Mary Enright is finishing up one of the regular self-development classes she gives to a group of Travellers at the Glen Community Centre in west Belfast. It is empowering stuff, she says, before turning off the television, saying goodbye to an elderly woman and sitting down to talk.
With the launch of a book of personal accounts from people affected by the Troubles, this warm Belfast woman has something other than community work on her mind. It is over two years since Mary Enright's 28-year-old son Terry was murdered by LVF gunmen outside the citycentre nightclub where he was working part-time.
She tells her story in the video that accompanies the book, Personal Accounts from Northern Ireland's Troubles; Public Conflict, Private Loss.
The telling was difficult and some members of her close-knit family did not want her to take part. "They knew I would be upset for days afterwards," she explains. But it was important, she says.
People with loved ones who were injured or bereaved still need support. And the rest of us, consumed once again with the prospect of a lasting peace, need reminding. "There was nothing done for too long, too many people were left in the wilderness," she says.
It is a hot sunny day and she sits inside, offering details about her son, cherished fragments of his life. She knows they can't paint the whole picture, but like the other stories recounted in the book and video documentary, . . . And Then There Was Silence, they at the very least provide a poignant sketch.
So she smiles remembering Terry the amateur sportsman, employed by the Upper Springfield Development Trust to teach young people a variety of outdoor pursuits. Terry working with Challenge for Youth, a group for young people at risk. Terry the boxer, the bird watcher, the GAA player, the motivator. The Terry who was "no saint either", according to his mother, but whose funeral was one of the biggest attended since the hunger strikes.
She describes him as a fit, strong and tough man. Young Terry. His father has the same name and he was like his Dad in many ways. He himself was the father of two small children and the wife of Deirdre who happened to be a niece of Gerry Adams. This connection was never seen as a reason for the attack.
Terry had friends and admirers in both communities. David Ervine, leader of the PUP, said afterwards that Mary's son was a fine and reputable young man with a vision of the future, murdered brutally by people without a vision of the future.
In the terrible aftermath of her son's death, neighbours and friends rallied round. They did the cleaning. They cooked dinners. They made the tea. And although it was hard to focus her mind, she found ways of accessing the support so badly needed by the family: "Because of my community work I knew how to access services, I knew what was available for Deirdre and the kids and the rest of us". She organised a holiday for Deirdre in Cork and got in touch with various counselling groups.
"I knew what could be done, the reason I got involved in this project was because a lot of people didn't know," she says.
Alice Nocher was one of many who didn't know and life in what Mary Enright describes as the wilderness has taken its toll on her soft features. In a chapter entitled "The Troubles Is My Life", the north Belfast woman recounts the litany of tragedies inflicted on her and her family in decades past. In 1975 her brother was killed in a bomb explosion.
A couple of years later she was shot eight times on her way to work, somehow managing to survive. Then in 1983 her husband, Davy, was gunned down in a sectarian attack at work.
Her teenage life was spent cowering in her bedroom from fear, her hair falling out in clumps from the stress. In the callous words of one doctor consulted about the problem, she should think herself lucky it hadn't turn white overnight. As an adult and mother, she was left with serious financial burdens. Davy had been working part time so she was entitled to compensation but because she was not given legal aid, she couldn't take the case.
"It is a cruel world," she says in the book. "But I think if you had financial help it would make it that much easier. Because for to get one of them a pair of shoes you've to save up for weeks. And this is the way it was going on. A constant battle".
Alcohol became a coping mechanism for many victims of the Troubles, including Bel McGuinness from Bawnmore in Belfast, now president of the Greencastle Women's Group. Her husband was killed by a plastic bullet in 1981 and her drinking got so bad she had her gall bladder removed. She feels strongly that people need to be allowed to tell their stories and that counselling should have been made more readily available for those affected.
"People are still living with it 30 years on, it is a part of their history, it is a huge chunk of their life . . . with the book they could tell their story in their own words. That meant an awful lot," she says.
Compiled by the Cost of the Troubles Study (COTTS), a charity set up after the 1994 ceasefire to monitor Northern Ireland society, the book contains 14 accounts of people affected by the Troubles. From the young man who has received 13 punishments beatings from the IRA to a disabled police officer to the woman whose husband was killed by the IRA for being an informer.
In all, 85 interviews were conducted by the director of COTTS, sociologist Marie Smyth and research officer Marie Therese Fay, who said the experience of travelling around Northern Ireland faithfully transcribing these stories changed her life.
Both envisage the video documentary being used as a training tool, available to a variety of sectors in Northern Ireland, including GPs, social workers and mental health workers.
Through her work with COTTS, Ms Smyth has already been responsible for some of the most important statistical data collated on fatalities that occurred during the Troubles. This book represents the human face of the number crunching. The stories that still need to be told.
Personal Accounts of the Northern Ireland Troubles: Public Conflict, Private Loss is published by Pluto and priced at £12.99 sterling.