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

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Possibly biased as I'm one of Katriona's ex-students circa 2012. I always remember how honest she was with us all about her experience of the Trinity Access Program etc., and I was always in awe of her. An absolute powerhouse of a woman. 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 really built herself from the ground up. There were glimpses of other lives. At three, she remembers her friend next door being given a hug by her mum, and wondering why her own mother didn’t hug her like that. For a short time, she and her siblings were taken into care, where she “got food, and washed”. She always believed she deserved more, but over the years, she says, “hope and belief get eroded”. The effort of survival was exhausting. “As a kid, I was hopeful, vivacious. All kids are – some are quiet, some are loud, but we all have potential. And then as a teenager, with all the shit constantly, in the end, you just lean into it.” There were people, she says, “trying to keep me hopeful, but it’s very hard to battle against a lifetime of poverty and belief within a family. Eventually, it’s like your light goes out.” 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. Of a teenager whose English teacher believed she was fantastic. Of a young mother who had a caring nurse who encouraged and supported her. Of a woman who becomes a doctor of psychology and works to increase diversity in education. Now an award-winning lecturer whose work challenges barriers to education, Poor stands as a stirring argument for the importance of looking out for our kids' futures. Of giving them hope, practical support and meaningful opportunities.

O’Sullivan, grew up one of five children in England with Irish parents, both heroin addicts, in a home environment riven with dysfunction, abuse and poverty. This is a harrowing tale of Katriona’s life as she was brought up by drug-addict parents surrounded by poverty. Her world around her was soiled, filthy and squalid. Having somebody like me in there was just pivotal”, she explains. “If you don’t see people like you, you’re never going to aspire to it”. This book was recommended to me by my line manager as the book for anyone who works in support or services.

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This is the extraordinary story - moving, funny, brave, and sometimes startling - of how Katriona turned her life around. How the seeds of self-belief planted by teachers in childhood stayed with her. How she found mentors whose encouragement revived those seeds in adulthood. Amazing read by an amazing woman. Some parts were absolutely gut-wrenching; really brought a tear to my eye. The fortitude she had to get through what she did amazed me, and to get to where she is today even more so. However, as Katriona herself points out, she didn't make it out alone, there were numerous people along the way who helped her up, as well as programmes and social investment schemes that paved the way. Now all those schemes are gone at a time when we need them more than ever. There must be so many like her out there, struggling with abuse, addiction, terrible parents, with no-one to see them as they really are. At it’s core this is a cautionary tale about the effects of austerity, the class system in the UK and the horrifying generational impact of addiction.

What makes this story so awe-inspiring is how she went from this to becoming Dr Katriona O’Sullivan, the award-winning lecturer after graduating from Trinity College. How much courage, strength, fortitude and pure determination must it have taken to get where she is today? Being able to hear Katriona tell her story in her audiobook, in her own voice brought me to tears several times. Hands down one of the best books about difficulties of being brought up in poverty & by parents with addictions. In a simplified manner, book covers such topics as co-dependency, co-addiction and the enormous societal pressure that people from "lower class" experience and how difficult it is to escape it. This is the extraordinary story - moving, funny, brave, and sometimes startling - of how Katriona turned her life around. How the seeds of self-belief planted by teachers in childhood stayed with her. How she found mentors whose encouragement revitalised those seeds in adulthood, leading her to become an award-winning academic whose work challenges barriers to education. Her relationship with addict parents Tony and Tilly is gut-wrenching and yet, because of O’Sullivan’s empathy and love for her parents, my judgment and disdain that I had for them at the beginning of the book falters. There’s no doubt of their negligent, harmful actions. But you are also given an understanding of the turmoil that Tony and Tilly lived through.It is society that loses, she points out. “We’re missing talent, vibrancy and creativity. Because I’ve been empowered, I have been able to change my life, my children’s lives. I’m not costly any more to the state. I’m not doing all of the things that happen when you live in poverty. 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.”