Kathleen (Kat) Irvin, 56, never became a billionaire, doesn’t hold a celebrity status with thousands of fans and doesn’t have a husband. She proves that you don’t need to be gifted to give gifts, and throughout life’s struggles and heartbreaks, she looks back on her life so far with a smile on her face. Irvin now lives her life currently as a single woman, with two careers and a dog. She lives an independent and supportive life.

Irvin strives to make a difference in our current world and she never turns down an opportunity to do the right thing. She gives blood, adopts rescued dogs and loves improving everyday life for people. “I don’t know, it’s easy. I just see the need, and it’s no big [deal.] It’s something easy to do, and it makes them [happy.] And it’s different. I like to do things that are different,” Irvin said.

Irvin also gives 5% of her salary to a church every month, even though she doesn’t usually attend. Throughout her life she has worked at day camps for kids and also worked with troubled kids. She now works at a hospital full time, as well as a clinic in her free time.

This underlying level of enthusiasm has always stuck with Irvin, and she sees some of her past experiences in an optimistic light.  “I have bipolar II, and part of that is getting depression, and now in retrospect, I had episodes of depression during college, but didn’t know it at the time, so because of that I almost flunked out of school. But it was a good experience,” Irvin said.

When confronted with the fact that it was surprising that she saw her school involvement laced with depression as a good experience, she went on further to say: “I had good professors, who took notice of me. So, even though I wasn’t doing well in their class, they tried to help me along. I mean, it wasn’t a GREAT college experience, would I do it again? Probably not. But it was okay.” Irvin also involved with a group called Meyer’s House that had 12 other inhabitants. She only lived in her dorm for one year which she found beneficial.

Irvin was also active in high school sports. Not only did she apply for basketball and swimming, but they were both men’s teams and she was accepted.

“I never won a tennis match, and in swimming I swam the 500, and I usually ended up about 4 lengths behind the 3rd place person. That’s okay though, it wasn’t bad, it was fine! I knew it was gonna happen,” Irvin said. She explained that she did it for fun, and that she learned to not take the games too seriously and enjoy herself. By doing this, she achieved an aspect of life that many people strive to have for themselves: being able to enjoy life without too much weight on her shoulders.

Irvin lost her mom to a chronic illness in her 30’s, but when her dad remarried to a woman only eight years older than herself, she saw the opportunity to make the situation into a good one and treat her new mother and their child as a second family. Her first family had six people in it: her two parents, three siblings and herself. All of her siblings, from both families get along with each other quite well and Irvin says that they even protected themselves from each other as children.

“My father once said that my mother wanted it so if she were to die, we could take care of ourselves. That started when I was four to five, so I became very independent early on,” Irvin said. This independence has paid off, and her friends and family are truly impressed.