Monthly Archives: October 2026

Thursday Thoughts: Going on a Job Hunt

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As I continue to recover from the hip replacement and five years of chronic pain, I’m rediscovering the joy of getting out of the house again. I’ve spent the last five years staying at home, only going out when necessary, such was the power that crippling depression had over me, so going out regularly, even if it’s just for a walk down the canal, feels like heaven. But it’s becoming apparent that getting out is costly. Even a bar of chocolate costs two euro, if not more. The cost of living has exploded, with things nearly costing double what we paid for them during the pandemic. I’m no longer a victim of chronic pain, and I know that I’m going to have to get a job. And it’s not just that I have to – I want to. I want a steady homemaking-physio-work-writing routine. It doesn’t bode well that even just typing that sentence is tiring me out, but I’m confident that once I get into the swing of things I’d be laughing.

There’s a slight problem, however. Okay, scratch that – there’s an enormous problem. I’ve done lots of voluntary and freelance work in the last eleven years, and I’ve done it while raising our daughter and keeping the house going. However, I haven’t had a steady job with a predictable income since 2015, so I wouldn’t call myself a catch on the auld job market. When Alison was in primary school, it suited all of us for me to be at home, ready to dash if the school telephoned or texted me. Now Alison is almost fifteen, and I feel like that stupid grasshopper who failed to prepare for the winter. I love being a mum, and I’ve had a tough time over the last few years adapting to the role of not being needed and being very needed at the same time. In four years, please god, Alison will be in college and with that, the day-to-day organising and keeping track of school meetings, basketball training, drama rehearsals and the likes will be gone. What will be my purpose then?

The last three years particularly feels like a waste. I know I couldn’t help the chronic pain, but the accompanying tiredness was so debilitating that even a once-weekly blog felt like a mountain to climb. Research suggests that pain can rewire the brain, and I think I was stuck in fight-or-flight mode for a long time. Now that the pain is gone, I’m now grappling with tiredness, possibly from the extra physio, but also the years of sleep deprivation and pushing through it all.

I also feel annoyed when I think of all the money I’ve spent on doing various courses in the hope that a combination of them would lead to meaningful employment. Unfortunately, many content creation and editing jobs are now being replaced with AI. I honestly don’t know how this can be justifiable, especially since most people I know would agree that it’s obvious when AI Has Been Used To Write An Article (grrr). There’s also been a shift in the last twenty years in how we consume material. Even I, a self-professed lover of feature journalism, don’t buy newspapers anymore, opting instead for news websites like rte.ie and thejournal.ie (being unemployed led me to cancel my Irish Independent Subscription).

And speaking of phone calls, for those of you who haven’t met me in person, let’s just say I don’t quite have a telephone voice suitable for working in a call centre, unless it’s a Guinness or Smirnoff call centre and they’re expecting to hear a drunk at the other end of the phone. Nor am I built for waiting tables (unless it’s a restaurant where customers love to have their drinks and  food rained all over them) nor, thanks to this hip replacement and the good old CP, am I suited to stacking shelves. Thankfully, I’ve never had any interest into going into the medical field. Can you just imagine these shaky hands trying to draw blood or insert a catheter? I wouldn’t let myself anywhere near me with a needle, and nor should anyone else.

I think back to when I first graduated from Trinity in 2007, clutching that precious English Studies degree etched in Latin (only for the parchment, I could’ve printed it off one of those dodgy templates on Microsoft Publisher. You know the ones, with the dodgy Latin text to show where your own text should go?). I was young, naïve and full of hope. I thought that I could juggle a number of jobs: Freelance Journalist, giving English grinds to Leaving Cert students, teaching creative writing and eventually churning out two novels a year a la Enid Blyton. It’d take a while, sure, but I believed that I would eventually secure that six-figure book deal that all writers fantasise about. Perhaps I still could: who knows?

But money, although useful to survive, isn’t my only motivator. It’s also about the embarrassment and shame I feel for being out of work for so long. Yes, I raised a child, but plenty work and raise children. When I’m asked, “what do you do?”, the answer is always different. Unemployed, self-employed, and occasionally, stay-at-home parent, which is the hardest job in the world, and that’s before you remember that there’s no sick pay or annual leave.  I had a rough few years, and I’m considering looking into counselling to help me process that, but now that I can look forward, the expanse looming ahead of me is frightening. I feel an irrepressible need to fill it with something purposeful.

Now, I know that a certain Cork-based sister is going to smite her forehead and contact me saying “This is not what we agreed. We agreed that you were going to focus on your physical and psychological recovery.” My mother’s body might be dead but somehow it feels that she lives on! And I am of course taking my recovery seriously, but the hip replacement has given me a new lease of life and I’m craving the satisfaction that can only come with being productive and having achieved something (Here it’s worth noting that, like Del Boy, I’ve always plugged away but haven’t actually achieved that much, i.e., completing my bloody novel).

In a bid to throw myself back into the labour market, I’ve joined Employability, an organisation dedicated to helping disabled people find work. My mentor is a fellow CPer, which helps when explaining my capabilities and limitations. There will be challenges, however, to finding work. The cost of living crisis means that many businesses are reducing their workforce, for example, shops introducing self-scan options, reducing the need for staff. Employers are looking for value for money, and may not be willing to gamble on hiring a disabled person who, while well capable of work, may need accommodations in order to reach their true potential. This is nothing new. According to the National Disability Authority, 32.6% of disabled people are in employment, compared with 70.8% of the non-disabled population. This is well below the EU average of 51.3%; in fact, we have the lowest percentage of disabled people in employment in Europe (Source nda.ie).

All of this isn’t exactly inspiring, but like many others, I shall persevere! After all, the best thing about being disabled, and specifically, being part of the Independent Living Movement, is knowing I am not alone, and that we are collectively advocating for change. In the meantime, I’ll continue applying for the jobs that crop up in my inbox, until such time I write that award-winning novel!

Tuesday Thoughts: Martin Naughton, Ten Years On

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It’s been ten years to the day since the disability movement was shaken by the passing of our beloved Martin Naughton. You only had to meet Martin once to know that you were talking to someone special. He lived in-between spaces; as a child, he moved from his home in the Gaeltacht in Spiddal to St Mary’s in Baldoyle without a word of English (legend has it that his friend John Doyle taught him English); he worked in St. Mary’s teaching swimming classes when many of his fellow residents were passive recipients of care; and he fought for the right to true independent living at a time when, in Martin’s own words, disabled people “were to be cared for rather than cared about.”

In the later years of his life, Martin approached Joanna Marsden, former editor of the Irish Wheelchair Association’s feature magazine, SpokeOut, as well as being a journalist and author extraordinaire, with the proposition of helping him to pen his memoir. Sadly, when Martin passed away on 13 October, 2016, Joanna had not yet finished penning the memoir, and was hesitant to complete the project without him. Thankfully, Joanna came to the same realisation as many of us who have worked with Martin in the past, myself included: Martin wasn’t one to hold someone’s hand. He had great vision, but often needed help in executing his grand ideas, and so he had a rare ability to encourage people to trust in their own capabilities and to have the courage to make mistakes. Thus, Joanna completed and published Martin’s fascinating memoir, Never Know Your Place, and in doing so, played a pivotal role in keeping Martin’s spirit alive.

Everyone who has ever met Martin seems to remember their first meeting. Many people were introduced to him in Chief O’Neill’s, a hotel that was once located in the heart of Smithfield. When I met him, I was only twenty-one years old, and I was eager to be spoonfed, but it soon became clear that Martin wasn’t going to do that. He wanted me to establish a Leader Forum in Dublin. The disabled people I met during this time, including Hubert McCormack and Peter Moore, helped me more than I ever could have helped them. Thus, I was able to apply what I learned during the summer of 2005 to my everyday life long after the summer job had ended.

Martin became the recognisable mouthpiece of the Independent Living Movement, often filmed or photographed in a red jumper and matching taqiyah-style hat.

 With his soft-featured face and largely paralysed body, he could elicit pity from the coldest of politicians, but once he started speaking, he made it clear that he was not an object of pity, and that he meant business. After all, government cutbacks were a constant threat to his independence and in turn, his freedom and his livelihood. Accidently or otherwise, guarding these for himself – and his peers across the country – became Martin’s top priority. Some would say that Martin was only too happy to be the face of the Independent Living Movement, and if that’s the case, then we as a movement were happy to have him stand at the coalface. We praised him, doubted him, admired him but I, at least, never envied him. Campaigning for the right to true independent living wasn’t just something Martin did, it became something Martin was: a symbol of disabled people’s ambition, of our quest to live the lives that we deserved.

Seeing the recent campaigns led by disabled activists around introducing a once-off cost of living payment for disabled people made me swell with pride, as Martin and others taught us younger activists to never take no for an answer. Martin and his peers were notorious to resorting to outlandish measures to get his point across. One of my favourite photos of Martin (which I can’t find on the web right now) shows him and Michael McCabe, dressed in stripy black and white prison uniforms, surrounded by a cage. The purpose of this demonstration by the pair was to illustrate how disabled people were becoming imprisoned by cutbacks. 


Martin Naughton touched the lives of both disabled people and our non-disabled allies. Then president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, paid tribute to Martin on his passing. Christian O’Reilly, a now prominent playwright and screenwriter, landed one of his first jobs working with Martin in the mid-nineties, and immortalised him in the film Inside I’m Dancing/Rory O’Shea was Here, and later in the stage play No Magic Pill. Christian later explained that he wrote the latter because he wasn’t satisfied with his attempt to capture the tenacity, the cheekiness and the complexity that embodied the man with the hat.

This challenge is not Christian’s alone. Younger activists coming behind us will never have the privilege of meeting him in person, and that’s why, ten years after his passing, I think that it’s crucial that we remember him, talk about him, and strive to honour his amazing legacy. To do this, we must believe within ourselves that we are worthy of equality. We must insist on sitting at every table where discussions about our lives are taking place. We must resist the urge to shake those collection buckets and instead demand our rights, which have been denied for all too long.

We owe it to Martin, and indeed to all the activists who have since passed away, hoping that their contribution to society will make it a little better. This year, the Irish disability community lost another remarkable activist – who “was born in 1954, the same year as Martin” – our comrade Dermot Hayes. Dermot and Martin were great friends, and although Dermot was very much an activist in his own right, establishing many community initiatives for both disabled and non-disabled people alike, he still looked up to Martin and credited him for the support Martin gave him. 

And to those of us who knew them, they will never be forgotten.

Thursday Thoughts: Push Yourself

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I can’t believe that I’m missing my favourite class – English – for this waste-of-time, bullshit conversation. Sr. Frances, the school secretary, is like a dog with a bone; once an idea becomes lodged in that head of hers, she won’t let go, and today it’s driving me insane. I sway from side to side on her swivel chair, flashing my sweetest grin at her and ignoring what she’s saying. I don’t have time for this. She’s presented me with the most old-woman wheelchair she can find and she’s trying to convince me to use it to get between classes. Those falls can’t be good for me, she says.

Nonsense, I wave my hand. My nickname is “Bouncer” or “Springer” because I’ve springs in these titanium knees. I fall, I bounce up again. It mightn’t look ideal from the outside, but it’s just the way my body works. As long as I can walk, I refuse to sit in something that looks like it came out of a nursing home and relinquish whatever little control I still have over my life to be pushed around this school. Now – I stand up and beckon my assistant Anne to follow – let that be the last of it. I concentrate hard as we walk out of the office. Falling over now will do nothing to strengthen my case. Anyway, what does she know? I am more acquainted with this wobbly body than anyone else. I’ve cycled the couple of hundred yards to school every day for six years and have spent my days traipsing from class to class. I’m fitter than I’ve ever been. I’m only nineteen, and if I start to use a wheelchair now, I’ll become lazy.

When I receive the Leaving Cert results and accept an offer to study English in Trinity College, I also receive an invitation from the Disability Officer, Orlaith O’Brien, to come and discuss my access issues. In this meeting, it’s decided that to get maximum benefit from the course, I need a number of accommodations – an on-campus room, notetakers, a library assistant, notetakers for lectures and, an electric wheelchair. I shake my head with such vehemence that I’m surprised that it doesn’t roll from my neck and bounce around me on the floor.

“I have a mobility scooter,” I explain. Because I haven’t brought it with me today, Orlaith doesn’t see that I don’t mean mobility scooter as much as I mean small tractor. It was a gift from my dad, a sturdy thing well capable of handling a big load of shopping, especially after we put a large basket on the back of it, but it’s huge. It won’t fit into the lift in the Arts block, but I could abandon it downstairs and walk to whatever room my tutorials were in upstairs.

By the end of my first day, I’m so overwhelmed by trying to get to tutorials on time, I’m in tears. I know it isn’t just first day teething problems. Even though I only have twelve teaching hours per week in total, many of these are grouped together – three sessions in a row. I need a wheelchair, otherwise it won’t be doable.

My friend Emmet (the one I wrote this blog about) is kind enough to lend me one of his electric wheelchairs until the college arranged for an Occupational Therapy assessment. (I’d already had an assessment in Tullamore, about a week before starting college. It took five minutes and went as follows:

OT: Oh, so you already have an electric scooter?

Me: Er, yes…

OT: And you are fully ambulatory?

Me: Kind of. But I fall a LOT.

OT: Ah sure you’re grand then. Why are you looking for a wheelchair?

End of assessment.)

Trinity Student Disability Service isn’t happy and so I’m referred to OT expert, Bethan Collins, who also lived on campus, to get a proper wheelchair assessment. Bethan doesn’t need to be able to see to know that I need a wheelchair. An application to some European fund proves successful, and I’m given my own first ever electric wheelchair by the middle of November 2003 (The cobbles had already rendered Emmet’s wheelchair defunct – oops).  And sure, it means that I’ve no excuse to be late for lectures, as I vibrate across the cobbles, but now I can also go grocery shopping, browse Grafton and Henry Street in my spare time, and go for class nights out in The Duke. It gives me the freedom to embrace all aspects of college life, and this I do with wholehearted enthusiasm!

Yet, despite being happier than I’ve been in years, there’s still that lingering voice, the one that says Don’t lose your mobility. I continue to trudge across Front Square to the student shop for my evening chocolate, ignoring the twanging in my knees when I fall. It’s 2004, and there’s no level pathway in Front Square. I’m not supposed to take the wheelchair across it, but when I lose track of time, entering the Arts Block through the Berkeley is just such a faff; who has time for that? I like to think that it was my destruction of two electric wheelchairs that led to Trinity revisiting their plans to carve a smooth pathway through Front Square, which they finished in 2011, four years after I graduated.

I don’t bring my wheelchair home to Tullamore at weekends, because my home house isn’t accessible. That means walking around all weekend, whether it’s to do shopping, walk the new Jack Russell puppy Fred, or on a night in the town. It’s exhausting, but I pat myself on the back and tell myself I’m doing the right thing. I’m still walking. I’m also still falling. My falls are infamous, as is my ability to laugh them off.  When out drinking with friends and I fall in the pub, we all laugh at my expense, and I swell with pride. It doesn’t even hurt! Once, I slide across the floor of our local shopping centre, and I hold my hands in the air at the end, a la Ozzy Osbourne. I’m invincible! I don’t need a wheelchair!

 In 2007, I move to Portlaoise and rent a terraced house in St. John’s Square. There’s a shop and a takeaway just around the corner, but I find that I’m struggling to walk that far. Nevertheless, I continue to do so, even though my legs hurt. The house isn’t wheelchair accessible, but the lovely landlord has built a special shed so I can store and recharge the electric wheelchair that Trinity has gifted me. A few months later, we move to an accessible council house, but the wheelchair isn’t working properly and since the HSE won’t  service it, it rusts away in my spare room. Anyway, what would I need a wheelchair for? Don’t I manage just fine without one? In 2009, I acquire a new tricycle, which I use to do more errands. Sure, walking is becoming increasingly painful, but that’s probably my own fault. I’m not exercising enough. I just need to push myself a bit more, that’s all.

The dawn of 2011 brings with it new resolve. This will be the year I start walking for long distances again. Having moved back to Tullamore the year before, I cycle everywhere. I push myself to get fit; new year, new me. I start writing again, sending pitches to every publication I’ve ever heard of. By June, I’m exhausted, and progress begins to stall. My brain, alive with ideas, words and phrases, turns to mush. Also, I’ve been so busy, that I neglect to notice that I’m three weeks “late”. The test doesn’t lie: I’m six weeks pregnant. Delighted, yes, but shocked.

I’d always assumed that, in the event of me getting pregnant, that I’d have to start using a wheelchair straightaway, but ever determined to prove a point, I instead start using a rollator, which I’ve never done before, and keep walking until I’m thirty-four weeks’ pregnant, stopping only because a fall in my hallway means that I can’t walk anymore. After giving birth to Alison, I’m walking with a rollator within twenty-four hours and back walking normally (with a rollator) within a week. As a little family, we go on day trips to Portlaoise, and I push the heavy buggy, leaning on it for stability, proud of myself. Sure, I’m exhausted, but what new mum isn’t, right…?

Alison was always going to be an only child, and I was determined to give her everything I had. I place her on the floor and get down and play with her. I pull out all the toys, play and read with her, resolved that she will not be at a disadvantage because I am a wobbly mummy. I can’t change her nappy on the floor, so I either bring her in the buggy or, as she gets older, lure her into the spare room with a toy, so that I can lift her up and lay her on the bed. 

In 2014, I purchase my first electric wheelchair. Not because I’m finding it difficult to walk, but because I want to be able to enjoy Alison and bring her places independently. I still walk short distances, and struggle to walk long ones, as we do not have an accessible vehicle at this point. I can feel myself getting tired more easily, but what do I expect with a toddler? I don’t use the wheelchair unless I really have to, or unless I have Alison with me, as I can’t keep up with her on foot. My mantra always is: I don’t want to get lazy, and I don’t want to lose my mobility. Continuing to walk, however tiring or painful, is something I cling onto like a badge of honour.

Having the knowledge I have now, about my hip, means that I look back on the last ten years a bit differently, and with a bit more kindness towards my former self. I remember in 2017 going to Dublin and meeting other writers with Cerebral Palsy, older than I, who seemed to walk without difficulty, and feeling ashamed of myself. I was getting lazy. I truly believed that losing my mobility was my own fault, for not pushing myself, for giving in and using these mobility aids. Yet the more I tried, the sorer and more exhausted I became. Of course, I had no idea at this stage that I was also contending with undiagnosed hip dysplasia and arthritis.   I always pushed my body to its limits, walking further than I was able, but afraid to admit to it in case it was seen as a sign of weakness. Now, almost ten years later, I’m proud that I managed it, but at what cost?

I have fond memories of when my mobility was better. Like the summer’s day in 2004 when JP and I bought a telly for my campus bedroom, and we pushed it home from Henry Street to Botany Bay in Trinity on the electric wheelchair. A particularly stormy day in 2005, holding onto poles on O’Connell Street, trying not to blow away as I made my way to the Luas on Abbey Street. Legging it down Nassau Street after the infrequent 14As, tired from working in Trinity all day, so that I could get back to rooms in Rathmines. Walking around Front Square in a dress on a sultry May evening, often in the flimsiest slip-on shoes you can imagine, marvelling at how the Trinity Ball changed the atmosphere around the campus.

I used to hoover on my knees. Every Friday, I would pull out the furniture and hoover and mop behind it. I used to be the gardener in our house, and I’d spend hours pulling up weeds, enjoying the silence and the thoughts in my head. 

Sometimes I feel a mere shadow of myself, a shell of the stubborn mule I used to be. But then, I remind myself to cop on, and to unbind myself from the ableist shackles that have worn me down. Had I taken a hybrid approach to things earlier, maybe I wouldn’t have done so much damage to my hip. I don’t regret the life I’ve lived, but the things I’ve asked my body to do over the years range from being a tad unreasonable to batshit insane. And now, at forty-two years of age, with a hip replacement, I’m restricted from doing certain things for safety reasons. I’m learning that this doesn’t mean that I’m lazy or not trying hard enough. It means that I’ll have to do things a bit differently, a bit more safely. As boring as that is, that’s where I am now.

Perhaps this hip surgery was the reminder I needed that it’s not realistic to always expect so much of myself. Maybe it’s okay to put my physical wellbeing over the need to prove something to the world, and embracing my limitations is one of the most powerful things I can do. But deep down, I’ll always be that belligerent schoolgirl, chancing my arm. After all, I owe her so much for getting me this far, because she always pushed herself.