Gráinne Gallanagh: I’ve always struggled with confidence

Gráinne Gallanagh: "When I was dancing, when I was doing Miss Universe Ireland, I was a bag of nerves inside."

I am the youngest of four girls. There was a lot of fights, drama and stealing each other’s clothes and makeup growing up but we get on very well and we are very close. My mum was a teacher and my daddy is a farmer. I have four nephews and two nieces who I am absolutely obsessed with. I haven’t met one because she was born in Australia during the pandemic. I can’t wait to be able to meet her. We’re a very close knit family. We were spoiled rotten by mammy and daddy and even though we’re all grown up now, we’re still spoiled.

I have two very different types of work in my life and I love both. I am a nurse, which is not as glamorous as the influencing side of things, but is very rewarding. When my day is done, I know that I’ve done something to help someone else. The influencer work is just so much fun. Influencing wasn’t really a thing when I was growing up, but I always wanted to be a model. I was always nervous telling people that. I think Irish people are very self deprecating so it was a bit like — do you really believe that? But I’ve got to do so many amazing modeling jobs which I’m really proud of as well.

The greatest challenge I’ve faced so far in my life has been getting my nursing degree. I found my last year in placement so tough. It was quite a lot of responsibility and I used to faint a lot on the ward, I used to be sick all the time. I think it was just nerves. I put myself under a lot of pressure and I didn’t think I was going to finish it. When I did, there was a huge sense of relief and achievement because it was just really, really hard. There isn’t a lot of emphasis on how difficult student nurses have it. That was a really, really tough year for me.

Gráinne Gallanagh and Pro Dancer Kai Widdrington pictured during the final of Dancing with the Stars. 

Looking back, Dancing with the Stars is probably my proudest achievement solely because I am an atrocious dancer. It’s actually worrying; if you saw me dancing on a normal night out you’d think ‘is that the same person who did that show?’. I actually still watch back the videos of me dancing and I am like, ‘how did I ever do that?’. I haven’t retained any of the skills at all, but the fact that I did it and I got to the final — it’s a great achievement considering the starting point was so low.

I think my greatest quality is that I am very empathetic. Even when I’m arguing with someone I always try and see the other person’s perspective. At work I’m always very considerate of what my patient is going through and how they’re feeling, and I take that into consideration because in the medical field, it’s very easy to focus on the problem and not the person.

The person I turn to most is my sister Gemma. She’s four years older than me. We are very close. We ring each other every day just to sort of complain about everything. I’ll listen to her mundane complaints and she listens to mine. I turn to her as well when it comes to style. She’s the person I turn to first when something great happens in my life or if I’m not feeling too great. We argue a lot, but we get on really well.

I’d like to be remembered as being nice. I think being nice is so underrated. Calling someone nice is such a lovely compliment and right now, in the world that we live in, there’s a lot of trolling and nastiness. It surprises me how people can be so mean to people on the internet. I find it so strange that people can: a) comment on something without actually fact checking what they’re talking about, because people don’t seem to look things up, they just seem to just write what they think straight away, and, b) post their opinion on how someone looks. I find it strange that people would actually physically write that out, it just baffles me.

The life lesson I would like to pass on is just to have confidence in yourself. I struggled so much with confidence, believing in myself. I’ve always struggled with confidence, through school, through college, and I always say, with everything I’ve done, I am faking it. When I was dancing, when I was doing Miss Universe Ireland, I was a bag of nerves inside. I’d always come out of interviews and say ‘my nerves got the better of me’. The greatest advice I got was from my mum, she told me, ‘nobody is above you, nobody is below you, we’re all just people’. It stuck with me. When I feel like I am nervous about something or putting someone on a pedestal now, I tell myself that.

Gráinne Gallanagh is an ambassador for Gallaghers Bakehouse Bread Made Better, The secret is out campaign. 

In another life I think I would have gone into real estate. I’m always looking up my dream home, even though I’ll probably never be able to afford it. I love big, beautiful houses and I love little cosy houses. I would love to sell houses. I think I’m good at selling things so I would be good at it, but it’s something that I’ll probably never ever try.

I’m pretty happy with who I am. I like to think that I’m a good person which is the main thing, and the things that I’ve done are all things that I really wanted to achieve and there’s still so much more that I want to do.

• Gráinne Gallanagh is an ambassador for Gallaghers Bakehouse ‘Bread Made Better, The Secret is Out’ campaign. The Donegal brand’s new range of handcrafted sourdough breads is available in select Tesco, Dunnes Stores, Supervalu, Spar, and Centra stores nationwide.