Crafting Communities: Innovation in Holistic Living

In this episode, we dive into the inspiring journey of Ciara Heneghan, a visionary mom, author, editor-in-chief of All In magazine, and chairwoman of the Homefulness Ireland Club. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, Ciara’s passion for literature and truth-telling has shaped her life’s mission to empower and uplift marginalized communities through innovative housing solutions. Join us as we explore her powerful life motto, ‘If you see it, it was meant for you to do something about it,’ and learn how she is spearheading the Homefulness project to create self-sufficient, inclusive villages in Ireland. Discover the essence of living without limits and the transformative power of truth in making a significant social impact.

TIMESTAMPS:

02:14 Meet Kiara Henigan: A Life Without Limits
04:31 The Power of Truth and Story Weaving
10:47 A Personal Journey Through Literature
18:32 The Vision of Homefulness Villages
20:23 The Birth of a Movement
29:04 Challenges and Realities of Homelessness

Listen to Part II of the podcast episode here:

Watch Part II of the interview here:

Emily Bron: Welcome to the age of reinvention, eco living, free cities, and intentional communities. The podcast where we deep dive deep into the journeys of those extraordinary individuals who are redefining their worlds and simultaneously changing the lives of those around them. I’m the host, Emily Bron. Today, we have an inspiring figure whose life is a testament to living unrestricted by boundaries.

Ciara Heneghan. Ciara is not only a mom and truth telling change maker, but also an author, an editor in chief of All In magazine, and the chairwoman of the for the Homefulness Ireland Club. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, her passion for literature has propelled her on epic adventures, shaping her into a visionary who lives life fully.

From helping people share their stories, To advocating for personal responsibility and love, Ciara embodies the essence of living life without limits. She has a deep resonance for reflection, awareness, huge heart, and is a firm advocate for the life is for living. There’s no limit, no boxes, and no problems without solution.

In this woman’s world, one of Ciara’s life mottos is if you see it, it was meant for you to do something about. And she lives this motto powerfully. Join us as we explore the multiple dimensions of her journey, understand her mantra, and of life is for living and discover how she uses her visionary mischief maker role to make a significant impact.

Ciara, welcome to the show and I’m happy to speak with you today.

Ciara Heneghan: My goodness, when you hear yourself back, when somebody reads about you, I don’t know if anyone else feels like it, but I go, I want to meet that person!

Emily Bron: So we are here, and we met each other, and you can, after then, review. And listen, and even maybe to discover about yourself something new.

Ciara Heneghan: 100%. Thank you so much for having me.

Emily Bron: I really appreciate being here. It’s my pleasure. And I was looking forward for it. Ciara, you have taken on the fascinating title of story weaver. And I found a different description about you on some other site, specializing in truth and impact. Could you tell us what both phrases mean and how they connect to your journey of reinvention during your life?

Ciara Heneghan: 100%. It’s a bit of a story about my mother, actually, if you’ll allow me to share. So I grew up in a house with a mother who used to always say, I never lie. And I never break my promises. And that woman lied and broke her promises all the time. All the time. It was insane. And when you’re small, when you’re little, and I’ve done a lot of work around attachment theory and I’ve worked with counselors and therapists.

And when somebody says something to you, you take it on as the truth. So when somebody in a position of authority and somebody that you trust says, I never lie and I never break my promises and then they do and they do it repeatedly, it has a huge effect. But I never realized the extent of the effect until I had my son.

And when I had my son and he started to tell lies as kids do, it’s natural, there’s nothing wrong with it. The kids tell lies and then it’s up to us to guide them in how not to do that. And I would get cross, I would get angry because he had told me a lie, because the pattern that was so deeply ingrained in me from the way my mother had been, I carried through into my relationship with my son.

So I really had to dissect it in a huge way. I had to pull it all apart and recognize that truth was really important to me. Not only because of that, but because when you tell the truth, it is the truth. You can’t change the truth. You can’t make up the truth. You can’t add things to the truth. The truth is just the truth.

And I find a real liberation in that, a real freedom of, a power. When I tell the truth, it’s really powerful. It’s out there. It doesn’t matter if it’s against me or for me, it’s the truth and it is what it is. And so I would have taught my son that. And when you tell the truth, that’s when you make the biggest impact.

I see an awful lot in society at the minute, people talking about something that’s really interesting. Radical truth. Like the truth needs an extra word behind it. I’ve got to be a radical person to tell the truth. And maybe at the minute you do, but it leaves an impact when you just say exactly what needs to be said.

And you don’t lie. You don’t add anything to it. The impact is massive and how all of that connects with the story weaving is when I meet people and they tell me their stories and they start off sometimes telling me the story they think I want to hear, right? So the nice story, the pretty version, the one that there’s nothing bad and nothing wrong and they’re lovely.

And I know that they’re lovely, but I know that they didn’t become the person who they are without going through things along the way. So I want to get that story. I want to pull it out. I want to poke for it. I want to know all of the little pieces. So that when I help them put it together, it’s a story of truth and for impact.

And that’s how it all comes together.

Emily Bron: I can very resonate with you on the side that truth is very important for me. And it was important for me all my life. And I can tell you over the last years, it was big shock and impact to me as I understood how people perceive reality. And sometimes it’s not there.

Because they believe to what government telling them to what other people telling them this host on TV is telling them, and maybe because they used to trust and believe the authorities, they accept it as a truth. Or there’s, there’s no notions that everyone has his own truth. I completely don’t agree.

Truth is the one. There are different interpretation and it’s come different story, but truths are based on fact. We will not go to, philosophy because it’s very important. And I found that it’s impacting our life. And when I say our life, like our personal life, our social life, our business, actually we are living in a time of the big political, societal and economical changes.

And many people are confused, sincerely confused because they don’t understand what is the truth or the truth, which was instilled in them now in conflict with reality.

Ciara Heneghan: I completely agree. And I just want to say, especially on that point, when

people believe exactly what they’re told to believe because we’ve been told to believe it for so long. And then when it counteracts with your belief system, when the real truth is shown to you, it can be so scary and it can be anxiety inducing that you sit back and you say, I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know how to think. I don’t know how to feel. And sometimes it’s easier to go back. Into your own belief and into your own truth, because that’s what you know, that phrase, it’s better the devil, so a lot of people stay in that space because they’re too scared

Emily Bron: because it’s a comfort zone. People don’t like to be confronted with reality. I would say, you all get out of the comfort zone and they will push away and they will kill the messenger. As sometimes just not to get from this shell that they built for many years. And especially people with, when they have life experiences, they assume okay, they’ve had, they’ve seen, they know, and suddenly it’s all appeared differently.

And you need to have special courage, I would say, and power to recognize it and get out of the shell. From your early age, as far as I understood, writing poetry and short stories to becoming the author and story viewer can you share how your love for literature has shaped your journey and influenced your path?

Ciara Heneghan: Another funny story, and again, it all comes back to writing. So I started writing poetry, my earliest memory is when I was nine.

And there was a lot of things going on in my childhood that I couldn’t make sense of. They were big, they were traumatic things, but I didn’t know that they were big and traumatic. They were just bad. And I needed to figure out a way to be able to articulate my feelings and make sense of the world. So I wrote poetry, and I have a gift for rhyming.

So I rhyme all the time. Everything I do is always a rhyme. And I loved the sound and the look. of the words when I would write them and they would rhyme at the end. It gave me such a satisfaction. It was like a piece. So I could put my emotions and my feelings on the paper and I could see the rhyming and it was a whole sensory experience.

But later on down the line, I was in my 20s and I went to Ibiza with a friend of mine. We went over to work. And we had a horrific experience. It was so bad. We met a guy who was out and about in Ibiza. And he was the local. What is Ibiza? Sorry? What is Ibiza in Spain. Ibiza. Ah, okay. The island. Okay. Yeah. We were over there dancing because I was a dancer for years and years, and this guy was the local drug dealer.

We didn’t know this, right? We were 21 and 25. Okay. Green Irish girls. We got to this place and we met this guy. And he was the local drug dealer. And as it happened, he took us out one night. And I didn’t drink at all while I was over there. But my friend was drinking Blue Wicket. It’s like a blue drink in a bottle.

It’s an alcohol pop. And my dad always said to me, Whenever you’re out, never drink from your drink twice if you’ve left it down. So walk away from it and go and get a different drink. Because anybody can spike your drink. So I always remembered. But my friend didn’t, and every time she would leave her drink down on the table, she would come back and drink it again.

And I was out dancing, so I couldn’t monitor. I wasn’t saying to her, don’t do that, don’t do that, and I couldn’t find her. Anyway, long story short, her drink ended up being spiked. It was a terrible event, and the drug dealer came back to our apartment with us, forced himself into our cab, and came back to our apartment with us.

The following morning, he was still there at 11 o’clock and he asked us if we would let him back in if he came back with more drugs. This was terrible. This is just terrible. We weren’t doing any drugs. This guy just wanted to force as much as he could on us. Luckily, I was fine, so I was in my right mind.

And I said, absolutely, if you go now and you get more drugs, we’ll let you in when you come back. And he came back and we wouldn’t let him in. So he sent a little small man who was very high on drugs to come back and try and break down our door. There’s a reason I’m telling you this and you’ll laugh when you hear it.

So I’ve done martial arts for a very long time and I don’t get scared of very many things. And I’m looking out the door at this, through the peephole, at this small man smacking against our door, bashing our door down. And I thought, Oh, I know what I’ll do. I’m just going to open the door. I’m going to let him run in and then I’m going to catch him by his neck and his trousers.

And I’m going to turn him around and throw him out the door because I thought this will be easy. That’s exactly what I did. Closed the door, barricaded it up. And I had to take my friend and put her in the shower and make sure she was okay because she was. Absolutely bonkers. So she’s lying in bed.

I have the covers over her and I thought to myself, there’s only one thing I can do to make this better because I can’t do anything now. So I wrote her a story about a pixie named Flicky and I wrote the story and wrote the story and wrote the story and I read her the story and it was the thing that brought her back.

She could have died right there and then in the apartment in Ibiza. But she said that as she was coming in and out of consciousness, She was listening to me read this story about this pixie called Flicky and she felt like it kept her attached to the life that she was supposed to be living and I That’s why I write.

That’s why I write poetry. That’s why I write books. That’s why I write stories. Because if I can help one person, just one person, and they read something I write and they go, Oh my god, that feels amazing. Then my mission is complete in this world. My mission is complete. It’s so important to be able to share stories.

So

Emily Bron: important.

I’m absolutely with you. And my next question, actually, what books you read from your childhood and formative years that influenced you to be who you are today? I understand that you read after then many more books, but what is the books formed you, your vision?

Ciara Heneghan: I spent a lot of my childhood reading Enid Blyton, Mallory Towers, St.

Clair’s, anything to do with kids in a boarding school was Just, oh, it just, it gave me so much love because they would have midnight feasts and they would all come out of their bunks in their dormitories and they would meet and they would discuss mysteries and then I read Nancy Drew and she was a child who solved mysteries.

And I read The Famous Five and they were kids that went on adventures. And I spent so much of my life going on adventures and being part of mysteries in the real world. It was like the real world mirrored my reading world, and it was fantastical. And I’ve always had a great imagination, so when I wasn’t reading, which wasn’t very much, I was imagining what was happening in the world and creating scenarios for myself.

And then, later on, I read the Lord of the Rings whole book. It was about a thousand pages, and I read it in a weekend. I just couldn’t put the book down. And that was fantastical and magical. And then as an adult, two books have absolutely blown me away. And the first book was The Five Love Languages. Oh, it is, I just think it’s one of the most beautiful books in the world.

And I think every child of probably maybe 12 or 13 should be given it to read as like a project and it described to them what their own love language is, how they want to be loved and how they want to love back. I think it will be so powerful. And then the second book was the Four Agreements. And I read that long after it came out.

And when I read it, I thought, I’ve been living my life this way all along. I wondered, did I write this book? Is this book written about me? And I’ve spoken to some people in the personal development space who are very aware and attuned and they have had the same feelings. They’ve looked at the book and gone, wow, did I write this?

It’s such a powerful book. Yeah those were definitely the ones.

Emily Bron: Actually, this last book, the only one that I read from the list of books and authors you mentioned, because I was growing up on the different literature and different cultural environment, and this book I read later in the life here being in Canada.

But, I see a lot of similarities between us, even we grew up on the different books and different cultures. My next question about homefulness. And now, for our listeners and followers who would try to understand what I’m speaking about, I need to bring some clarity. Homefulness villages in Ireland.

It’s fully self sufficient, sustaining communities. Designed for up to 500 residents, including individuals and families from diverse backgrounds. These villages will be the cornerstone of a new model of inclusive living, featuring modular homes and tiny homes, affordable eco friendly homes all structured around the hubs of the villages, and they also based on self sufficiency.

Which means solar panels, wind turbines, vegetable grow houses, and small farm animals. They will include community center and medical facility, offering western and holistic health practices, from massage therapy to naturopathy. And they will the, and the business places will be part of it, which is opportunities for residents to create their own livelihood from beauty salons to law offices.

Please tell us a little bit more about This project and actually how you get to this idea, because I understand that you are leading this movement.

Ciara Heneghan: Yeah, so it’s awesome to be able to talk about it. So there’s a group of us that are working on this, and it’s a group of really, truly incredible people that see the vision.

And it started in 2017 when I brought my son to Manchester to his first Man United game. And the excitement was incredible and we, I’m in the west of Ireland so it’s a three hour train journey up to Dublin and then you go from the train station to the airport bus and you get your bus to the airport.

So we were walking up the Liffey, which is the river in Dublin, and my son got quieter and quieter as he saw all of the people in their tents or in their sleeping bags and it was cold, it was November, and it was very cold. And I could see his face changing. He was only 10, but he didn’t want to ask me any questions and I thought I’ll leave him to it to see he wants to process this himself.

He’ll ask me when he’s ready. So we got on the airport bus and headed over to Manchester, had a great time and came back. And on the way back, it seemed like there was even more people on the streets. We were on the far side this time coming down O’Connell Street, and there were so many bodies. People in sleeping bags, people without sleeping bags, people in tents on the way down the main street of Dublin.

And I kept thinking how did I not know that this was as bad as it is? How have I’m only three hours away, how have I not known it is as bad as it is? Have I switched myself off so completely from something that’s really bad, that’s a crisis? And does everybody switch themselves off so completely?

And as we got to the bottom of O’Connell Street, my son got really upset and he said why are they not in their homes, mommy? And I was trying to explain to him how many different things can happen for somebody to end up without a home from, not having the money to pay their mortgage to going down a wrong path, to making bad choices, to, to fighting with people in their house, to not feeling like they’re safe in their houses and so many other reasons.

And he saw a young couple, now I’d say maybe they were in their. Very early twenties and he said can I go over and talk to them and can I give them some money and I said of course you can and I felt really inadequate because there was so many on either side of the street and I had given whatever I could to the people on the other side on the way to Manchester, but I felt like it was unfair, how I how can I help all of them?

How can I help? I’m just given a few bits to these few people. This isn’t enough. He went over and he had a conversation, he came back and he had tears in his eyes. And he said, will somebody fix it, mummy? And as soon as he said the sentence, what came to my mind is, surely someone will do something, right?

Surely somebody will fix it. And we got on the bus and we went back home and the whole way home on the train, that’s all I could think was, surely somebody somewhere will fix it. Surely somebody somewhere will fix it. And then I had a light bulb moment I’m somebody. So if I’m somebody, maybe I’m the one that’s supposed to fix it.

Because what we see, we have the opportunity to fix. And nothing happened. I percolated on it from 2017 to 2019 because I didn’t know what I needed to do. And I was meeting people and I was talking to people and I was coming up to Dublin and I was, bringing clothes up to the Simon community and whatever I could do, I would do.

Tiny little things, insignificant things. We’re trying to get my head around what was happening. And in 2019, I had the idea, right? We’re going to end homelessness in Ireland. That’s it now. Done. I’m going to do this. I have no idea how, but I’m going to do it. Who do I need to talk to? And I rang Lee and I said to Lee, I’ve had an idea.

We’re going to end homelessness in Ireland. Told him what my idea was and he said, that’s brilliant. I’d love to be part of it. And I said, great, let’s do this. Who else do we need? So we contacted Bill Phillips, Declan Dowling, Aaron O’Dowd, Joseph Maguire. Julie Tooley, there was a group of people, Joe Clancy, incredible people, all entrepreneurs, all visionaries, all go getters and doers who, as soon as I said what I said, they all said yes.

None of them said, no, that’s been done before and it hasn’t worked. No, I don’t think that’s going to work. No naysayers. It’s just people who got on board. And we met constantly every single weekend. And then 2020 happened and we couldn’t meet in person. So we took it all online and we started to build a foundation and figure out what it was that we wanted to achieve and how we wanted to achieve it.

And something I’ve only learned or understood recently is how important it is to note that everything worth doing does actually take time. In order for a project to have a solid chance at success, it has to have a solid foundation. So over the last five years, we have been building the most incredible solid foundation and we’re at that stage where we’re about to take it to the next level.

So we went and we had a vision day with Bill Phillips. Bill is one of the most amazing people in the world. He does this thing called future basing and he has worked with some huge organizations like the Red Cross and councils across England. And he has brought teams together, huge teams together that weren’t cohesive before, and quantum leaped them from 15 year plans down to a two year plan where they’ve achieved all of the things that they want to achieve and more.

He’s just incredible. And he said he would do a vision day for us. So at the time, my sister had a cafe in Mullingar, which is in the Midlands of Ireland. She said she would host it. And we had a great group of people come and. Bill brought us through this vision, future basing, incredible day, and we had so many things come from it.

And the one thing that kept popping up was what if we could create spaces where these people and other people could come? For example, the young mother and her two kids, who doesn’t have, like she, maybe she can’t afford to buy a house. Then the couple who are on the streets. Then the older couple who don’t want to go into old folks homes separately, because that’s mostly what they do here in Ireland, they separate them.

And what about the young, up and coming couple who don’t have enough money to buy a €400,000 house, and they also don’t want to live with their parents, because they want to be independent and on their own. So the communities would be for everyone. rather than communities just for people who are homeless.

And the more we talked about this, the more we realized that there is so much stigma around homelessness, which is unfortunate. There’s so much negativity around it. And people can be very judgmental because they’re scared. They don’t understand. They don’t know. So I’m scared of the homeless person because dot.

They don’t even know why they’re scared. This isn’t judgement. They just don’t even know why they’re scared, they just are. And we don’t want to fight homelessness because there’s been people helping with that for so long. But there comes a point where you have to stop helping people to stay homeless.

And you’ve got to help them get a home. That should be the goal not keeping people on the streets, but taking people off the streets and giving them the dignity and the space that they deserve to live the lives that they deserve to live. And that takes time and it takes effort and it takes particular spaces and it’s also going to take a lot of money.

So we’re not a charity, absolutely not a charity because there’s enough charities out there. This is going to take a change in consciousness. On a very different level, it’s going to take a change in conversation. We’re talking about homefulness so that we can change that conversation from the, maybe the depression of homelessness. How it’s been talked about for so long. So now we’re talking about homefulness as something that’s possible for everyone. This beautiful concept of everybody being treated in a dignified way and community and everyone. The world people all over the world in Ireland to start with actually looking after each other in a way that was really connected.

There’s a lot happening. There’s a lot going on. There’s some incredible people involved. And all I can say is 2025 is going to be a massive year for this project.

Emily Bron: Several questions came to my mind when I’m listening to you. First of all, government and this charity or NGO organization, are they helping somehow?

What is their role in this obvious situation for many people already?

Ciara Heneghan: Again, honesty is the best policy, and I’m never gonna not be one, to be honest. Most of the time, the charities are doing the job that they have to do in order to keep the job that they have. So if people weren’t homeless, what would the charity do?

If people weren’t homeless, what would the head of the charity do?

Emily Bron: So what they do actually, but they need to prove that they do something, that they work something, or they just bring coffee, what do they do?

Ciara Heneghan: They do something. They give them sleeping bags, and they give them soup kitchens, and they give them dinners, and they sometimes provide them with tents, and they talk about homelessness, and they sometimes provide homeless shelters.

Like dormitories, which are not great places to be for anybody, and anyone you speak to will tell you that, so I’m not speaking out of school. And they do a lot in my mind to keep the homeless because there is a, this has been going on for so many years. We’re talking.

Emily Bron: And not only in Ireland, that’s why I’m asking you.

No, everywhere. Yeah. Because I see the same in Canada. And I see how Canada, Toronto changed over the 27 years I’m living here. It’s completely different country. And more and more young homeless people are lying sleeping on the streets in or they clean them a way. I am aware about the topic of homelessness in Toronto, especially because my daughter was working in shelters.

And it’s not a great space. It’s not healthy. Absolutely. But more and more people. Joining this unfortunate club, became homeless.

Ciara Heneghan: And, and there’s so much going on, so the prices of everything have gone up. Houses particularly, right? Huge amounts of money on houses. Huge amounts of money on rent.

Airbnbs have gone sky high. So many people are now turning what could be a rental property into an Airbnb. And that means that there’s less rental properties. Governments are clamping down on building. You can’t get a site here locally unless you live five kilometers away from the site, which means you can’t build a house, which means you can be waiting for ages for building or planning permission.

But if you don’t have any money to do that in the first place, then you’re stuck in a situation. There’s a lot of people who are on the poverty line who are literally one bad decision away from becoming homeless. The wages don’t represent or aren’t relative to the cost of living. Salary isn’t relative to the cost of living.

There’s so much going on inside the, why are more people homeless? There’s something like, and the numbers are way bigger than they tell us. Way bigger than they tell us. We’re looking in the region of about 22 to 30, 000. in Ireland, right? Which is, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculous. And when you think about it and then you look around Ireland and that there are so many boarded up properties, there are hotels boarded up, there are properties that have wood on the windows and wood on the doors and there’s nobody living in them and there’s nobody doing anything about it.

And it’s one of those things. Because it’s easier to not do anything about it.

Emily Bron: Okay. And what is the situation in UK? Your closest neighbour?

Ciara Heneghan: Yeah, they are, like, I haven’t looked at the numbers. I’ve only gone as far as up north, but It is relatively bad to Ireland. Okay, but a little bit better because it’s probably started later.

I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah, we’re looking at, we’re looking at homefulness, at this movement, at this project, at the potential of this as being something that could be rolled out all across the world. And just before, like, when people are listening to this, what I want to get across is we’re not trying to come in and be the bosses of something that has to change were coming in and saying that something needs to change and how incredible would it be that across the world, there was less homelessness.

How incredible would that be? That would be fantastic. So that’s the goal. It’s to have people in homes because they deserve it and to give people back their dignity and respect.

Emily Bron: Absolutely agree. It’s one of the reasons actually I started my international lifestyle consulting, but it’s a different story.

And I’m speaking about people actually moving abroad to retire because I believe that we deserve to retire with dignity. And I’m speaking about people who are close to retirement. My. Additional question about Ireland, trying to learn and understand more. In the late 1990s, Ireland experienced rapid economic growth, known as the Celtic Tiger period.

Can you I took it from internet? No, I heard about it several times. It was not new for me Can you please provide a little more history on why it happened in Ireland? which became by some definition one of the success stories of Europe from one side, this postcard picture and from on the other side of picture, like the story, whatever you shared, not story, the reality that you shared with us before.

Ciara Heneghan: In my limited understanding of the Celtic Tiger, because I’ve never looked into why it actually happened. But from my perspective, as I was watching it happen and seeing what happened because of it. And. It was definitely a phenomenon locally that people would have a really big house and two cars and more money than they could shake a stick at.

There was people with loads and loads and loads of money and nobody minds people having loads of money. But when it happens really fast and people who haven’t had loads of money suddenly have loads of money and it seems like there’s no real reason for it. They’re doing the same things and the banks were handing out loans.

A sweet shop would hand out sweets. And in fact, you could have more money and then more money and then more money if you wanted it, and then some more money if you wanted that too. And it was interesting to watch because there’s like a money fever, you give somebody some money and they want some more and they want some more.

And the banks are only happy to to provide. And then it all crashed. And when it all crashed, all of these people had huge loans. Massive loans.

Emily Bron: In 2008 when it crashed?

Ciara Heneghan: Yeah, and they had no way of paying them back because their salaries hadn’t changed. Their salaries were still the same. The bottom fell out of everybody’s world.

Suddenly some houses had no cars, never mind two cars. People couldn’t sell their houses and they couldn’t pay for their houses. And it looked like it was a train wreck, which it was, and honestly, I have no idea. I’m not au fait enough to say why that whole thing happened. There are a couple of people in my life that could tell me one of them would be Declan Dowling.

He’s a fantastic person. Actually, he could be a great one for you to interview. His name is Declan Dowling. No. But how he explained the situation? He was a banker. And so if there was ever a question to ask him, he could answer it. But I’ve never spoken to him about it, so I can’t give him that.

Emily Bron: I have my explanation.

What’s your explanation? So it was artificially created years ago, because I see the same in Canada a little bit later on. And I was asking myself understand it. Why other people don’t understand it? But it’s something else. Because I was newcomer, I came with zero money, I get through different story.

But I started to open my eyes, after some years of living in Canada. And because I was looking, reading what’s going on around, I didn’t know exactly about the Ireland. But how I understand now, is that Ireland was more and less homogeneous society, I would say. Not so big gap between what they say today rich and poor.

So this gap was created and it’s grow over the time and people Were corrupted. I mean with this that you can get cheap loans the same in the united states in uk. It’s the same In all English speaking countries, I am not taking another country, they’ve had the problem, similar problem but here it’s the same kind of signature.

So now, and 2008 created, affected many people, and COVID created, and the development what we see now, and inflation now going up, I don’t know, it’s how I understand, and this gap, it’s coming. Growing deeper and deeper, and it will be till more and more people will wake up and start asking questions, like start critical thinking and asking, and not only asking questions, but actually, doing whatever you do, or maybe some other, because not everyone is do, doer, I understand it, but since I see the same scenarios, I don’t believe in coincidence again. Going back to our conversation, I learn from the Homefulness Island Club newsletter that I am reading now I learned that homefulness project is about creating villages. That in power, uplift and restore dignity to those who have been marginalized or priced out of secure home.

How you can achieve it?

Ciara Heneghan: So we have a great guy who’s part of the project. His name is Joe Clancy. And he’s amazing. I was introduced to him. He’s a building contractor. And he does Trojan work, huge amounts of work for the Haitians. He sends trucks over, he goes over himself he’s a really beautiful soul.

And so through all of our meetings we started to talk about what could be possible if these villages were created, if these spaces were created. And Joe is a researcher, he’s incredible. He’ll go and he’ll research all of the latest builds, all of the things that are possible. From pods To modular homes, to log cabins, to tiny homes, to container villages, and he would find things from different places that could potentially suit us and will cost them and see what they would come up with.

And it’s incredible when you look at how inexpensively you can make something, a home, in comparison to what people are being charged normally. And something came up here a while ago, and it was just an article I read maybe two or three weeks ago. And it was, and I’m going to get this wrong, I’d have to find the article, but I’ll just basically say what it was.

There is a guy locally who builds modular homes, he builds steel frame modular homes for 100 grand, €100,000 euros. The same house that’s being built for the, now who did he say it was for? I’m nearly sure it was for new people that were coming into the country. They were pricing at 435,000, four times the price.

For newcomers? Or refugees? I think it could have been, now I see, I don’t want to get this wrong, but I think they said it was for asylum seekers. That’s not the problem. The problem is the difference in price. Why are they charging 435,000 for a house that this guy can do for 100,000? Same house.

Emily Bron: Because they want to enslave people, because they want to make easy money and enslave people working to bring up mortgage.

Ciara Heneghan: Of course, but it’s disgusting. It’s disgusting. It’s not okay. And until people start seeing it and calling it out, nobody sees it. Nobody understands it. Nobody is aware, like you said a minute ago, the critical thinking element sometimes isn’t there. But it needs to be because what you’ve got to witness is that there is.

There are shenanigans going on that should not be going on. There are things happening that should not be happening and they’re happening in front of our faces. It’s not hidden. They’re doing it in front of our faces and for the most part people are completely unaware. So when we sat down to talk about these spaces that we would like to create and we looked at what would a tiny home cost a container, right?

A container, a 20 foot or 40 foot container could cost you 4,000 euros. 4000 euros for a container that can be turned into a gorgeous home on the inside. Beautiful. Tiny homes that could be built and turned into beautiful spaces. Modular homes. They’re going to be a bit more expensive, but that can work.

Log cabins. But that can work. There are so many options and opportunities to be able to create these spaces. But here’s where sometimes you come up against an issue. And in the very beginning, I said this to the whole group. I said, what we don’t want is we don’t want to have to rely on anyone that’s going to say no.

Okay. And there’s going to be lots of people that will say no. Because if you say, if I said, I want to, there’s a site across the road from me, right? I’m looking at it now. Say it’s 400 acres, 100 acres, 50 acres, whatever. And I say, I’m going to buy that land and I’m going to put a village for 500 people and some of those people will have been coming off the streets.

The first thing that will happen will people will object and say they don’t want to be living beside this type of a space. Only because the word homeless was used. Because there’s a stigma so big. The next thing that’ll happen is the councils will say no. The county councils. Because they will have those sites earmarked for something different.

That something different might not happen for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 ever years. So I just sit looking at a site that’s perfect. But I can’t have it. So the way to get around that, and it’s an unfortunate truth, but it is the truth, is money. If you have money, and lots of money, I don’t mean I have 500,000 in my bank.

That’s not lots of money in this realm. If you have a hundred million, 200 million, a billion, if you are that type of a person and you have a vision and you’re wanting to do something like this, you can bypass all of that. And you can do good in the world, you can make a difference, you can make change, if you’re altruistic, if you have the desire to make change and the desire to make things different, you can do that.

Emily Bron: So the question, if you have these people now in your circle, so please tell a little bit more about the stage of this project. Do you already have some land parcel for such village? What, what is going on now on the ground?

Ciara Heneghan: No, so we’re at the next phase. So we’re at the stage now where we are ready to start talking to people who have the money to see the vision that we have.

We are ready to start meeting with people. We’re looking for ambassadors who are going to come in and maybe be the face of the project. People who see ireland and its need to change and will come on board. And once we get the model set for Ireland, then it can be rolled out anywhere else.

Anybody else wants it. So if we get the right people to come on board who see our vision and ambassador it could be. I don’t know, have you ever heard of the band called Aslan? Oh, it was an amazing band and the lead singer, he’s, he died and he was just one of the nicest people and I saw him at a seminar and I spoke to him afterwards and I asked him would he be part of it and he said he would.

but he obviously passed away and it was so unfortunate because he would have been the most incredible face to have. He was a Dub from Dublin. He was really vocal. He didn’t care what he said. He was, he’d open his mouth and he would speak the truth and it was powerful. Somebody like that to come on board would be the next step to bringing the people who have the money.

This, Lots and lots of money to make something like this happen. And it’s a funny system because all you need is one person or two people to come along with that kind of money to create one of these spaces. And then the government will see how viable it is and they possibly would help. So you need case study, yeah.

Yeah, like a case study. This is our practice project. And there have been a couple of spaces in Ireland that have attempted to do something like this. They have, not in terms of um, homefulness or homelessness. And they haven’t fully taken off the ground. Because there’s always something to stop them.

And if you don’t have the right group of people with the vision in mind, who don’t say no ever, then you’ll always be held back by something. So we’re at the stage now where we’re looking for our ambassadors, a couple of ambassadors to come on board. We have the foundation solid, we have our social media solid, we have our website, we have two songs written, we have incredible people coming into the conversation, we’re looking at the ways in which we can bring this whole project together.

Once we have the ambassadors, then the next phase will follow. So 2025 is. It’s a two phase part of this project and it should be good.

Emily Bron: I see. One of the reasons I launched this podcast, EcoLiving, free private cities and intentional communities. I know it’s a long name. I’m trying to shorten it sometimes because I was thinking about what’s going on in the world and I started to follow our projects, actually grassroots projects.

When people. Starting to build their own communities trying to connect like minded people or they would say for like minded people in Mexico, in the United States, in Latin America. And I’m following these projects. I’m know some developers for several years. And my idea was to learn more about what’s going on in Europe.

It’s another continent I have interest in and your project it’s quite different, but it’s like it’s wonderful for me. For my understanding that people understand that there is a time to start doing something. And even it’s different and I have several different episodes and it will be shared with people who are I hope we’ll find it and listen to spread the word.

To provide information and maybe some models or community models that can be taken out, by other people living in other countries or even to help you in Ireland with building this or other communities because I understand you have idea to spread the project again, format worldwide.

And I can tell you that, modular home, tiny homes, or sustainable living, it’s all what my projects are speaking about. Because it’s common sense, and because people understood that, prices home buildings and what’s going on. It’s different from what it is on the market.

And some people are looking, actually, it’s creating of the parallel, I would say movement for freedom loving people. Many of them libertarians, who are built, who want to get out of the government, because government does not help them, or vice versa, and build their own community. I am really interested and would like to support such a project, like all over, and you are representing the first project of this kind in Ireland.

Actually, it’s a unique project because in other projects they speaking about, Bitcoiners, about libertarians, about refugees, about different people who need home. You are speaking specifically about homelessness in your own country, which is very important. It’s how it should be.

And again, going back to the project, and I believe there are more and more homeless people and is amount will grow as we speak. How would you select a residence for the first village? And because I believe many people are now without home and you mentioned, not you mentioned, I read that you’ll be up to 500 villages and I don’t know why it’s so small, probably there’s a reason?

Ciara Heneghan: Something that I learned in 2020, so I was meeting with a group of people who were all quite similar to me, they were all critical thinkers, they were all, why is this happening? What’s going on? Why has this all happened in this moment? There was 44 of us and what I noticed was the more there were, the less leadership there was because a lot of people had a lot of opinions and wanted to take the group in different ways.

And it was a fascinating, you could almost call it an experiment, to look at what’s needed in a society. And one of my friends at the time, she said, I think we do need a dictatorship. A good dictatorship, but a dictatorship. And I said to her what do you mean by that? How do you mean we need a dictatorship?

And she said sometimes, somebody, Needs to be the one to crack the whip. Not in a mean way, not in a bad way, but somebody needs to make decision, just to make decision, otherwise you’re stagnated. You’re in the same place. Absolutely. Really simple. And it’s not something I disagree with. I think absolutely.

Somebody needs to lead things and maybe there’s a group of people that are leading things and that doesn’t necessarily have to be us. We’re leading the project. But we’re, we don’t need to be the leaders inside of the village. That’s not, we’re not looking for power or control or any of those kind of things.

But when you get to a certain number, It’s too many. And what came to mind is if we had 500 in a village, that’s a lovely, manageable number for everybody to care about each other. For everybody to actually connect in community. For people to meet in the hall, in the community hall. For people to gather together maybe in a square.

For people to Check on each other. Hi, how are you doing? Are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you? Is there anything I can do for you? Bringing it back to old school communities, old school neighborhoods, old school tribes, where everybody actually cared about each other and everybody needed to make sure that everyone was okay in order for the society to actually grow and succeed.

And the more I thought about it, the more I thought isn’t that interesting? Imagine if homefulness was actually the way that society could grow intentionally and on purpose, right? Because homelessness separates, Oh my God, they’re homeless. They over there, they’re homeless. So there’s an us and a them.

Homefulness brings everybody together in a beautiful space. And that only makes a community stronger. So all of these communities would be linked, but they would be separate only because they would be in separate places. But there would be this beautiful link between all of these villages that in every one of these villages, everybody cared about each other.

You care about your neighbor, you care about the old couple who need to go for physical therapy together, or maybe they need a hand with their gardening. You care about the mom and her two kids who might need a babysitter because she wants to go out for a drink with her girlfriends. You care about the people who are in your space.

Because it’s nice to care about people and that’s what keeps people cohesive and together and connected. So the number was arbitrary, it just came to my mind and I thought maybe we should have this as a small number, as 500 in each village. So that everybody would care and connect.

That’s where that came from.

Emily Bron: So how you would select people? Because again, many of them homelessness. Now, in the future they have depression, they have different, probably, diseases. Or state of mind after living on the street, no doubt. And to start this new way of living and thinking.

When even people who are living more prosperous life, I would say sometimes don’t understand each other. How to create cohesive community? It’s by the way, the questions that I’m asking each of my, in each of my interviews for each leader of the community.

Ciara Heneghan: So I think that’s twofold. The first part I’ll answer is the second part of your question is how to create that cohesive community.

And that’s why every single one of the villages needs to have a community hall and a medical center. And the medical center needs to be normal medical and holistic medical holistic wellness. And. I love, and I, this is me speaking, so I’m only speaking for myself, but I’ve seen it work in so many spaces.

Community groups are fantastic. And when you have people who are dealing with lots of the same things, so there’s a lot of people that are feeling depression, there are a lot of people feeling anxious. There are a lot of people with different types of illnesses or diseases. There’s groups of people that have these same things.

If you have a community center, a community hall, coaches, physiotherapists, holistic wellness specialists, therapists, who are willing to do group work with the people inside in the village, again, you’re bringing it back to that collective community. Somebody cares enough. To bring a group of people together in a group, and to sit with them, and hear them, and listen to them.

Most of the time, that’s all any of us want. We want to be heard, we want to be listened to, and we want to be helped. Sometimes we won’t ask for the help, because we feel too proud, or we feel like we might be a burden. But that’s somewhere in our system. I really wish I could ask for help right now, and I don’t know who to ask.

Inside the villages, inside the communities, you’ll have somebody to ask, and everybody will care enough to ask you how are you getting on today? Are you okay? What do you need? Great. That’s on over there, that’s on over there, there’s your group over there. So bringing people together, connecting them, and letting them know that it’s okay to feel the way they feel and there’s a way out of it.

Emily Bron: . There is another point, sorry to interrupt you, professional people need to get salaries for their work. A hundred percent, absolutely. How is it going to all work? Even if they will be inside the small village and involved, they need to be paid otherwise.

Ciara Heneghan: Yeah, absolutely. And I haven’t, that’s not for me to work out.

I don’t know how that’s going to work yet because that’s not my skill set. That’s not my wheelhouse, but they, there will definitely need to be salaries and wages and all that kind of stuff happening inside these spaces. And at the same time, I have a friend who created a platform, an app, and it’s called barter chain.

And. It’s incredible. This girl went to Italy to live in Italy and she ended up not paying for rent, not paying for food, not paying for anything. She had a cleaner, she had a yoga teacher, and all because she gave English lessons for free in exchange for all of the other things. And I just thought to myself, if you can live for free in Italy and get yourself a cleaner and yoga classes for free.

There is a huge lot to be said for barter, but not everybody feels like I feel, so there will be people who want to be paid and that’s completely fine, absolutely and totally fine. That would be something for down the line, once the villages are all in operation and we figure out the monetary side of things, the financial side of things.

Which is something that isn’t in my wheelhouse whatsoever.

Emily Bron: By the way I support the barter economy now. I understand what you’re speaking about. It’s what happened, when Soviet Union was collapsed and other countries where the money didn’t have kind of value or you couldn’t find anything.

So you exchange your skills. It’s how actually tribes started to develop thousands of years ago. And it’s normal. If you can offer something,

Ciara Heneghan: but there’s another one of the guys in Lee’s community called Sean Brosnan and he’s from New Zealand and I was having a conversation with him one day we meet every week and we were talking about a plumber coming and doing something in the house and what he said was incredible.

He said, Oh no, we don’t do that when we’re at home in New Zealand. He said, so say for example, I need to get my kitchen done. All my mates. We’ll come around and help me do my kitchen and it’ll get done. And then when they need to do their bathroom, I’ll be around at their house and I’ll do their bathroom.

Money doesn’t exchange hands. We just all pitch in and help each other. And I just thought, oh my God. That’s the kind of situation I’m talking about where Ev if I’m a plumber and you’re a an electrician, why would I charge you? And then you charge me when we can just help each other. We’re going to be paying each other the same anyway.

And I get that people’s focus is on money. I get it, but there are a lot of ways to do things. And there are some people who will love the barter system and some people who love money, neither are wrong.

Emily Bron: Yeah. If you can engage probably in different systems and I wish you all the best. And I will follow development of the projects.

Now I understand that it will take years, but we have a lot of years ahead.

Ciara Heneghan: Yeah, and just on that, can I just say one thing, to everyone who’s listening to anybody who’s listening? What I would love to say is this. Is what you said is so true. This takes time. This will take years. This might take two years.

It might take two years to build the first village. It might take X amount to do the next. Time is finite. We’re not going to live forever and ever in a thousand years. We’re, we just, that’s just not how we’re made. So to be able to bring people on board this project, Who are the next generation is a vital, my son is 17 and he’s been part of this since it started in 2019 and he asks, can he come to the meetings?

He said the next in person meeting, he wants to be there because he’s really invested in it. And because he said that, I know that whenever my time to not do this anymore is. I can hand over to Josh and I can say, okay, now this is your legacy now. I’ve done my bit. This is now your legacy. You can go and do it and he will go and carry on that legacy, which is beautiful because it’s something that could last for such a very long time and then become part of the normal blueprint of life.

I think that’s exceptional. So bringing the younger people in to this project is so key. And that’s something that we really do want to have happen.

Emily Bron: It’s actually, it was the next question for me to ask, but I will still ask it because I understood that building an intentional community, it’s why.

Your community coming under my intentional communities title is deeply rooted in collective effort and shared values. How do you engage the community and encourage people to become part of your homefulness movement other than your son?

Ciara Heneghan: We bring people on board on our calls. So we have a call. We were having them every week.

We’re having them every month now and they’re much more intentional. They’re very specific calls because we’re doing a lot within the month. And then we meet again, and so we say to each other, okay, who is someone that we would like to bring on the call this time that has that could have an input that has the same vision as us the same ideas, but might see something in a different way that could move us forward.

And so each month, somebody might bring on a person on the call or we’re having conversations outside of the call. We’re speaking to people. We are opening conversations and suddenly people are sharing their stories with us. There’s two people who I’m having conversations currently with who were homeless and have changed their whole lives around and who want to be part of this.

Then we bring people on board who could have a part in a different way. So we need people in the development part. We need land people. We need building people. We need photographers. We need social media people. We need PR people. We need vision people. And so when we spot those people in our lives, And we can see what types of people that they are and then we let them know about homefulness and they say, Oh, I’d like to be part of that.

And then they come on a call and it’s growing and growing in the right direction with the right people, but it’s all about opening the conversation and something really cool is going to happen in 2025. Because so how do I describe this? We’re the people that are doing the project, right?

Trying to make it happen, but we’re not the people on the streets. It’s so important that we have conversations with these people. And I thought about it last month or the month before, and We need to write a book, and we need to have the people who are on the streets be the ones that write the book.

So that’s 2025, and I’m very excited.

Emily Bron: You describe yourself as a visionary, it’s obvious, an all around mischief maker. Can you share how these traits manifest in your projects and day to day life? And maybe instance where a bit of mischief led to the breakthrough?

Ciara Heneghan: Oh, there’s one. Yeah. So every meeting we have, I’m naturally I love fun.

I love mischief. I love jokes, pranks. I love anything to do with fun. I think it’s so important to have that be a cornerstone of everything that you do. And in a space like this, it can be very serious. There’s 22, 000 people who are on the streets and homeless. That’s terrible. Now what are we going to do about it?

It’s very heavy. It’s very serious. And you have to find humor and you have to find fun because if you don’t you will be sucked down into the same space that everybody else is sucked down into and we can’t afford to do that. We have to stay elevated. We have to keep our spirits high and our attitudes high and our vibe high.

Big so that we can carry the vision through and mischief and fun is often the thing that actually keeps something elevated. So we had a meeting a few months ago in Dublin, and the meeting went from the sublime to the ridiculous. We decided we were going to create our own country. We were going to create our own money.

Emily Bron: We were gonna, but. But it’s not, it’s what happened in the world now, by the way. A hundred percent, right? Like it’s not completely ridiculous. Like I have several episodes speaking about people who created their own country. Yeah,

Ciara Heneghan: but that’s what I said. So the guys are sitting there and they’re going, maybe we shouldn’t be going so wild.

And I said, hang on a minute. Here’s the thing. What’s happening now is wild. It is ridiculous for 22 to 30, 000 people to be homeless is ridiculous. It’s crazy. It’s insane. So why can’t we match the ridiculousness on the other side? Why can’t we match the insanity on the other side? What is wrong with opening our minds to the potential and genius of let’s just create our own country.

Let’s create everything from scratch in the most incredible way and see what happens. Somebody else can do it. Why can’t we do it? Do you know what I mean? And I say this to my sister all the time. She did her masters in family support recently and I was going through stuff with her and she’s incredible and she’s so clever and she was saying, no, I have to do it this way.

I have, this is the way the college said that I have to do it. So I have to do it this way. And I looked at her and I went, okay, the first person to create psychology and she said, yeah. And I said, did they follow someone else’s rules? And she sat back and she looked at me and she goes, No, and I said, exactly.

So at what point are you going to stop following everybody else’s rules and instead create something for yourself? That’s where the mischief comes in. It’s that moment where you go,

Emily Bron: No, it’s not mischief. For me, it’s critical thinking. It’s opening your mind to the possibilities and opening your eyes to what’s going on around.

Ciara Heneghan: And then taking it and run with it. So yeah, that’s where the mischief comes in.

Emily Bron: So now I’m even more curious like you see the opportunity to create enclave for me. Your company enclave inside Ireland with a kind of own rules, like autonomy, I would say. Is it possible?

Ciara Heneghan: Oh, it’s just, anything is possible.

I like you said, when you read out the stuff about me, anything is possible. You just have to be willing to trust that it’s possible. And when I said that when you are shown something, it’s for you to do something about, I mean that from every possible scenario. So whether you believe in God, or you believe in a higher power, or you believe in nothing at all, you trust in yourself, it doesn’t matter.

When you have a feeling, and you have a desire, and you have a dream, and you have an idea to do something, then there’s nothing that can stop you doing that thing except yourself. You’re the only limit that is in your way. Everything else is excuses. Everything else is excuses. Excuse me, bullshit. You have to be able to take what you’re seeing and run with it.

So anything is possible. We could create whatever we want in any way we want because we’re all free people at the end of the day.

Emily Bron: Finally, what advice would you give to our listeners who are, I believe, inspired to start or join an intentional community? or eco living project. Where should they start?

Ciara Heneghan: Don’t ask yourself any questions of why. If you have a desire to go and do something, if you have a desire to start something or become part of something that’s already been started, Don’t ask yourself why, because the desire comes from a specific place. Either you’ve been given it inspirationally by the higher power that you believe in, or your own core and your own source is what bubbled it up inside you.

It’s there for a reason. We don’t get given things for no reason, ever. They are there for a reason. Every dream, every idea is given to us for a reason. So the minute you have that feeling, start to explore it. Find people who are in that space, ask them what it’s like, or don’t even do that and just go and join it.

Be open and discerning. When you jump into a community, when you jump into a space, and you haven’t done your work to find out what that space is like beforehand, and then you’re surprised because it might not be something that you had wanted to get involved in, like a cult, because that’s what happens in cults.

We jump into them, and we go hell for leather and focused, and then you realize it’s not what you wanted and backpedal backpedal, backpedal. That was your choice. You’ve got to be discerning before you jump into something. So find out if it’s the space that you want to be part of. There’s lots of spaces.

There’s lots of people doing incredible things and watch the people who are doing the incredible things. Are they the kind of people that you want to be around? Do they have the level of vision that you want to have? Are they willing to talk about it openly? Are they, do they talk about limits? Do they talk negatively?

If people are talking about limits and talking negatively and saying that’s been tried before and it won’t work. They’re not the people that you want to be involved with because at some point they will limit themselves. They will stop themselves from doing the thing that they say they want to do.

So I would say just go for it. If you want to be part of it, then allow your inspiration to bubble up and just go for it.

Emily Bron: Thank you very much, Ciara. It was amazing conversation. And I believe it’s just beginning. It’s our first conversation because I would like to follow up when your community will be on the next stage and inform our followers what’s going on.

Because I believe in grassroots movement and I really wish you the very best success in your personal and especially in this project. And today I was speaking with Ciara Heneghan. That wraps up another episode of the Age of Reinvention. A heartfelt thank you to our wonderful guest, Ciara Heneghan, whose stories of adventure, passion for social change, and boundless energy have truly inspired us all.

Ciara reminds us that there is no limit of boxes in life. only opportunities for growth, love, and making a little mischief along the way. For those listening, we hope you are living with the motivation to see challenges as opportunities waiting to be taken and that life is about living to the fullest.

Don’t forget, if you see it, Perhaps it’s meant for you to do something about it. Thank you for tuning in, and remember to keep reinventing yourself. Until next time, keep exploring, dreaming, and living without boundaries.

Ciara Heneghan

Change makers and story tellers come to me when they want to create ripples in the world.✍️ Best Selling Author, Poet, book Developer, Founder & Editor – ALL IN Magazine

Ciara Heneghan is a seasoned author, mentor, and storytelling expert with seven published books, including bestsellers and poetry journal features. Writing since the age of nine, Ciara helps aspiring authors turn their stories into powerful, authentic narratives. She simplifies the writing process, guiding clients from uncertainty to clarity, as seen in her successful projects like The Mother Ship series and Hard Work or Success. Whether you’re just starting or feeling stuck, Ciara helps you find your voice and share your story with the world.

In a constantly evolving world, the age of reinvention is upon us. It is a time for embracing eco-living, exploring free cities, and building intentional communities. In a recent episode of our podcast, we delved into an inspiring conversation with Ciara Heneghan, an extraordinary individual whose journey embodies living life without restrictions and advocating for change. Her story is a testament to personal growth and a call to action for all of us to reconsider our roles within the spaces we inhabit.

Breaking Boundaries: The Journey of Ciara Heneghan

Born and raised in the west of Ireland, Ciara Heneghan’s life is a tapestry of adventure, literary passion, and a drive for societal change. As a mom, author, editor, and chairwoman of the Homefulness Ireland Club, Ciara wears many hats, championing the cause that life is for living without limits. Her philosophy is simple: if you see something, it may be your role to address it. This vision is at the heart of her work, particularly in creating inclusive and sustainable communities for people without homes.

The Power of Truth and Story

For Ciara, truth is a cornerstone of her life and work. She shares anecdotes about her upbringing and how truth-telling has shaped her perspective. These insights have informed her role as a “story weaver,” helping others share genuine narratives free from embellishment. Ciara believes the actual impact is born from honesty and transparency—a belief that resonates deeply today.

Homefulness: A Vision for Inclusive Living

One of Ciara’s groundbreaking ventures is the Homefulness Project, an innovative approach to addressing homelessness and encouraging community building in Ireland. The concept revolves around self-sufficient, eco-friendly villages capable of housing diverse groups, from young families to older people. These communities aim to restore dignity and provide new opportunities for those marginalized by modern societal structures.

Overcoming Challenges and Embracing Potential

The journey to bringing Homefulness to fruition is not without its challenges. With rising house prices and economic disparities, the vision requires strategic collaboration and groundbreaking partnerships. Ciara and her team actively seek ambassadors and investors who believe in sustainable change and are willing to support this transformative vision.

A Call for Cooperation and Change

Ciara’s approach to creating cohesive communities involves leveraging financial models and barter systems to ensure sustainability. By fostering environments where resources and skills can be exchanged, communities gain the potential for organic growth and mutual support. This is a reminder that while money plays a role, cooperation and shared values are equally crucial.

Looking Forward: The Next Steps

As Ciara and her team continue to build the foundation for Homefulness, the community remains hopeful and determined. The project serves as a model that can be replicated globally, highlighting the importance of creating spaces where everyone is valued and can thrive. The goal is to change societal consciousness regarding homelessness and community living.

Final Thoughts: The Courage to Forge New Paths

Ciara Heneghan’s journey is one of vision and courage—a beacon of hope for intentional living across the globe. By embracing the unknown and fostering a spirit of innovation, we, too, can contribute to creating spaces that reflect our shared humanity, promoting growth, inclusivity, and love. The age of reinvention is not just a concept but an invitation to reimagine our lives and communities for the betterment of all.