From losing a child or close family member in tragic circumstances, to being falsely imprisoned for a terrible alleged crime, or dealing with serious illness or abuse, the power of the human spirit to overcome the worst that life can throw at it is quite amazing.

"I think we can sometimes become immune and de-sensitised to the abuses that go on in the world, and are reported in the papers every day, " says journalist Trina Rea, a researcher on the Late Late Show, "but sometimes a story stays with you, and you find yourself wondering what happened to the people involved once the media moved on from their story."

It was this interest that inspired Trina to put together a collection of true stories about ordinary Irish women, and their extraordinary experiences of dealing with tragedy and taking something beneficial from it. From Eilish Enright who was wrongly imprisoned in a foreign country and falsely accused of molesting her children, to Ann McCabe, whose late husband Detective Garda Jerry McCabe was murdered in the line of duty, each story movingly and sensitively describes the human stories behind the headlines in the papers.

"What struck me most was how these particular women have come through such horrific tragedies, but have managed to turn them around into something positive, " says Trina. "I would hope that their stories will inspire people who are going through a difficult period in their own lives."

JANETTE B YRNE, FOUNDER OF PATIENTS TOGETHER

Janette was an ordinary 39-year-old mother when she diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2001. After undergoing an operation, and 90 days of in-patient hospital treatment, Janette was forced to take a case to the High Court because she couldn't get the rest of her cancer treatment, due to of a shortage of beds.

"I feared the worst because I had been told that I needed to receive my chemotherapy in a timely manner, and subsequently there was a good chance I would make a full recovery, " she says.

"When there was a delay with my treatment, I worried that the tumour would start to grow again."

Janette phoned every organisation that she thought might be able to help, but was saddened to find that nobody could do anything. Having spoken on Joe Duffy's Liveline radio programme, the response to her story revealed to her that she wasn't the only one suffering within the Irish healthcare service. Inspired by the horror stories she had subsequently heard of people who were forced to wait dangerously long periods of time for treatment, Janette decide to take a legal case, which thankfully she won, and the presiding judge ruled that a bed had to be provided for her treatment.

Another shocking aspect of Janette's experience was the poor hygiene in her cancer ward, which she couldn't believe, given that cancer patients are so vulnerable to infection. She developed septicaemia at one point, and was horrified at some of the conditions she witnessed. "The hospital ward was dirty, " she says. "Filthy. Excrement on the floor. Overflowing sanitary bins. Inside the toilet cubicles, there were splashes on the walls and around the toilet, splashes of vomit and God-knows-what." Eventually Janette became free from cancer, but she remained shocked by her experience and also that of her mother, who was left on a trolley in A&E for five days, under horrendous conditions.

Such was the distress experienced by Janette's family and another family, the Mulreanys, that they came together to form Patients Together, a non-political group of patients and their families that seek to highlight the current situation in A&E departments around the country. The bubbly, vivacious Janette is the spokesperson for the organisation, and she works tirelessly and empathically, helping people who are going through the same experiences as she did, and trying to bring about reform.

"My experience at the hospital caused me more stress than cancer ever did, " she admits. "I could manage the cancer, but I couldn't handle how the system failed me, how I was treated, and above all, how I was made feel. We all use the hospitals, so we should all stand together and demand a proper health service."

LINDA REED, LIVING WITH HIV

Linda Reed was 25 when she was diagnosed as being HIV positive. A very academically gifted young woman from a loving family in Blackrock, Co Dublin, she started taking heroin at 17 years of age to help with her self-esteem issues, and quickly became addicted.

"The first time I took heroin, it wasn't really what it made me feel, it was more about what it didn't make me feel, " she says.

"As I walked into the Belfield university bar, for the first time in my life I didn't care what anyone else thought. I felt a security and confidence that didn't come with being 17."

As she became increasingly dependent on heroin, Linda began to deal drugs to feed her own habit, and was arrested on three occasions. Despite the best efforts of her family to help her, the situation spiralled out of control, and she moved to Germany with her boyfriend Darren, whom she later married.

They had a daughter, Derrie, and a son, Merlyn, and despite her best efforts to resist it, Linda eventually turned to prostitution to support her addiction.

"It was five in the morning and I hadn't sold any gear, " she recalls, "so not only did I have no money for drugs, I had no money for food for my children. I said to myself that I was going to do it . . . I was going to go with a punter."

While Linda was generally responsible about using protection, some men offered double and triple pay for sex without a condom, and when she was really stuck for money for drugs, she took the risk. She was later arrested and was detoxing in the prison's hospital wing when she was given an Aids test that turned out to be positive. "I couldn't comprehend anything the doctor was saying, " she says, "but somehow I caught the most important detail . . . 'You have three years to live'."

Linda was deported back to Ireland, where Darren had already returned with the children. She went on methadone treatment, and began to spend time at the counselling centre attended by other ex-drug users and HIV victims. As Linda became more in control of her life, and rekindled her relationship with her children, she began to work with the Aids Alliance to address the huge problem of misinformation and lack of understanding about Aids in this country. She gave talks about living with HIV in schools and hospitals, and also taught a drugs and Aids awareness course, as well as setting up a support group for HIV-positive women, and working for the Drugs Task Force.

Having achieved so much in educating people about Aids, Linda's own health has begun to fail and, worryingly, she is now resistant to 16 of the 20 drug treatments available. Nonetheless, she still remains strong and positive, and is selflessly determined to use her experiences to help other people.

"I hope that what I've learned can save others from walking the paths I've walked, " she says. "Most of all, I've shared my story because when I die, I don't want my children to be ashamed that I died of Aids."

MARIE GOUGH, MOTHER OF MURDER VICTIM

When Marie Gough's 26-year-old daughter Mary got married to Colin Whelan, it should have been the beginning of a new and happy chapter of her life. Instead, the much-loved, vivacious young woman was dead less than six months later, murdered by her new husband who had coldly plotted to take her life, and callously arranged it to look like an accident.

Mary grew up in Stamullen in Co Meath with her five brothers. She first met Whelan in the local pub, the Huntsman.

They went out together for two years, and the whole family liked him, until one day he told Mary out of the blue that the relationship was finished. They got back together six months later, having met at a party, and moved in together in 1997. It was on holidays that Whelan produced a surprise engagement ring.

"Mary phoned me to announce the news and she was elated, " recalls Marie. "She was crying down the phone with happiness."

After the wedding, during which Mary was found crying inconsolably at one point after the ceremony, which at the time was put down to the absence of her late father, Marie noticed that her daughter was becoming somewhat withdrawn, and thinks that she may have been aware at that point that something was wrong in her marriage.

An insurance policy taken out before the wedding had been increased in value, so that if the death of either spouse occurred within 10 years, the other partner would receive 508,000. And Whelan had begun an on-line relationship with a Welsh woman, to whom he pretended his fiancee had died and he had collected the insurance money. Most chillingly, computer searches revealed that he had begun to investigate ways to murder someone on the internet, one month after taking out the insurance policy.

When Marie got a call during the night of 1 March 2001, it was telling her to come to the hospital as Mary had accidentally fallen down the stairs. When she arrived at the hospital, Marie saw Colin sitting in a little room.

"I walked up to Colin and asked, 'How's Mary?'" she says.

"He snapped, cold as can be, 'She's dead', and his tone and attitude was such that I didn't ask anything else."

A nurse at the hospital noticed scratch marks on Whelan that aroused her suspicions, and other marks were uncovered upon further examination. An autopsy carried out on Mary's body by state pathologist Marie Cassidy concluded that the young bride had not died accidentally, but instead had been strangled with the cord of her dressing gown.

Colin Whelan was charged with Mary's murder, but several months before the trial date, his car was found abandoned near Howth Head with a suicide note. He was presumed dead, although Marie never believed he was, and she was proved right when he was spotted by a holidaymaker, working in a bar in Majorca. Whelan was apprehended and he pleaded guilty to murder at the trial, and received the mandatory life sentence of 15 years.

"Colin is serving a life sentence, " says the kind and gentle Marie, "but the boys and I are serving one too. I don't hate or hold bitterness towards him, because hate is a terrible thing.

If you let it into your life it will rip your family apart, and finally it will turn on you and destroy you. I do everything I can to remain strong, both physically and mentally. I have to feel lucky to be alive, and enjoy this life that has been given to me."

Janette, Linda and Marie's full stories are told in 'Triumph Over Tragedy', by Trina Rea, along with the stories of Roisin McConnell, the McCartney sisters, Eilish Enright, Ann McCabe and Tara O'Brien