On Wednesday, we learned of the death of the queer Irish musician and activist Sinéad O’Connor at the age of 56. After a lifetime of being ostracized and shunned by the music industry and ridiculed for her public struggles with mental illness, O’Connor had retreated, for the final years of her life, to the small Irish village of Knockananna. While there, she mourned the recent death of her son Shane, the subject of a painful custody battle. She made friends with locals and became part of the community. She also arranged, in 2021, to donate a large quantity of unused makeup to the Irish trans community.
Related“A lot of times, publicly, we are discouraged, as trans women, to speak the truth – the whole truth.”
According to Noah Halpin, founder of the grassroots trans organization This is Me, O’Connor made contact years ago to help distribute makeup to folks that needed it.
According to another user, O’Connor also donated her clothes to trans women in the community.
O’Connor, who informally came out as queer in 2005, also converted to Islam in 2018. Despite her struggles with loneliness and suicidal ideation, she found time to give everything she had to the members of the queer community that needed it most.