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The idea of an orphan is the kind of people you expect to come across only in a Dickens novel. But Sarah and Jack Corbett are that novel, come to life.

They were part of a happy family in Ireland when their mother died from a sudden and severe asthma attack. Their father, Jason, left to raise two young children – including Sarah who was only 12 weeks old, at the time – knew he needed help.

He eventually hired an au pair from America and, a few years later, married her. Jason moved his children and his new wife back to America. Jason took a job with his company near Lexington and seemed to many on the outside, to be happy. He had a nickname for his daughter.

​”Well, I’m Noodle and my dad is Boogawooga,” said Sarah, now 14. “He would say, ‘Boogawooga,’ in the mornings – I don’t know what it means, it’s just something he would say and it always made me happy and made me smile.”

Then, one terrible night in August 2015, Sarah and Jack lost their father too, when he was beaten to death in their house.

Sarah was just 9 — a lot for a kid that age to deal with, having lost both of her parents.

Their aunt – Jason’s older sister, Tracey – moved Sarah and Jack back to Ireland and adopted them. Tracey and her husband, David, thought it would help Sarah to express herself.

“I got a new notebook and I wanted to write in it so I just started writing and I loved it and kept going. It came out to be something I really loved,” Sarah said. “I found it easier to write than to speak.”

“I think a lot of it, with the writing for Sarah, was therapeutic. She kept diaries, all the time,” Tracey said.

Sarah decided she needed to do more than simply write in her notebook so she convinced her aunt to allow her to write a book — but not just for herself — and she calls it “Noodle Loses Dad.”

Although this is very much Sarah’s story, she and Tracey both see this book and, perhaps, other books to follow as a way to help people through a variety of difficult times.

“Lots of people struggle in many different ways and it’s just to give that little bit of hope and to open up conversation with people so that we can communicate,” Tracey said.

Sarah’s work seems to very much help those around her. In conjunction with International Women’s Day, Sarah was named one of Ireland’s, “Top 20 Inspirational Women,” along with renown actress, Saorse Ronan (from the movie, “Little Women”) and the writer, Sinead Burke.

Meet Sarah, in this edition of the Buckley Report.

For more information on Sarah’s work, click here.