Maureen Fitzgerald

Good Girl Maureen Fitzgerald

Not all revolutions take place through violent means; fueling our most personal, intimate rebellions is what ascends us to victory against the destructive myths we worship... There are certain messages that women receive from the world with a promise that life will be fair; that the pursuit of goodness will render a life free of pain and heartache. When Maureen Fitzgerald first learned that her husband of three months was addicted to meth, her notions of being a "good girl" crumbled when love and goodness could not save him from addiction. After a year of drowning in his addiction and narcissism, Maureen's obliterated marriage left her with a broken spirit and disillusionment for life and humanity. In this darkness, she sought to find her truest purpose and meaning by sewing together memories, conversations, journal entries, and poems. Through this excavation of her past, Maureen collected soundbites to make sense of her last 30 years as a woman, her marriage, her pain, the pandemic, and a country in shambles. Left with the shrapnel of a shattered spirit, Maureen could not avoid the simple truth that the only way to make it out the other side of her suffering was to step fully into her own rebellion and turn it into a revolution.