Poor: Grit, courage, and the life-changing value of self-belief

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I don’t say that because O’Sullivan is my friend – though she is – but because she has written a memoir that brings the reader to the edges of their tolerance and empathy and profoundly challenges the judgment that readers may harbour towards families like O’Sullivan’s. The individual, she says, “is small in the decisions of their life, and we don’t like that because it suggests we’re powerless. It is almost an accident that her life took this trajectory – it has not been the same for her siblings – and even though her climb brought her to a place that is preferable to where she was, it comes with sacrifices. What was funny, but also difficult, says O’Sullivan now, “was that I was struggling at that time with: ‘Who am I?

Poor is the moving, inspirational and brave story of a seven year old girl who needed love and care and found it with her teachers. Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan is out today and, because I am so far behind on my reviews, this will have to serve as both a synopsis of my thoughts and a very well-deserved “yay it’s been published! The people who are making decisions are clearly very educated and yet they don’t seem to have the long-term lens on what investing in reducing poverty can do. Katriona O'Sullivan, despite a lifetime of trauma, possessed within her a belief that she was destined to climb out of the 'trenches' through sheer grit, a refusal to continue the cycle and through the benevolence of those few special people who could recognise her worth.Today Dr Katriona O’Sullivan is an award-winning lecturer whose work explores barriers to education.

As the middle of five kids growing up in dire poverty, the odds were low on Katriona O'Sullivan making anything of her life. Arkinson taught her how to wash every morning in the school bathrooms and kept a stack of fresh pants for her. There’s a uniform of the middle classes,” she says, and she was wrestling with it (a colleague had even suggested she dress more like them). When she was five or six, she discovered her father, who had overdosed, unconscious, a syringe still stuck in his flesh.The book delivers a powerful message to society about how we treat those who struggle with chronic addiction. Once such teacher Mrs Atkinson had a fresh towel, facecloth and clean underwear ready for her every morning before school to wash and change. I think Katriona highlights some of the barriers and stigmas in place for those in working class communities who are trying to get out of a cycle of poverty or a particular type of work they and their families are in, and how so much more needs to be done to make sure education is available for everyone who needs it, and better systems are put in place for families and children who grew up like Katriona's did. Being so exposed in the world, first as a child in need, then as an adult in the public eye, comes at a cost.

Despite what we know we still pretend that all it takes to succeed is hard work when the truth is only the privileged can. Creegan’s book, like O’Sullivan’s, is both brave and beautiful, and doesn’t shy away from brutality. Poor is not only Katriona's story, but is also her impassioned argument for the importance of looking out for our kids' futures. When she told me she was in Trinity I thought, if she’s going there, I’m going there”, the author says. In her book Poor, Katriona speaks about her hardship growing up as a child of parents who were drug addicts, and how ofttimes it was school and kind teachers that first taught her that she deserved more than what she had, and instilled a love of learning and education within her.I never knew just how much she had been through until I read this book - and now my respect for her has just soared to levels I didn't even think possible. Katriona O'Sullivan pours her heart out to the reader, using her memoir as a cathartic medium to elucidate and comprehend her upbringing and early life, enabling her to move forward and embrace her own life to the best of her abilities. She now works as a senior lecturer in Digital Skills in Maynooth University's Department of Psychology. You can read this before Poor: Grit, courage, and the life-changing value of self-belief PDF EPUB full Download at the bottom. When she was 15, she got pregnant; the moment she found out, “just knowing that it’s over – any bit of hope, any dreams”.