Product Description

Memoirs of a Life in Progress

"I have just buried my poor mother, and the pain in my heart is terrible. It burns like a hot drill through the very core of me, the burn etching its way out through my blood vessels to every extremity of my body. It is an all-consuming pain of unimaginable intensity."

At just short of her sixtieth birthday, Margaret Byrne sat down in the sun-room of her small, isolated mountain cottage in County Wexford, and began to commit to paper the fascinating story of her life to date. Her mother had just passed away, and she found herself being drawn back to her early childhood, which had begun in an orphanage ward in a Dublin hospital.

From these anonymous beginnings right up to carving out a new life in the hills of Wexford with her elderly mother and her own adopted son, Margaret's story is wrought with difficulties. A reckless nature often found her embroiled in trouble, but generally it is broken systems that take responsibility for the darker chapters of the book. These chapters encompass a range of topics, from debt to incest and sexual abuse, and it is clear that Margaret's Ireland has often been an extraordinarily difficult place for a vulnerable woman.

These matters are not what drive this true-life account, at least not in solitude. This is a story about family, faith, death and new life. It is a story about adoption and losing parents. It is at times funny and often brutally honest.
Most of all, it is a story about love.
It is a wonderful, engaging memoir that offers an intimate insight into the world of a most likable, frank and driven Irish woman.

Early praise for 'This is Me' -

“A bravely and beautifully told story from an inspirational woman. Margaret speaks with an honest voice, without ever crumbling in self pity. I cried, laughed and celebrated along with her. An insightful read that portrays a real, genuine experience of a woman overcoming the obstacles life and society throws at her. It resonated deeply with me”
- Fiona Doyle, author of 'Too Many Tears'

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