My Journey
Sean's Story: Communication Made My Life!
Sean O'Neill here to tell you about how my life has changed over the years. I'm 50 years old and have had my share of good, bad and indifferent days. I'm non-verbal and have always found it a challenge to be heard in a fast moving noisy, verbal world. You see, these challenges, as you can imagine extend out into my work, health, relationships just to to name a few situations.
My family are scattered around the world with a brother in Ennis, one in Lissycasey, another in Newmarket-on-Fergus, a sister in England and a sister in America whom I visited over Christmas last year. My Mom, Dad and a brother are dead. I grew up with them in Newmarket-on-Fergus during the 60's and 70's and thirty years later when I visit there I feel like a celebrity and spend a lot of time shaking hands and catching up with the people of the town and area. It only seems like yesterday since I lived there and I spent my days visiting my friend and washing cars at his garage.
A lot has happened since then. In 1977 I went off to live and work at Bawnmore in Limerick, before coming back to Clare and the Brothers of Charity in 1990. The story I want to tell you about really starts then, when I came back to Clare twenty years ago. Since moving to Clare I've lived in three community homes with four others. Until recently my experience in community homes were much the same, crowded and just not my idea of 'home', but I got used to it and they were okay. I also worked at the Brothers of Charity Workshop in Ennis for most of that time, and I had an important job to do -- making altar breads. It was great, I loved it. I worked with my friends and I knew what was expected of me each day. I did a good job and I knew why I was doing my job because every week the priest would come to take the altar breads that I helped make back to his church. It felt great to be doing work for someone in my community. Also, people there understood me and I understood the 'rhythm' of how things worked. It was easy to be a part of that environment during that time. It was important to be a part of something like that.. I'm non-verbal, and I could get by in a place I knew and where people knew me.
When work on the altar breads came to an end in 2007, I lost my purpose, the rhythm I knew was gone, I didn't understand what was happening, why my work wasn't needed anymore, why the priest stopped coming, where I belonged, and I didn't know what I was supposed to do now? I felt sick! I was down in the dumps and had nothing to get up for in the morning. It was tough, I didn't want anyone to tell me what to do and I didn't want to do anything either, not even change my clothes. There was nothing to look forward to and when staff asked me to change my clothes, I refused! I trusted no one and I certainly didn't want to lose my clothes, my clothes represented the few threads of who I was and left me with some control over my life -- no one was going to take that from me! I'm talking about a time in my life when I lost my sense of purpose and belonging.
I kept up the protest the only way I knew how for two, maybe three years. It was a time I'm not so proud of because I would take out my frustrations on staff and family, and we all got quite tired of each other. It seemed sudden when things started to look up again. Trainers from Ireland and abroad came to Ennis to talk to me and people who support me about doing things different. They talked about personal outcomes, individual and person-centred support services, relationships, choices, my home, my work, my leisure, my community.. I'm so grateful to all those people, because this was the start of better times, kind of like the good'ol days only better. What happened was a few people rallied round and opened up the lines of communication. They started talking about me and how they could help.. It was unbelievable, people were learning how they could help me to achieve what was important to me! They were serious about my interests, my skills, what I like, what I didn't like and I started to feel like a whole person again. They even made it their 'mission'.. I mean they would make it their mission to have "love and respect for all toward a full and valued life".. and that includes me.