Making a difference by being yourself, Albert Cashier and Jennie Hodgers, a real life ordinary hero.

Did you ever feel that to make a difference you needed to do something extraordinary?

That you would need a special kind of superpower not available to ordinary people?

Or that ordinary people are rarely extraordinary compared to people like Elvis, Nelson Mandela or Annie Lennox? 

Thinking we cannot make a difference without doing something magnificent can often blind us to the many ordinary people who paved the way for what we take for granted in an “enlightened world”.

This month I have been looking up extraordinary Irish female history makers in preparation for a new course for the autumn and one of the most extraordinary women I have come across (and there are many!)  is one Albert D. J. Cashier, who was born Jennie Irene Hodgers,  on December 25th, 1843, in Clogherhead, Co. Louth.

As a young emigrant, Jennie adopted a male persona somewhere between leaving Ireland and arriving…

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