Frances Black, the singer and independent senator, has spoken of the shame and stigma she felt after becoming pregnant as a teenager and her parents saying she could no longer use the front door of the family house.
After taking an emotional journey to the places that matter most to her, Ms Black recalls in the latest episode of RTÉ The keys to my lifehow her teenage pregnancy tore her family apart.
“I knew dad was devastated. It put the family to shame,” she said. “He couldn’t even bear to look at his beautiful daughter and think ‘she’s pregnant.’ He really, really struggled with that. And I carried a lot of shame around that.
She got a job at a nursery to save money for the birth of the baby, but was told she was no longer welcome outside the front door in case the neighbors saw her. When she came home at the end of each working day, she said, “I had to go around the back so the neighbors wouldn’t see me.
“I remember feeling that strength of ‘I’m going to do this and it’ll be fine no matter what’.”
Despite her struggles, she considered herself one of Ireland’s lucky cases of the 1980s, having been allowed to keep her son, Eoghan.
“I remember there was another young girl who got pregnant around the same time and she just disappeared. She was in one of the Madeleine laundries and when she came back there was no baby. I remember thinking, “I’m so blessed.”
The pregnancy led to a hasty marriage that ended in five years. Black then became a single mother of two young children, after the birth of her daughter Aoife. She was facing homelessness, but was saved when her friend offered her a spare bed in her house in Dublin “for very low rent…it really saved my life”.
After returning to the property for the first time in 30 years, Black recalled that it was also where her addiction started to take hold, once she put the kids to bed each night.
“It was lonely I guess and then it got worse. Once I started drinking I couldn’t stop until I passed out to numb the loneliness, to numb everything that was going on. The insecurities, low self-esteem, not being good enough. Everything. The kids were young at the time but it must have been very difficult for them.
Eventually, she came across a newspaper article that detailed the story of a woman with the same toxic drinking habits. She realized she needed help.
“I’ll never forget going to the counselor and realizing the impact my drinking had on the kids. I said, ‘I’ll never touch a drink again’. That was in 1988 and I haven’t had a drink since.
As part of the RTÉ programme, Black also revisited the home on Rathlin Island, County Antrim, where she spent idyllic childhood summers that temporarily relieved school bullying and poverty of life in Dublin city centre.
The 62-year-old also revisits the Victorian house in South Circular Road bought by her parents for just £13,000 in the late 1980s. This led to an inheritance which funded her studies in drug addiction and put the singer on the Leinster House lane.
“It would have been, I believe, my parents’ proudest moment. When I was elected to Seanad Éireann, I felt so close to both. I’m getting emotional now even thinking about it.
“I was there, walking into Leinster House and all the ushers were there and I was sure they were going to say, ‘Excuse me, what are you doing here?’ I just thought, ‘I’m from Charlemont Street, how did this happen?’ »
Meeting Brian, her husband of 27 years, was one of the most important turning points in her life.
“From the moment we met, life just got better and better,” she says.
“The Keys to My Life” with Frances Black, RTÉ One, tonight at 8:30 p.m.
#brought #shame #family #teenage #pregnancy #tore #Frances #Blacks #family
