Tag Archives: transgender

CLARE Champion journalist, Owen Ryan, has scooped a major journalism award for an article on how Shannon’s Jamie Walsh embraced his transgenderism after years of depression and inner torment. “The Importance of being Jamie” outlined Jamie’s experience of being a young transgender person and the impact on his mental health. The article won the top award in Headline’s Mental Health Journalism Local Print category for a news report or feature, published in a regional outlet, that deals with mental health issues. The judges citation stated: “The judges felt that the Importance of Being Jamie was a beautiful and well-written piece. It gave a voice to Jamie, a young transgender person, to share his experiences of being trans and the impact on his mental health. He did so with great openness and integrity. It felt especially important that a piece on this topic appeared in a local paper, shining a much-needed light on what can be a very dark and lonely …

INNER torment, fear of rejection and depression marked much of the early life of 21 year old Jamie Walsh, but he is now far happier and hopeful about what the future holds. What has changed for Jamie is that he can now be open about who he really is and what he feels. Raised in Shannon as a girl and named Saoirse, it was never a good fit but now he is living with a new name, has embraced his transgenderism and is planning to have hormone therapy within the next year or so. His mother Donna McGettigan was recently co-opted onto Clare County Council, and last week the two spent an hour of their morning talking about Jamie’s journey, in the sitting room of her Shannon home. Donna has been supportive all along – when Jamie was deeply depressed, when her only child came out as a lesbian and when she was told that the person she knew as …