Kathryn Ferguson

Obviously, I grew up in the north and that came with its own situation.

But certainly across the island of Ireland, we'd grown up, I'd say, as second class citizens, as women, with obviously the church dominating everything in the south.

And women's autonomy being so far down the list, it was something that we kind of grew up with.

And of course, I had an inherent anger about how we had been treated and how our mothers and grandmothers have been treated.

I was introduced to Sinead through my father when I was five.

He adored her and he blasted the lion and the cobra on repeat as we drove around rainy Ireland and many, many a road trip with her just wailing and blasting through the speakers.

And it was such a visceral experience for me then as a young girl.

And then when I was in my early teens and her second album came out, I guess I was conscious

By then, I also had multiple friends who felt the same as I did and felt the same about her as I did.

I was very lucky that my father had showed me her as an example of exactly like this perfect character, like just so bold and brave and talented and cool and angry and all the things that I

I did grow up feeling disempowered, actually, and it took me a long time to find my confidence and my voice.

But having this character out in the ether and making so much noise and creating so much news, I was so excited by her existence as were my friends.

So I felt like I discovered her for a second time in my early teens when I really kind of needed her at that point.

However, when that happened was really a year or so before the huge controversy happened against her when she used her own voice to speak out and call out the abuse in the Catholic Church in such a public way.

And she was absolutely destroyed over, you know, I guess, watching this woman that I admired so deeply and actually really looked up to, almost like an older sister.

I felt really connected to her even then.

Watching her go through that was a real dent, I think, for all of us to witness one of our own and one of our own women being treated so disgracefully on a global stage.

I feel like that created something which I've never been able to put out.

It was the fury at witnessing that happen to one of our own.

I think maybe that was the start of it for me.