"“I don't want to do this quickly, because there wasn't a quick fix back then”"
"“For me, domestic violence was such a hard thing to live through. There was a lot of fear, and it took me so long to get out of my situation.”"
"“The reason I'm doing this over seven days - it could take me 12 days - is because the struggle was so real, and I feel I need to continue to get through it slowly.”"
"“I'm going 'backwards' - going Malin to Mizen, so I believe the wind will be coming at me.”"
Sheila O’Brien, originally from Boston and living in Ireland for 29 years, is raising money for Safe Ireland, a national agency working to end domestic violence and support frontline services. She has already raised more than €3,000 and will begin her journey on Saturday, June 6, with the ride starting in three weeks. Instead of the common route from Mizen to Malin, she will cycle more than 600km through the middle of Ireland in the opposite direction, reaching towns and villages including Strabane, Enniskillen, Longford, Shannonbridge, Dromineer, Macroom, Bantry, and Mizen Head. She describes the route as difficult due to hills and wind. She frames the slow seven-day ride as a metaphor for the fear and prolonged struggle of domestic violence, emphasizing that there was no quick fix and that the process needs time.
Read at Irish Independent
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]