Turning pain into ‘something brighter’

One of Ireland's first trans people to come out in secondary school has said more needs to be done to support young people transitioning, writes Róisín McManus.

Saoirse Ní Bhaoighealláin, who was involved in Cavan’s first Pride, which took place last Saturday, June 13, was inspired by her own experience of growing up in rural County Cavan to create a sense of belonging for the local LGBTQ+ community.

Assigned male at birth, the Ballyjamesduff native was only 10 years’ old when she first started to identify as non-binary.

She later came out as trans at age 13 years before going into her first year of secondary school in 2017, and subsequently faced numerous difficulties throughout her youth.

Now 22, Saoirse is taking what she describes as a set of “bad circumstances” to “create good” and “stand up” for people who have no one to stand up for them.

She wants to become a solicitor and is hoping to complete a pre-university law course in Cavan Institute this September.

Having completed two years of secondary school in two separate schools, Saoirse’s teenage education was cut short when she decided to take a year out in 2019 to transfer into a new school and complete third year in 2020, before the pandemic redirected the course of her life. She didn’t return to education until she completed Youthreach in 2024 at the age of 20, which is the oldest age you can enter the programme.

After her first day of first year, Saoirse left school feeling like a “husk” of herself. She continued to struggle for the entirety of that year and ended up regularly going home early from school.

“I had a terrible year,” Saoirse recalls, adding that she felt a “new discomfort”.

Despite feeling more confident in her identity through meeting other queer people in second year, she still took half days and her troubles persevered.

She did not feel supported or understood by those in charge, who she believed lacked adequate guidelines to handle such scenarios. A lot of schools, she feels, were “left to go in blind”.

“I don’t think that teachers know enough and I don’t think that education is being given regularly enough,” Saoirse acknowledges.

“The reality is, I was one of the first trans people in Ireland to come out to their school. I’m not saying I was the first obviously, it definitely wasn’t something that we would have seen that often at the time and that’s definitely something that made things harder.”

As someone who is “naturally very intelligent”, Saoirse felt that her schooling was affected by everything she went through.

“At the end of the year, I was just broken,” Saoirse reflects.

After she left school in 2019 and was unable to return in 2020, Saoirse ultimately didn’t end up getting her Junior Cert or Leaving Cert.

“It really put me down a difficult path for the next few years, trying to readjust and get back into education,” she outlines.

Going forward, Saoirse believes that trans people in schools need to be treated with respect in their identities and included in conversations about themselves. She also believes that clearer, actionable guidelines are needed for those in authority.

Almost a decade on, the situation, she thinks, is “better now” than when she was at school.

However, she believes that, while a lot of young people may lean towards left-wing politics, there’s a growing proportion of young people who are “getting a bit more conservative”, particularly when being exposed to “people like Andrew Tate or Clavicular or even Nick Fuentes” from a young age.

Before returning to complete Youthreach in 2024, Saoirse became involved in activism work and now works with the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU). She describes herself as someone “who stands up for justice and fair treatment”.

After briefly considering a career as a teacher, Saoirse instead wants to become a solicitor to “stand up” for people who have no one to stand up for them.

“That’s inspired me throughout my life,” she says.

“I’ve always orientated myself to using my bad circumstances to create good and that’s always been extremely important to me, to never let anything that I went through be a continuance of pain, instead to bring it into something brighter.”

Pride events, she says, are a “beautiful display of support and solidarity” and it was “absolutely wonderful to see” in Cavan.

“That was definitely a triumph for me in regards to the fact that, obviously the experiences I grew up with in my community were shaped by this negative experience, and then to see something so beautiful and positive in support of queer people is very lovely.”

“I have a lot to look forward to and I definitely grew from where I was.”