My Life’s Journey

I arrived in the world at the end of the winter of 1947 one of the coldest that century. I was third of seven children and, as was the custom in many big families, I was reared with the help of a grannie, aunts and uncles. Being away from home gave me an independence and strength that has underpinned my life ever since.

After convent school I went to Belfast Art College and headed to New York in the summers to do au pair work. I did Teacher Training in Cardiff, a welcoming place. After graduation I married, started teaching in two schools on the north coast and relocated to Whitehead to follow my husband’s work. Then with two children and an interest in getting back out into the world I began a series of ‘follow your heart/trust your own thinking’ adventures. My marriage drifted apart. 

I went back to the north coast with my children but kept them connected to their dad too. I joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and became its Chairperson. I then started my own human relations business, The Leadership Consultancy. 

As the Troubles abated, I joined the Women’s Coalition and we were successful in getting women’s voices into the Good Friday Agreement.  When my adventurous teenage children left home, I spent eleven years as a project officer in community development, arts and environmental projects in Garvagh and Derry.   

Throughout those years I never lost sight of the colourful places I saw in The National Geographic magazine that my Uncle Dan sent from New York to us farm children. Despite living most of my life on a small budget, I’ve managed to visit places as far apart as Belarus and Brazil. I got to travel as part of my consultancy work, through an international peer counselling project I’m part of, or just by following my children when they set off to places like New Zealand. 

These days I’m a photographer and environmentalist, happily settled on the north coast. Life is good!

“I come from a family who have always done work in the community. There is an illuminated address at the top of my stairs that is to my grandfather which acknowledges the work he and his wife Mary did when they were the Master and Mistress of Ballycran National School on the Ards Peninsula. That lives on.” 

 “I’ve got a fierce independence. Someone sent me a postcard once and on it there was a little pig headed out over some hills and it said ‘I’m going where my pig is headed’. And I think it comes from those early years away from home where if I didn’t get up and go on and do my own thing I would have felt so lost.”

 “The thing I love about other women is the way they keep going regardless. I love what they know and I love when they speak up about what they know. I love when they clear the decks and say, ‘This is what I know, move over and listen’. I love the way they protect life and place and foster family networks. They are the original recyclers and environmentalists and experts at make do and mend.”

 “My parents did things which we unknowingly learned from. My mother would have put her principles before her comfort. We watched her stand up for herself and her family. And they both really valued education. They were short of money like most of the folk round the country but my dad would have communicated that we were good children, he believed in us. And mammy did as well. She would have got us piano lessons, brought us to the cinema, did her best without a lot of resource.”

 “I am proud of my girls and what they have achieved. And I am proud that I have held onto my own creativity despite everything. To quote a female French writer Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, “What a wonderful life I have had, I wish I had realised it sooner”.”