My Big Why

That phrase, “Know your why” irks me. Mainly because I know what it means but don’t really know what it means.

It’s a statement so often given as standalone advice but rarely explained. If you ask the advisor for clarity, or an example, the best they offer is a repeat of the same. They re-emphasise it: “Know your why”, you know? “Know why you are doing what you are doing”. “Know why you were drawn to that idea/topic/project/job etc. etc.”.

I rarely know my why (hence why the lack of granular explanation of such advice irks me).

Most new ventures in my life began when I feel compelled (by something) and then I do (it).

I get the curiosity, or the urge and I go. There is no question of why, because compulsion has overridden it — I have no choice.

That’s how I landed up embarking on this research project anyway: I woke up in the middle of the night on the 31st of January 2017 with a phrase repeating over and over in my head “The women of Ireland are unique and you’re going to write a book about them”.

It made utterly no sense. Such questions of gender, or women’s studies, or culture or any of it were not part of my research agenda or interests at the time. It just arrived and never let me go.

It compelled me (although it wasn’t until 2021 that I began to really do anything about it, when I started interviewing women). There was no rhyme or reason. There was no why, apart from, I have to.

One of the women I interviewed said something I think of often:

“Because I get these feelings Belinda if you don't do this, you'll die…. If you don't do this, you'll die. Something has been birthed”.

I know that feeling. Not quite ‘or you’ll die’ but a feeling of not being able to live comfortably if I don’t do this. That I will have no peace until I do the thing.

In this way all I can do, is do without really knowing why or for what purpose or outcome I am doing the thing for. But invariably, I find that the why does reveal itself as I go along — often not until the very end. When I can stand next to the penultimate step and look back at all the others I have climbed and see it — the Big Why — has been walking beside me all along.

The Women of Ireland Project has never had a clear Why. For the near enough last four years of research, interviewing and writing I have been in the dark in that regard. There have been several important, compelling and worthy whys that have kept me going along the way — like taking good care with the life stories women have given me, attempting to do their words justice in my writing — but they are not the Big Why.

The Big Why holds the key to the bigger picture. The divine purpose shall we say, of why is this book I am writing about the forces which have shaped women of Ireland being written at all?

Why am I here trying to go as deep into the murky depths and layers of the complex cultural strata that influence women of Ireland as I can? Bring it all up and out. The good and the bad. Lay it all bare and say why it is there in the first place?

A friend sent me a voicenote the other day. It was about other things, but in it she mentioned having watched back the talk I gave last year on the concept of Tight Culture and how it explains the relationship between Ireland’s historical experience of threat and the strict norms women (and everyone of Ireland) have been expected to adhere to.

She explained how, as she listened to the ways we are disciplined to behave — to adhere to strict social norms — through things like shaming, ridicule, passing-remarks, slagging, belittling, gossiping she could hear it. She could hear all the times such things have been done to her in her life, the words that people used, the phrases — she felt them ‘talking inside of her’. She could feel all the emotions that went with it, the stress, the anxiety, the disappointment. And she could recognise how they are not her. They were placed within her. By Tight Culture, and how that is perpetuated by society and family. She could see it.

This is my why. This is my Big Why.

I want to pick apart the layers of our cultural shaping so much and lay them out with as much clarity as I can, and bring as much understanding and sense-making to them as I can muster that people might be able to See Things they may not have even known where there. The things that are pulling at us, the things that are not us but have become us.

Because you can’t address/heal/change what is not known.

That is my Big Why.

I have a quote from Sinéad O’Connor’s Famine pinned above my desk.

“And if there ever is gonna be healing

There has to be remembering and then grieving

So that there then can be forgiving

There has to be knowledge and understanding”

She has been naming my Big Why for me all along.