Joanna Donnelly is preparing for an emotional performance on Dancing With The Stars as it’s dedication week and she’ll be shining a light on a cause very close to her heart.
The weather presenter has often spoken about the challenges she faced growing her family and she’ll be dedicating her performance to Sara Murphy for all the work she’s done ‘as an advocate for people struggling with infertility.’
During the night, Joanna will also talk about Pomegranate, the former charity she set up to help couples who were in a similar position to her but couldn’t afford IVF treatment.
Speaking ahead of the show, Joanna said: ‘We’re dancing Tango to Dreams by the Cranberries and it’s dedicated to Sara Murphy and her family for all the work she’s done as an advocate for people struggling with infertility.
‘It’s been a long time since Harm and I struggled to conceive Tobias, finally succeeding with assistance through IVF, after which I went on to form the charity Pomegranate with Fiona McPhillips to help others in the same situation. It takes a huge amount of support to run a charity and we were helped by an army of couples that went through the same journey and wanted to pay forward to others.’
Joanna continued to say that it’s been an emotional week and she’s certain she’ll be crying on the big night. ‘Dancing is very emotional and it’s a perfect way to express those feelings you keep inside.
‘I came close to tears the other day in rehearsals tapping into those emotions that were so long ago buried, so tomorrow night is going to be a tissues at the ready situation. I think that will be the case for everyone so maybe I won’t be the only emotional wreck on the dance floor!’
‘I’m really looking forward to sharing this dance with you,’ she continued. ‘It’s been a wonderful week again in studio and I think Maciej has choreographed a perfect capture of the rollercoaster of emotions that a couple going through infertility experience.’
Although none of the celebs will be sent home this Sunday, Joanna is still hoping people will vote for her as it could mean immunity the following week.
‘Please please let that be me! I’m loving this journey. Every single minute of it. I love that I’m representing women “of a certain age” (54!) out there. I think I’m getting better. Keep voting for me please and let’s see how far we can get,’ she concluded her post.
Speaking to RSVP previously, Joanna admitted that she was a loner growing up in Finglas, Dublin, and she never thought that she would get married or have a family.
But once she met her Dutch husband Harm Luijkx when she was training to become a Met Éireann meteorologist in England, everything changed.
Their daughter Nicci arrived in 2003 and the couple just expected that if they decided to have another baby it would happen easily, but it wasn’t so straightforward to have their first son Tobias in 2007.
‘You don’t just start the process of IVF, you build up to it,’ she said. ‘You don’t just wake up one day and go: “I’m going to have a very complicated but at the same time quite simple medical procedure.
‘I went to the gynaecologist and they prescribed Clomid and HGC shots. They said, “If that doesn’t work then let’s try IUI”, which is Intrauterine insemination. That didn’t work so then we got to IVF. You don’t just go from A-Z, you go through the B, C, D beforehand.’
Joanna became pregnant several times and sadly lost the pregnancies. However, her third child Casper completed their family and came as the sweetest surprise in 2009.
Joanna said that when she was growing up she came from a poor background, and her good fortune in being able to carry three children, one of whom was through IVF, gave her great compassion for couples desperate for a family but without the means to seek medical intervention.
‘I always thought that life is hard on some people but it’s harder when you’re poor. Infertility is rotten, it’s hard for everybody and is a terrible thing to have to go through.
‘But at least we had money to make the process of getting treatment bearable. I couldn’t bear the thoughts of people going through what I was going through, but they didn’t have any money,’ she said.
Joanna set up a charity called Pomegranate to help people suffering from infertility alongside her friend, author Fiona McPhillips, who suffered a similar infertility journey.
Rightly proud of their achievement, Joanna admitted that they have lost count of how many babies they helped to be born through their charity.
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