Shot NINE times but Belfast woman transformed her life to run business and pick up Prince's Trust award
Remarkable turnaround for victim of masked gunmen
A Belfast woman who turned her life around after being shot nine times by a masked gang was last night (Monday) honoured at a special charity event.
Jemma McGrath (29) won a Prince’s Trust enterprise award after becoming a successful businesswoman.
Five years ago her life was very different.
Struggling with drink and drugs, the low point in her life came when she was seriously injured by gunmen.
Ms McGrath had been told she might never walk but while recovering in a wheelchair she transformed her life.
That blossomed into running a firm selling false eyelashes online, with a new office and plans to start supplying her products in shops.
She said: “ know how much I have put into this, it has literally been blood and sweat and tears.
“Make-up in a way saved my bacon.''
Ms McGrath was raised in a part of East Belfast divided between Catholics and Protestants.
She said: I grew up on the peace line where you were taught to hate people because of religion, race or beliefs.
“As a teenager I was very angry at life, at the world.''
She added: “Coming from a broken home and having responsibility of looking out for my wee brothers just gave me a burden and made me spitting fire and angry at everybody in life.''
Alcohol and substances helped her cope.
“The drink and drugs got me into trouble in the end and I ended up getting shot nine times.''
Some organised crime groupings in Northern Ireland carry out assaults and shootings to exert influence over communities for self-serving reasons, police have said.
Ms McGrath was in hospital for a month and a wheelchair for three, recovering from a broken arm and leg, with bullet wounds to both legs.
One round remains lodged in her stomach.
“I have got plates and pins and screws and every other piece of metal that you can think about holding my body together, but I also have determination to overcome it.
“The determination was what kept me going, it was the inner thing to prove people wrong, that I can do this and I am not going to let it beat me.''
Ms McGrath said the Prince's Trust accolade - the Northern Ireland, Ulster Bank Enterprise Award - had given her renewed self-confidence.
“It is not just a wee business idea no more, this is grown up and it is really good and I have come from being that person, down in the dumps, to up and coming, a successful businesswoman.''
Her firm, #makeupurlife, started out on Facebook as a way of coping and the name always had more than one meaning.
“I was in a wheelchair, I could only move one arm and I was sitting doing YouTube tutorials with one hand and practising on one of my nieces.
“That was how I got my mind focused on something else.''
She is a now a fully-qualified make-up artist and eyebrow stylist and has designed her own eyelashes line, while working on self-development with young women from across Northern Ireland.
She added: “I know exactly what it is like to have nothing and be at rock-bottom.
“When you have been there you just have this thing inside you that makes you want to make sure that no one else is there.''