This paper shares my former literacy learner and friend - Marie's journey - and my own. We explore critical approaches to education and beyond and how they offer a potential space for transformation not just for the learner but for the teacher. The ripple impact has supported us on our journey across nearly two decades. Our relationship was forged by a learner driven, and socially empowering model (Freire, 1993; Barton et al 2003; Duckworth, 2013, 14; Duckworth and Smith 2017, 2018) which takes into consideration the cultural, psychological and educational factors related to the Learners and their lives and driven by creating critical spaces for organic transformative tools for consciousness-raising (Freire 1995) and a caring space where hope can act as a change agent that fuelled our life. In this paper we argue that the aforementioned encourages dialogic communication between teachers and literacy learners whereby learners, teachers and communities can share stories, ask questions, analyse and subsequently work through effective and meaningful strategies to take agency over their lives, enhancing their situation and empowering them in the public and personal domains of their journeys.