What a Difference a Day Makes with Róisín Maher: I nearly died... but it drove me to find my voice

Just outside Timoleague, a car came around a blind corner on the wrong side of the road. 

I swerved… kind of wrenched the car to avoid a head-on collision but that brought me into the path of cars behind so I swerved in the opposite direction to avoid them.

The person in the original car fled the scene but I remember the horrified faces of the couple in the car behind… bits of memories, it all happened in seconds, milliseconds.

I lost control of the car. It skidded into the ditch, on its side, kind of hung there… I thought, ‘OK, this isn’t too bad,’ but I was at the top of the bank going down to the Argideen River — a 20ft drop. The car started to roll. Six times — I remember counting: One, two, three... And I did think this was it, and it was a stupid way to die.

The car smashed into a tree, was stopped going into the river. I didn’t feel injured. I was obviously in shock. 

The car was on its side, though not flat against the ground. I started to panic — was it going to burst into flames?

I started trying to crawl out the window. As I crawled, I could hear somebody saying, ‘Wait, wait, I’m coming down.’ 

The couple in the car behind, whose faces I’d seen — the man was coming down the river bank. I crawled out, he scrambled down, the two of us hugged, complete strangers on a day-trip to Courtmacsherry, and he said, ‘I can’t believe you’re alive, I can’t believe you’re OK’. The car was a write-off.

And he was really worried, asking was there anyone else in the car, were there any children. 

He thought I might have concussion. My two daughters’ booster seats had flown out the window. 

The car going into the tree disturbed a bird’s nest, and the birds were shrieking. So he thought it was children crying.

They gave me a bottle of tonic water — sugar for the shock — and we went looking for my glasses, they’d flown off my face. I had cuts on my forearms, my face, from the glass, crawling out.

The ambulance came, and my husband. No broken bones, no concussion. I don’t know how I walked away from it. 

But I struggled with my emotions, my mental health. I was afraid to sleep in case I wouldn’t wake up. 

Every time I’d drift off, I’d get the sensation of the car rolling and I’d jerk awake — that went on for months. 

It took me weeks to get behind the wheel of a car. I’d always loved driving, it was my happy place. I didn’t have that any more. 

If I was driving, I was gripping the steering wheel. It was more than a year before I could drive anywhere without crying and feeling completely overwhelmed. 

The accident spot was so close to my home. I had to drive past it several times a week.

What helped most was hypnotherapy. He put me under, brought me through the whole accident — pausing it, speeding it up, slow-mo. 

Afterwards, I found out I’d been talking two-and-a-half hours, bawling crying the whole time. I was absolutely wrung out by the end but I was calmer. I’d got all the emotion around it out. And I felt: I’m done.

It took a few years for it to be something I could look back on with some kind of objectivity. It was so out-of-the-blue, a normal Sunday afternoon and then… boom! Such a shock on so many levels.

There were two sides to how it changed me. The change in my relationship with driving was the negative side. 

But just having that really intense feeling that I was going to die — and then I didn’t. It stayed with me. 

I realised I’ve only one life — what am I going to do with it? If I did die, what would I be leaving behind, what am I proud of?

A saying that stays with me: ‘We each have two lives. Our second life begins when we realise we only have one life.’

As a lecturer in Cork School of Music since 2004, it always annoyed me there was so little music being performed by women composers.

If the accident hadn’t happened, I don’t know if I’d have had the confidence to say, ‘Let’s just do this’ — my sister Cliona and I co-founding Finding a Voice, a four-day festival that celebrates unforgettable music by remarkable women. 

I just wanted to do something, my own little bit of action, to get more music by women out into the world.

It’s only in the last year I’ve seen the connection between the accident and Finding a Voice. I didn’t want to credit the accident with doing something good. But in a weird way, something good did come out of it.

• Róisín Maher Finding a Voice co-founder and artistic director. 
• Now in its eighth year, the four-day festival takes place in Clonmel from March 6-9 and celebrates exceptional music by women across eras and genres — contemporary, jazz, classical, and traditional.