The Year I Finally Stopped Staying Quiet (2025) 🔥
I don’t even know where to begin anymore — maybe because this entire year has been one long chain of moments that should never have happened, never should have been tolerated, and certainly never should have been normalised. Yet here we all are in Ireland in 2025, pretending that the chaos is somehow just “the way things are.”
A year where the headlines blur into each other:
disability rights hanging by a thread, families barely coping, athletes and volunteers scraping by, SNAs stretched to breaking point, frontline responders expected to work miracles, and communities doing the heavy lifting while government departments issue statements about “progress.”
A year where photo ops and PR lines replace real action.
A year where those living at the sharp edge are told to “wait,” “be patient,” “understand,” or “hold on just a little longer.”
But I suppose I feel it differently because I’ve lived the consequences — for two decades now. I’ve spent weeks, months this year unshaved, unwashed, in the same clothes, sleeping in them too… because all my energy has gone into carrying the weight of a story that should have been told years ago. A story that didn’t begin with any IDPD theme or political announcement — but in actual, lived experience.
A story rooted in real people, real losses, real friendships, and real consequences.
And every time I see another speech about “building inclusive societies,” I can’t help thinking:
Where was all this when Josephine was skipping meals to pay club fees?
Where was it when volunteers were paying for petrol, food, gear, travel — basically functioning as unpaid staff?
Where was it when an athlete like Alising Beacon came home from double hip surgery during lockdown and was handed nothing but two sheets of paper because the health service had nothing else to give her?
Where was it when families waited six years for services they were legally entitled to in six months?
Where is inclusion when the systems built to “help” start controlling every corner of someone’s daily life?
I saw that control up close.
Quiet control.
Soft control.
The worst kind — the kind you don’t notice until it’s already shaped someone’s world.
The kind that dictates where a person can go, who they’re “allowed” to visit, what they can afford to eat, who is permitted to check in, who is excluded, and which friendships are quietly pushed aside because they don’t fit the internal politics of a club.
All delivered with a smile for the Facebook photos.
This year alone, I watched a key holder — someone trusted for years — suddenly told they weren’t allowed to travel to check in on someone they care about. Not to interfere. Not to break rules. Simply to care. To support. To be human.
Apparently even kindness needs clearance now.
And it made me think of the bigger picture — how easily support turns into supervision, how quickly boundaries turn into barriers, how often “policy” becomes a shield for control.
Because here’s the truth no one wants to say out loud:
If you control someone’s time, you control their freedom.
If you control someone’s fees, you control their food.
If you control their transport, you control their relationships.
And if you control their relationships — you control them.
And that’s not community.
That’s not inclusion.
That’s not empowerment.
That’s control wearing a volunteer badge.
But the part that hits deepest — the part nobody can sugar-coat — is that all of this sits on top of a story that goes all the way back to Bray in 2005.
Back to the fire that killed Billy Riggs.
Back to William losing his dad in the most horrific way imaginable.
Back to him being left homeless, paying €10 a week to a B&B while waiting for his house to be rebuilt — the same country that now wants asylum seekers to hand over 40% of their income.
Back to Josephine travelling between Bray and Dublin three days here, four days there, because there was no one else to step in.
Back to real support — not policy documents — but actual people doing the work.
Back to shared dinners, grief, confusion, late-night conversations, and the kind of friendship that forms only when life falls apart and you have to rebuild it together.
And then 2006: William got the keys to his new home.
An ending for him.
A turning point for all of us.
Then 2008: Josephine joined the Special Olympics club.
A new chapter — a good chapter in many ways — but also a chapter that came with strings nobody warned her about. A chapter that eventually grew into a system where she now has to skip meals so she can afford the very organisation that was supposed to give her community.
So here I am in 2025, still sending care packages, still keeping an eye out, still doing the things friendship demands — because life doesn’t stop being real once the cameras turn off.
And maybe that’s why this year pushed me to the edge.
Why I stopped shaving.
Why I stopped caring about fresh clothes.
Why I’ve been living in “survival mode.”
Because when you carry a story for 20+ years, one that spans fire, loss, homelessness, volunteering, disability rights, friendship, control, and everything in between — eventually you either speak it or drown under it.
So I’ve chosen to speak.
If my posts are long-winded, good.
If they make people uncomfortable, good.
If they hit nerves, better.
It means the truth is clawing its way into the open.
Because some of us didn’t read about inclusion — we lived the consequences of the lack of it.
Some of us didn’t join committees — we held people’s lives together when everything else collapsed.
Some of us didn’t just show up for photos — we showed up in smoke-filled nights, in emergency rooms, in B&Bs, in physiotherapy corridors, in living rooms where someone broke down because the world was too heavy.
Some of us were there.
Some of us are still here.
And some of us are done staying silent.
So yes — I’ll keep writing.
I’ll keep telling the truth.
I’ll keep naming what others won’t.
Even if I’m unshaved, unwashed, and wearing the same clothes I slept in — it won’t stop me.
Because the story deserves to be told.
And as long as I can speak, type, breathe, or hold a thought —
I will keep telling it.
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