Danielle Gallagher gets a trim in preparation of getting her head shaved for charity. RMGFH182
TODAY ( Friday) , Danielle Gallagher turned back the years, literally, by having her head shaved for charity.
For, due to extreme bullying at school, she ‘hid behind my hair’ and would not get it cut.
Her locks will be going to the Little Princess Trust for conversion into wigs for young cancer patients while sponsorship money will go to Fermanagh Women’s Aid for whom she was a volunteer.
So, what about that uncomfortable childhood.
“I was very badly bullied at school and I would have hidden behind my hair and I would have continued doing that long after I would have thought I was over the bullying. I simply didn’t get my hair cut.”
But, today , in ‘Hair By Amy Gow’ on the Cornagrade Road, Enniskillen, at 11am, Danielle took steps to erase the past by giving something to young people who have their own problems.
She counts Fermanagh Women’s Aid as her favourite charity,
“It’s not just because of the help they give to abused women, but it’s stopping the abuse in the first place by going into the schools.”
“The abuse I got as a child may not have been domestic abuse but, at the end of the day, I know how long it took to get away from that, and the support of so many people it took to get me over it.”
It was her English accent and being brought up in Brookeborough that was the trigger, she feels.
Her mum, Sarah and her three younger siblings still live in Brookeborough where she was brought up by her grandparents, Michael and Jenny Hicks.
“Michael had his own pack of hounds and ran the West Ulster Hunt on Topped Mountain. He and granny would have moved to Fermanagh in the 70s and, when he did in 2006, there was a guard of honour of huntsmen from the Knocks who were particularly fond of him.”
Today, she lives between Brookeborough and Tempo and works in Enniskillen, for the past number of years in the Convent of Mercy, Enniskillen. She and the Sisters got on really well (”I found them very supportive”).
In 2012, she converted to Catholicism, after which she has become active in St Michael’s parish, as a reader and Eucharistic Minister.
“My faith has made me who I am”, she said. “It has helped me enormously come to terms with the past.”
Sponsorship money can be given into Fermanagh’s Women’s Aid or to Danielle herself, either at Mass or at https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/daniellegallagher.
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