Where there is dark there is light, and we're made of both

The pain and pride of being a woman of Ireland

“And how are you this morning”? I said to the Austrian guy next to me as we poured the coffee flavoured hot water that always seems to be ‘catering standard issue’ at conferences, regardless of location, into cups. This time it was a small-town in Germany and the Austrian guy was a fellow doctoral student I’d met the day before. He looked at me with discomfort and confusion. We stared blankly at one another, lukewarm tea cups in hand, floundering. Him about what to say next. Me about what I’d said wrong. Another Austrian came to our rescue, “It’s okay, my PhD Supervisor is Irish too; they do this” he explained, turning to his fellow countryman, “They ask how you are and how are you getting on. It seems weird but they’re just interested in people”. ‘It seems weird?’ I thought to myself, still confused. I was lost in translation.

“And how long have you lived in Dublin then”? I watched an older man from ‘down the country’ engage the Brazilian student sat next to him on the Luas. “Six years is it? And do you like it, you do, ah very-good-very-good. And what’s it you do then? A PhD! Fair play. In engineering! More power to you……” The chat continued like this for the next twenty-five minutes as the Luas (or ‘The Slow’ as my husband ironically named it when I told him ‘luas’ is Irish for fast and it’s anything but) trundled through the city. The older man asking him more about his PhD and listened with genuine interest. Delighting in learning the younger man liked hiking and it meant he had seen more of Ireland than just Dublin. They shared their favourite parts of the country and when it came time for the PhD student to get off, the older man grabbed his hand and shook it, “All the best now with your research. Sure, don’t we need more young people like you”. ‘This would never happen on the Tube’, I said to myself, thinking on the journey I had taken that morning from London.

“It would never happen in Ireland. Never!” a friend recently exclaimed as she regaled me with the story of her and her family standing on the side of the road in France next to their broken-down car. “Not one person stopped. No one came to ask us if we needed help. And this old man just walked by us, staring — like he came over to look at us but then didn’t do anything. It was mad. Mad!”

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When I began interviewing women for the Women of Ireland Project I had no idea what I would find. But I was motivated by a sense that it was worth doing, there was worth in asking, ‘What has it been like to be a woman of Ireland’? — that there was something there to know.

I knew I’d be told hard things —no one’s life is a bed of roses— but I wasn’t prepared for how hard. Even now, as I continue to work my way through the analysis of each interview in-depth, I struggle to grasp the full weight of the pain (the hardship, the challenge, the burden, the anguish, the wounding) that appears in a woman’s story when ‘Ireland’ and ‘being a woman’ get connected. And when you’ve heard 37 stories about ‘being a woman of Ireland’ that pain is amplified.

I started referring to it (just in my own head) as ‘The Pain Body’ — the Collective Pain Body of The Women of Ireland (akin to Eckart Tolle’s explanation of the ‘Pain Body’ as an energy field of old, stored, negative emotion, that I also extend to negative events, physical experiences and the societal influences and expectations that women carry). It’s this collective pain body that often results in me procrastinating from doing the work I need to do here. I need a certain amount of mettle to face it and on many a day, I just don’t have it.

They say that humans are more sensitive to bad things than good (that our ‘negativity bias’ means we pay more attention to unpleasant things than pleasant). Certainly, I’ve been focused (fixated) on the ‘bad things’ that come with being a woman of Ireland.

Much of my writing on here has been dedicated, in one way or another, to some aspect of unpacking the collective ‘Pain Body’ (and if I could have any wish for the book I am writing is that I can unpack it so much, that it might just be transformed, if even for one person). I’ve written about the shame, the intergenerational trauma, societal expectations and notions like ‘respectability’ and ‘just get on with it’ (i.e. the strong woman), and the codependency of the family unit, that often negatively impacts women, amongst others. And they’re only the tip of the iceberg. I’ve not yet fully faced the abuse, violence, control, manipulation, silencing and trauma that exists much deeper down.

At a tutored writing retreat a few months ago, one of the tutors asked me “Is there anything you’ve found in your interviews that surprised you”?. “Yes”, I replied, “I was surprised by just how bad it is, or how, when ‘woman’ and ‘of Ireland’ get connected, how negative its connotations are”.

That’s true, but it’s also not entirely true. Or rather there’s another side to it. That for every negative there’s a positive. For all the pain there’s also so much pride. That, despite the intensity of the ‘pain body’ that seems to come with being a woman of Ireland, few would want to be anything else.

“Where there is dark, there’s light” — I noted in the margin next to a section of an interview the other day.

It was a section expressing a sentiment that, in one form or another, nearly every interviewee has conveyed: that community — keeping an eye out for other people (whether they like them or not), taking an interest in the lives of others (whether they know them or not), and helping people (whether they have any relationship with them or not)— is what Ireland and people of Ireland do really well. That it’s inherent in our language and the phrases we use to start a conversation (which is why I couldn’t understand why the Austrian guy at that conference was so baffled by my morning greeting). It’s there in the general curiosity and openness that prompts us to start a conversation with a complete stranger (like the older man on the Luas). And it’s why you can usually rely on at least one (if not several) passers-by coming to your rescue when something goes wrong (like having a broken down car — unlike in France, apparently).

And I wrote ‘Where there is dark there is light’ in the margin because as I read and resonated with the interviewee’s pride in how people of Ireland are good at ‘keeping an eye out’ for one another, it struck me that we’re also excellent judgers and begrudgers;

What makes us good at ‘keeping an eye out’ also means that we are very good at ‘keeping an eye on’.

What I mean is they are not the outcome of separate, disconnected social forces. Rather, they come from the same place — a strong sense of collectivism— and demonstrate the different ways this underlying social force can be expressed. In it's ‘light’ form of supporting others and in it’s ‘dark’ form of judging and monitoring one another's behaviours closely. They’re two sides of the same coin.

The Light and the Dark

As I made those connections between the light and the dark of Ireland’s inherent community-mindset, I realised that all the social forces which have negatively shaped women of Ireland have their ‘light’ side too.

Shame helps maintain social hierarchies. Intergenerational trauma can foster resilience. Co-dependency can also mean support. A desire for ‘respectability’ has meant many in Ireland have, over the centuries, been encouraged to get an education and improve the quality of their lives. And there are times when ‘just get on with it’ is really good advice!

If there can be no dark without light and no light without dark what becomes important is how we balance or move between the two. My continued efforts to make sense of the forces that have contributed to the collective ‘Pain Body’ of the Women of Ireland have left me with little doubt that Ireland has long brought the ‘darker’ sides of its social and cultural forces to bear heavily on women. And that’s left its (imbalanced) mark.

Yet, for all that pain, women’s stories also pulse with a strong current of ‘light’ and energy — they tell of joy and humour, and craic, and love, and pride, just as they tell of sadness, hardship, loss, breakdown and trauma.

Opposites can and do exist and that, often, is what makes us who we are. As one (very wise) interviewee said, as she reflected on the reality of being a woman of Ireland:

“You kind of have to sit with both, you know, and go; ‘Yeah, there's some bits of my Irishism I really love’ …. [but if I take that] bit then I do have to take the rest; [the not so good bits]”.

Where there is dark, there is light, and we’re made of both.