Jacqui Hurley on coping with loss: Would we be swallowed by grief, or would we learn to live again?

Sports broadcaster Jacqui Hurley is determined to turn personal tragedy into a force of change as an ambassador for CRY Ireland. We speak to her ahead of International Women's Day about blazing a trail for other females 

Jacqui Hurley believes that her whole perspective on life shifted when she lost her brother. 
Picture: Moya Nolan

RTÉ sports broadcaster Jacqui Hurley knows what it’s like to be hit by sudden and profound loss. In 2011, her brother Seán was killed in a car accident when he was 24 and in 1997 her cousin Nicole died of sudden cardiac arrest at 19.

“Even now, years on, I’m still shocked by what happened,” says Hurley. “But you learn to live with it. It actually makes you want to live all the more, so that you get to do all the things they never got to do.”