Brigid O’Dea: As one door closes, an ocean opens

You might call it an existential crisis, but at the start of 2026 I began listening to a Jungian podcast. I was teetering on the verge of burnout. My system was displaying warning signals that anyone who has lived with chronic illness would know not to ignore.

I had added a new relationship to my life. Love! Yes! A wonderful thing. But this new relationship had cast my meticulously curated time management into disarray. It wasn’t that I could no longer juggle the many balls required for someone in their mid-30s to thrive; I hadn’t a clue where the balls had gone, nor had I the energy to go looking.

Around this time, the Jungian analysts introduced me to the concept of ‘solve et coagula’, an alchemical process that roughly translates as “dissolving and solidifying”. In their beautifully earnest American manner, the hosts of This Jungian Life framed these processes as both essential and cyclical in human life. We build structures that make us safe, allow us to survive and thrive, solidify these structures, until the time comes when we must dissolve or dismantle these structures to make way for change.

Basically, something had got to give. And it wasn’t going to be my relationship.

I sent an email to Martin Doyle, the books editor of The Irish Times, for whom I’d been writing book reviews for the past six years, and to Damian Cullen, the editor of the health supplement for whom I had been writing a monthly column.

I need time off, I said.

They both replied with care. And that was it. Years of building a career, in the space of two emails, gone. And I was still sitting in my kitchen, unchanged.

Disconcerting how easy it all was.

Two days after the dissolving of my journalistic career, an email arrived from Mayo Books. Did I want to talk about the picture book that I had submitted to the publishers before Christmas?

No sooner had the ‘solve’ begun than the ‘coagula’ came knocking.

I had written the text of what would become my debut publication, What Does the Ocean Taste Like?, a few years previously. I had obsessed over the initial drafts in the moment when creative drive is always most pronounced – I had a deadline for a different project looming. The text had received positive feedback from a number of UK and Irish publishers. The possibility of publication was raised but, as is often the case in the arts, lines ran dry. But here was Mayo Books, with a commitment to publish the book before Christmas.

God laughs when we make plans. Especially when those plans are for rest.

What Does The Ocean Taste Like? is inspired by the concept of Umwelt, a term I was introduced to by reading Ed Yong’s An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Umwelt refers to an organism’s unique sensory world. It captures how individual species perceive the world differently based on their sensory capabilities and needs. For example, baleen whales can hear infrasonic sound, while a bullfrog can see infrared light. For humans these experiences exist outside our perceptive experience. However, that does not mean that they do not exist.

Those who have followed my column in The Irish Times health supplement (and anyone who has ever met me) may not be surprised to learn of my immediate affinity with this concept. I once spent an entire first date reeling off animal facts from my book to the extent that my date suggested I try mindfulness.

I mentioned to a friend that the concept had inspired the children’s book. She gave me a knowing look that said, “Ah yes, I remember you were obsessed with that for quite a while.” And yes, of course, if you search The Irish Times archive, you will find a column written by me on the topic.

[ Brigid O’Dea: Have you ever wondered how a blind cavefish experiences the ocean?Opens in new window ]

As someone who has lived – and really struggled – with migraine from a young age and with refractory chronic migraine since adolescence, I have suffered the consequences of what some might politely call “a highly refined sensory system”. In common parlance, my sensory system is whack.

Smells, sounds, lights, tastes, textures, temperature. My system is highly reactive to them all.

In school, I couldn’t sit near the toilets or the teacher’s coffee. I struggled with the stuffiness of a Portakabin classroom, and the smells that clung to it. I gagged on my lunch of raisins and wet ham sandwiches.

As an adult, it’s no big lights, sleeping with both a hot water bottle and a fan. My poor boyfriend has also resigned himself to premature ageing as I can’t stand the smell of his moisturiser.

The widely held ignorance of the sensory processing challenges of migraineurs leads to many people such as me being branded as “fussy” and “particular”. It’s an experience common to many members of the neurodivergent community, whose perceptive experience of the world differs from the norm. I empathise with those who don’t get it. It is really hard to relate to an experience that you yourself cannot perceive. You try, for example, finding your way home with echolocation.

[ Migraines: What causes them and how to find reliefOpens in new window ]

Now, if this all sounds a bit high-falutin for a children’s picture book, What Does The Ocean Taste Like? ultimately reads as a poem about sea creatures. In the picture-book, exceptionally illustrated by Lucy Sherston, a child is in conversation with the sea:

When I was three, I lived in a house by the sea. You could see the shimmering shoreline from my bedroom window and hear the tide wrinkle as the moon pulled her in and out ...

and in and out ...

and in and out

Every night, the sea entered my sleep. And every night, it asked me the same question. ‘Imagine,’ the sea said to me.

‘Imagine ...’

This conversation takes us on a journey through the marine world and through each of the five main senses. We meet a sea urchin who lives so deep in the seabed that it has no eyes, a catfish whose taste buds line their gills, and a sea cow with nostrils on the top of its head.

Imagine, the sea tells the young character, how this must feel. And imagine, the character says in reply to the sea, how it must feel for me.

[ Accepting uncertainty is a key component in living with chronic illnessOpens in new window ]

Sherston came into my life in slightly unconventional circumstances. The Brighton-based illustrator and tattoo artist had inked matching tattoos for my brother and me, based on a shared childhood memory. A bond was quickly formed. It helped too that Sherston, like me, is a thalassophile.

This shared love of the sea became a starting point for our collaboration. When I asked Sherston about her experience, she too referenced our fateful meeting in her home tattoo parlour and said, “It is so funny to think that here we are two years later with a book we’ve worked on together coming out. What a lovely and magical thing.

“When I was first sent the written book I felt really emotional. I am completely in love with the sea and when I read about the concept of ‘umwelt’ it really connected with me, this idea of exploring the ocean’s depths by empathising with the experiences of different animals.

“We had a pretty short turnaround for the illustrations and I was given so much creative control and trust, for which I’m so grateful. My work is very process driven, using tactile and analogue methods; painting, colouring pencils and collage, which I think lends itself to the textural underwater world depicted within the book. It was an absolute joy to work on from start to finish and I’m so delighted to be a part of telling Brigid’s beautiful story.”

The tactile nature of Sherston’s work proved ideal to complement the sensory-rich prose. Her expert use of scale captures the vastness, immensity and absolute quiet of the ocean. Sherston also understands the importance of creating a book that is thoroughly enjoyable to read; one conducive to reader/child interaction, with obvious cues to raise and lower the voice, and new details to spot on each reading.

And here we are now, with a picturebook available to buy in real-life bookshops. A launch in Books Upstairs. Copies arriving by post to friends’ and families’ houses. Nieces and nephews curiously proud that their auntie has written a book. Only six months since my first phone call with Sherston (a third the length of the gestation period for an orca’s pregnancy) and the book has been released into the world.

I’m pretty damn proud.

What Does The Ocean Taste Like? is published by Mayo Books and launched in Books Upstairs, Dublin this Friday, November 6th, at 6pm.