to horticulture. It's a fantastic journey. For me it's lovely to be a witness to that transformation and to be a facilitator to it. To see him come out from such a lost place is inspirational."
His own journey from engineer to counsellor may not be as spectacular but it is equally inspirational.
"I guess I drifted into engineering because I was good with my hands and it came easy to me. But there came a day when I realised I was not getting that much out of it anymore. I was driving fast cars but not getting the satisfaction out of them any more."
When setting off to Chile all those years ago, Tarpey stopped over in London to stay with his brother who told him to reduce his luggage by abandoning all the self- help books he had packed.
"My brother said I wouldn't find what I was looking for in a book, and he was so right."
Tarpey's advice to anyone considering a big change is avoid advice at all costs.
"The only one who can give you advice is yourself. Give yourself the space and time to figure it out - you are worth that time.
"You may need someone to listen to you but the advice is inside you. It would be a pity to look back on your life and not have gone for your dreams, it's even worse not to have figured out what your dreams are at all."
- Declan Tarpey, Solus Counselling & Psychotherapy, can be contacted on 086 8187074.