Adult education turned woman’s life around

Kim McGrath Myers was a 39-year-old single mother of five living in poverty.

As a girl she dreamed of being a social worker or a police officer. But, after dropping out of high school in Grade 11, she accepted that she would never have the education to do anything but unskilled, physical jobs.

Thanks to her determination and support from the P.E.I. Literacy Alliance, McGrath Myers has now fulfilled her dream and works to help women recover from addictions at Lacey House in Charlottetown.

McGrath said she asks her clients who they dreamed of being when they were young.

“Like them, I never once said “depressed, suicidal, hopeless, or uneducated,’ but that’s where I ended up — and with five children who depended on me.”

The first of many doors opened for McGrath Myers when she was encouraged by a friend to return to school for her GED (general education development) diploma. She wrote an essay to the literacy alliance that won her a $500 bursary and got the ball rolling. However, she didn’t want to go to her own graduation ceremony.

“I was still ashamed to acknowledge my past lack of education,” McGrath Myers said. “For me I had spent a lifetime ducking and dodging education questions and learning new skills in jobs. This would be a public ‘outing’ to me.”