The final day of October 2013, was the last day Geraldine Lavelle ever walked. That was twelve years ago. And on that late autumn afternoon, what should have been a short, bracing cycle turned into a nightmare. A tragic accident resulted in a spinal cord injury, and complete paralysis of her body from the chest down.

Then in her mid-twenties, the epitome of youthful good health and optimism, in a highly professional job, the world was her oyster. The following decade would call on all her reserves of determination, fortitude and resilience through many long bleak days and nights of internal grief.

That journey is the central theme of Geraldine Lavelle's second book, 'When the Apple is Ready, it will fall', recently published, the follow up to her first, highly acclaimed, 'Weathering the Storm'. Her new book is a multi-layered chronicle of what that journey, as yet unfinished, has entailed. On the one hand, she examines the emotional roller coaster of living with a disability, an experience in which she neither sugar-coats the grimness of her situation, but at the same time never resorts to self-pity or regret, as surely she would be well entitled to do.

A second layer of the book deals with the daunting practicalities........

© The Mayo News