“Women and children were not afforded the rights of citizenship, of subjecthood, of being. They lived under threat of being erased, hidden, buried. This is why my mother tells me - halting, hesitating - that in her day it was the worst thing in the world for a girl to find herself pregnant, but worse still was for her to talk about it.” PregnancyWomens RightsForgettingComplicityIrish HistoryUnmarried WomenSilencing WomenMagdalene Laundries Book:In Ordinary Time: Fragments of a Family History Source: In Ordinary Time: Fragments of a Family History
“We know that now. Vehicles of transportation include, according to the scholar of memory studies Marianne Hirsch, "narratives, actions and symptoms." The stories we tell and don't tell, the actions we take and don't take, the symptoms expressed by a mother holding the trauma tightly to herself, because she refused to burden her children with it.” MemoryStorytellingFamily HistorySilencingHealing TraumaGenerational TraumaIrish HistoryUnburdeningBiological Trauma Book:In Ordinary Time: Fragments of a Family History Source: In Ordinary Time: Fragments of a Family History