I was born in Mayo in 1945. After I was born, my older brother got seriously ill with TB. I got it into my head very young that my mother didn’t want me. So I grew up very well behaved in order to get into her good books. I never quite did, but that was okay.
I went to boarding school, which I hated. I became very religious, thinking God and Jesus were the only ones that loved me. Then I decided that I would join a monastery, so I went into the Cistercian monastery in Roscrea. I was suffering from depression there, and I left after four years.