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Rachel Gotto: “Will I Ever Be Able to Sail Again?”

6th January 2022
Rachel Gotto has spent her life on, in and around the sea
Rachel Gotto has spent her life on, in and around the sea

“Will I ever be able to sail again?”

These were the first words Rachel Gotto remembers asking a close friend after coming round from major brain surgery.

Gotto has spent her life on, in and around the sea, as one of the Bendon family from the magical west Cork harbour of Glandore.

For Gotto, the Atlantic has been a constant solace, amid considerable pain and suffering. Rachel lost her brother Dominic to cancer, and her husband Nic to a diving accident when she was six months pregnant with her daughter Nicola.

She was diagnosed with a large benign inoperable brain tumour, and after an exhaustive search she found a surgeon who was willing to "give it a go". However, she was left with paralysis on the left-hand side of her body which she had to learn to overcome. She says that her greatest challenge after all that was shaking a dependency on prescription drugs.

Gotto, who is now practising as a hypnotherapist in Galway, has recorded her path to recovery in her recently published book, Flying on the Inside, which she spoke to Wavelengths about when we met overlooking Rusheen Bay.

Flying on the Inside: A Memoir of Trauma and Recovery by Rachel Gotto is published by Little a books and is available on Amazon and on Audible.Flying on the Inside: A Memoir of Trauma and Recovery by Rachel Gotto is published by Little a books and is available on Amazon and on Audible.

Published in Wavelength Podcast
Lorna Siggins

About The Author

Lorna Siggins

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Lorna Siggins is a print and radio reporter, and a former Irish Times western correspondent. She is the author of Search and Rescue: True stories of Irish Air-Sea Rescues and the Loss of R116 (2022); Everest Callling (1994) on the first Irish Everest expedition; Mayday! Mayday! (2004); and Once Upon a Time in the West: the Corrib gas controversy (2010). She is also co-producer with Sarah Blake of the Doc on One "Miracle in Galway Bay" which recently won a Celtic Media Award

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Afloat's Wavelengths Podcast with Lorna Siggins

Weekly dispatches from the Irish coast with journalist Lorna Siggins, talking to people in the maritime sphere. Topics range from marine science and research to renewable energy, fishing, aquaculture, archaeology, history, music and more...