BY MICHAEL BRESLIN
Traditionally, matchmaking is any process of introducing people for the purposes of dating and mating, usually in the context of marriage. In some cultures, the role of the matchmaker was and is quite professionalised.
However for one modern-day matchmaker, and healer, Mary Mitchell, who has a studio in Ballintra near Pettigo, putting couples in touch with each other has a much more serious dimension to it.
"I started it back in August and I have about 40 people on my books, but it's growing constantly. Every day, I'm sending out between 10-15 information letters. I do ask for a ¤100 deposit if they want to make a booking to avoid time wasters."
A native of Limerick, Mary has been living in Ballintra for the past five years and came equipped with certification in reiki healing ('you become a catalyst for the person to heal themselves'), hypnotherapy/psychotherapy, and neuro linguistic programming.
The last two areas are to do with the sub-conscious mind. For instance, the programming involves helping the client build a picture of positive living for the next 6-12 months.
Calls were coming in thick and fast, many around midnight from lonely people and, it was this that inspired Mary to add on matchmaking to her services.
"The calls were from people who were genuinely lonely. They would say they saw my advert and they wanted me to tell them more about my services, but I would imagine it's mainly loneliness they rang me up about in the first place.
"The thing was I could relate to that because after I came up here I was living on my own for a number of years till I met Ciaran (they are due to be married next year), and it's usually at night you would wish for somebody else to be there with you."
Although she has till to record her first wedding, relationships have ensued.
"I would say it's 60-40 ratio of men I'm getting at the moment. Ideally, you would like a 50-50 split. One of my first gentleman was an 80-year old man who had never married before, a really, really nice man.
"He came along to me with a bag containing a bottle of wine, two boxes of chocolates and a dozen dishcloths."
She is currently processing a match there, but not before both, as happens in every case, have passed Mary's scrutiny test.
"I insist each client makes an appointment to come in to see me, and I sit and chat with them for an hour. It takes me that amount of time and, of course, I always ask for photographic ID. you have to know who is who."
The 80-year old is her oldest client, and a 30-year old (man), her youngest who has rediscovered himself after a relationship that didn't work out.
And, any feeback? - "Yes. I was talking to a couple yesterday and she said they were madly in love. Both of them came to me, separately. They didn't know each other previously. I had given the woman the man's name and address. She then arranged for friends who knew him to set him up with a blind date.
"Normally, I would give both each other's names and a little bit of information about each other, and then I would ask the gentleman to call the lady directly. He would make that first call and it would go from there. After that first call, they make their own arrangements to meet."
As indicated at the start, Mary has other strings to her bow.
It was a car accident in 1994 that sent her on her way as a healer: "I needed a lot of healing for myself and I discovered that each person I needed came to me at the right time. It took about a year before I was healed, although, obviously, it's an ongoing process."
Having mastered the reiki technique, and completed a three-year course in hypnotherapy, with psychotherapy, and then neuro linguistic programming, she broadened her scope for treating people with depression, victims of abuse and so on.
As a result, Mary was meeting more and more people through her work, hence the midnight lonely callers.
Confidentiality is very much the name of the game. Not once did she name drop, although she spoke freely about aspects of her work, her 95 per cent success rate in getting people to smoke (after just one session), and her firm belief she has prevented a number of people from taking their own lives.
"One mother came to me and said her son, who was 18 and had dropped out of college, just lay in bed till 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon. So, one morning, she literally lifted him out of bed, put him in the car and brought him to me. He was depressed, but do you know where it came from? He was bullied at school."
Under hypnosis and guided by Mary, the young man relived those episodes years before when he was bullied, thereby releasing all the pent-up feelings that had lain mostly dormant in his sub-conscious. After a 10-week session, his fears evaporated.
Mary Maxwell's advert appears elsewhere in this paper.
