If you were to watch a movie based on Tracy’s story, you would say it’s too far-fetched to be realistic. Tracy is an author, who published a work of fiction that was loosely based on her own life called “So Not Me”. She once drove to Madrid on a whim and started teaching English. She’s feisty and opinionated, but she’s had to be that way, to advocate for her own needs.
Tracy didn’t have an ordinary childhood as such, even though she was greatly loved and supported by her siblings, she was made an orphan tragically young. “My father died when I was three and a half, and then my mother when I was fifteen. I kind of went into survival mode. I thought about all the things I had to do, the leaving cert, college etc, and just tried to get on with it, not really processing that grief at all.”
When the leaving cert rolled around and Tracy was just a week away from her 18th birthday, herself and her boyfriend were in a terrible car crash. Her boyfriend died and Tracy was left paralysed from the chest down. She spent the following 9 months in hospital. Not only was she grieving the loss of her boyfriend, but she also lost the baby she was carrying.
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