I am feeling incredibly sad this evening. Incredibly sad and incredibly ashamed to be calling myself Irish. It is a tough slog to live on this little Island some days and today is most definitely one of those days.
The media is awash with terms I loathe.
“illegitimate”
“unwed mother”
“out of wedlock”.
And this evening on our National News, single mothers like myself, years ago were referred too as “repeat offenders” if they dared to become pregnant more than once.
These women were shamed. They were farmed out to catholic nun’s homes (detention centres), where they were hidden away from view, made work until they bled (literally), and when their child was born it was ripped from their arms and given (sold) to the worthy families (the married ones). If these women came from poverty stricken families, and most of them did they were made stay at these hell holes and were worked into the ground for 3 yrs to “pay back” the nun’s for their “kindness”. Sounds like something from an Oliver Twist movie, right? Except it isn’t.
This week it has come to light on this holier than thou island of ours that “mass graves” have been found in not just one, but since this evening, two of these “homes”. These “graves” contain in total the remains of over 1,300 babies. No, this is not a typo.
1,300.
The media are referring to them as graves. Trouble is, one of these “graves” is a septic tank. A tank where waste is thrown. The worst kind of waste. This is where these little innocent, defenceless souls are. Not “buried”. We bury our loved ones. These are not graves. These tiny humans were thrown away. Dumped. Discarded. Unloved.
I nearly typed unwanted in the last sentence but something stopped me. Unwanted by whom? The nuns? They didn’t want them. The church, oh protector of the unborn? They didn’t want them. Old catholic Ireland? Not them either. The grandparents who shunned their daughters? Not a snowballs chance in hell and my guess is that the mothers of these babies knew that too.
These mothers. Mothers like me. Mothers I know who spent lifetimes wondering where there very loved, much wanted babies were, with broken hearts and damaged souls. These mothers wanted their babies, just as much as I wanted mine. Only difference between us is that I was born in a slightly different time. I was born in a time that didn’t lock me away, though the shame was still there. Shame put on me by my government, and by the church that resides here and by everyone who told me that it was a “shame” that I couldn’t make my son’s father stay.
I am sad today. I am sitting here wondering what on earth it must have been like to have had your child ripped from your arms and sold to the highest bidder. I am sad wondering who those 1,300 little people were and why in God’s name (literally) did they end up in a septic tank?
There is nothing “illegitimate” about my son. I am perfectly happy being “out of wedlock”. What I am sick to the back teeth of is the resurface of these terms used to describe my family.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH US. THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THOSE MOTHERS WHO WERE FORCED TO LIVE IN THOSE HORROR HOUSES AND THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THOSE 1,300 BABIES WHO WERE JUST AS BEAUTIFUL AND DESERVING OF LOVE THE SAME AS THE REST OF US.
This country needs to be dragged out into the sunlight kicking and screaming and the sooner it happens, the better.
Pieces of Me 