A powerful and deeply human story will take centre stage in Oughterard this weekend as local man Patrick O’Reilly launches his autobiography, I Move Forward So I Am—a book that traces an extraordinary journey from abandonment to belonging.
The launch, which takes place on Friday, 12 December at 7 p.m. in the Courthouse, invites the public to gather, listen to readings, and meet the author behind this remarkable life story. A second signing will follow on Saturday at 3 p.m. in the Bookshop Café, ensuring everyone has an opportunity to connect with Patrick and his work.
Patrick’s story begins in the heart of Paris, in the Department of Social Protection crèche where his mother left him as a toddler, promising only a short absence. “She never came back,” he writes. “I had been abandoned.” With these stark words, he opens a narrative that is both heartbreaking and hopeful, carrying the reader into the emotional world of a child who began life without the anchors so many take for granted. No parents. No extended family. No answers. “I started in life without knowing my parents,” Patrick recalls. “No mother, no father, no uncles, and no cousins. I was alone in that life.”
From Paris, he was placed with a foster family in the southwest of France—a placement that, thankfully, brought kindness and stability. Yet even in the warmth of that home, Patrick remained, in legal and emotional terms, a ward of the French Social Services for much of his childhood and adolescence. Across the pages of his autobiography, this experience of institutional belonging—different from familial belonging—forms a recurring thread as he searches for a place where his identity can truly settle.
Now a father and grandfather, Patrick came to realise that the story he carried inside him—one shaped by loss, resilience, and discovery—was unknown to his own son. That realisation became the spark that pushed him to write I Move Forward So I Am, ensuring that the next generation would understand the long journey that shaped their family. The book, he says, is not just about the past, but about claiming wholeness in the present.
Patrick’s life story stretches far beyond France and Ireland. His search for roots—both literal and emotional—took him across continents, weaving through New York, California, Hawaii, Canada, and back to Ireland and France. With honesty and introspection, he recounts moments of soaring joy, overwhelming disenchantment, and the profound humanity encountered in unexpected places. His pursuit of information about his parents and the possibility of siblings forms an emotional backbone of the narrative, revealing both the pain of not knowing and the courage required to keep seeking.
What emerges is a portrait of a man who refused to be shaped solely by the wounds of his beginning. Instead, Patrick charts a lifetime of moving forward—sometimes with confidence, sometimes with uncertainty, but always with determination. The title of the autobiography, I Move Forward So I Am, captures this philosophy. For Patrick, progress is not just motion; it is identity, survival, and ultimately, peace.
Above all, the book offers readers a meditation on identity, belonging, and the quiet strength found in humility and resilience. Patrick’s voice is both gentle and unwavering as he guides us through the turbulence of his early life and into the steadier ground he carved out for himself.
Friday’s book launch at the Courthouse promises to be a warm and welcoming event, featuring readings, a question-and-answer session, and signed copies available for purchase. Refreshments will be offered, and all are invited to attend. For those unable to make the evening launch, Saturday’s signing at the Bookshop Café will provide another chance to engage with Patrick’s story and celebrate the publication of this heartfelt and courageous autobiography.
