Why I wrote a book on Sinéad O'Connor
She was extraordinary, legendary, extremely troubled and amazingly talented
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Last year, I got the chance to pitch a biography of anyone who was no longer living. I chose the iconic singer Sinéad O’Connor. She had sadly passed away only weeks previously, at the age of just 56, and her death was subsequently revealed to be from natural causes.
I had read her obituaries and, though I’m not a celebrity, I had been surprised by how much we had in common.
We had both been abused as children by a violent parent. We both took great solace in music during our brutal childhoods.
We were both diagnosed with borderline personality disorder as a result of child abuse. We made multiple suicide attempts and suffered poor mental health throughout our lives - and were both very slight, petite women who were put on drugs for our mental health conditions later in lives, which caused us to gain a lot of weight.
We both fell pregnant at a relatively early age - she was 19, I was 24. I had an abortion, Sinéad had two with following pregnancies, and we both suffered the emotional pain of these. We felt an overwhelmingly deep love for our kids, and were single mums to them. We shared custody with their dads, who were quite a bit older than us.
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