She was sent to mend our hearts
Iremember being on the cusp of the new decade so vividly, because my father had just died. Four weeks before Christmas 2009, he lost his battle with cancer.
I remember not wanting to say goodbye to that year we were leaving him in and every year from that moment on would be darker without him.
I had given up journalism for a while to help my mum look after my dad. Full-time employment did not sit well with dashes to the hospital and ceaseless medical appointments and emergencies.
Around a month after my dad passed away, I found myself in my doctor’s surgery. I was really unwell and just couldn’t shake the crushing tiredness and nausea that had enveloped me for weeks. I thought it was grief. A positive pregnancy test said otherwise.
The news was a little chink of light in a very dark time and something positive we could all focus on. I had always longed for a daughter and, after three sons, I thought the chances were slim.
Holding my little girl, Maoliosa, in my arms early the next summer, I knew she was sent by my dad from heaven to help heal our broken hearts.
At the start of the new decade, still grieving for my dad, I found myself looking for journalism work again. There was none locally, so I created my own.
I launched what was to be Northern Ireland’s first online-only hyper-local news website, dedicated to the North West.
I worked 24/7 to bring the news to the people of my city. It was relentless and thankless and the effort put in did not correlate with the revenue coming out, so I sold it when my daughter was a toddler and went back into the world of work.
I worked for a time in PR, which I absolutely hated. Then, I worked as a journalism teacher. But even in the classroom, the sound of a siren in the street outside always distracted me. The call of the newsroom and the desire to tell people’s stories was just too strong.
I loved the job and my students, but more than half-way through the decade, I found myself frustrated at where I had ended up. I had gone off my trajectory completely and was just working for the money and not for the love of it.
Having worked in newspapers and having only journalism qualifications that meant little to those outside the industry, I decided I needed to go back to school and widen my horizons. I found myself — at 40 years old — back at university.
Once I had settled in, I started freelancing for newspapers and I was also asked to lecture in journalism at the Ulster University.
For two years, I found myself sitting in a lecture theatre being taught, heading to another lecture theatre to teach, going to the library to write essays while taking breaks to do interviews for the paper, while still chasing the news as well as working in a newsroom in Omagh on my “days off ”.
I graduated a few summers ago and threw myself full-time into the world of freelancing. I have been so lucky to have been given the opportunity to write for this newspaper, to tell people’s stories of life and loss, joy and tragedy, to give people a voice, to be there when history unfolds and to make a change.
As the last years of the decade drew to a close, I found myself working as a news reporter on
Q Radio and as a field producer with Al Jazeera — fantastic opportunities which have allowed me to grow and thrive as a reporter.
I have been so lucky to have spoken to people who have lived extraordinary lives, done unbelievable things and who have faced the most cruel adversity with the most remarkable and inspiring courage. I carry all those stories with me every day.
At the start of this year, someone shot up the street at us, the bullet hit someone standing near me, the journalist Lyra McKee.
I could very easily have been hit and it took months to get my head around the fact that my kids could have lost their mother that night and that some other poor family lost someone they loved desperately. It took months to get the horror and tragedy of what I saw that night out of my nightmares.
I tried to deal with this trauma while facing months of relentless social media trolling. I had people telling me they were going to kill me, calling me a liar, writing vicious and dangerous blogs, stalking me and threatening me — all for being present at a tragic and cruel murder I wish had never happened and that I had never witnessed. I knew that the whole experience was something that was either going to break me or make me stronger. I’m still here and I’m still fighting on.
As the dying embers of 2019 and, indeed, the last decade fade away, I’m hopeful for the future.
The past and our lived experiences are what shape us and I think I am made of titanium at this juncture, but I haven’t let tough lessons harden my heart.
Leona O’Neill is a journalist and broadcaster