Swing Cats’ Luke Thomas is taking each day as it comes since he lost his partner, Ciara, earlier this year.
Ciara Gunning passed away peacefully in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin on Monday, January 19, from cancer. The couple had celebrated their second anniversary in September 2025, just before her tragic death.
While the singer is trying to move forward in life, there are days when he finds that grief gets the better of him.
Luke spoke to EVOKE in May: ‘I have never been touched so closely going through something like this, and it’s something that I suppose you just go into battle mode, you know, you’re just like we have to get through this, and right up to the end, there was hope. Right up to the end, there was hope that she would get better,’ he said.
Luke said that over the last few months, he feels like music has ‘brought me back to life’ and said he continues to speak to her family.
During this time, the performer also mentioned how another celebrity managed to help him.
Speaking to another publication this week, he mentioned how mind coach Keith Barry brought some relief to his pain.
‘He reached out’ to me, and I went over to his house – he’d have experience with mindfulness and all that stuff, and he told me, ‘I have a few techniques that might help.’
‘And, in that first week, I was desperate to find some kind of help. So he brought me into his studio at the back of his house, and we did breathwork. Initially, I was a bit, ‘I’m going through the motions here a bit,’ but then my head really started to clear. Then he said, ‘Think of a nice thing Ciara might have done,’ and I just burst out crying. It was such a release of emotion. He basically ended up hugging me for 10 minutes.’
Looking back, he said ‘All I can say is, the time I was with her, I was meant to be with her at that time. I was supposed to be there for her. That was my role. I can’t look at it as ‘I’ve been robbed. That would haunt me.’
Looking to the future, the singer is working hard, performing and looking after his daughter Heidi, who has been his rock during this difficult time.
