LOVE, UNSTOPPABLE: On love across time and the Irish Sea

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As with many journeys in life, the story of an unwed mother in 1970s Ireland took many surprising turns until, many years later, life came full circle in an ultimate tribute to lost love, sorrow, regrets… and more love.

for the state’s “profound failure” in its treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies from the 1920s to the 1990s.

Raised by staunch Catholics in Belcoo, a rural village in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, she realised that her only solution was to leave for London to have her baby and put the child up for adoption there. There, all the women but Marion and an American girl gave their children up for adoption. It is impossible to express the pain they might have endured, the guilt they must have carried, the emptiness that must have filled their beings having to make such a decision.

Once she was fully qualified as a nurse, she was able to leave the bar work and continue nursing full time, leaving London for Cheshire with me as a toddler; I was now two years old. For the next two years, with the emotional support of a few family members in England who hadn’t shunned her, we shared some idyllic days in the countryside.As I see it, she was grateful that a man would take on and marry a single mother in the early 70s.

When making the final arrangements for him to meet me off the bus from the ferry to Belfast, he told me he would be wearing a navy blue raincoat; I told him I would be wearing brown ski pants and an Aran jersey. But then, my mother insisted that to cross the Irish sea on a ferry in the dead of winter, I should put on jeans, a leather jacket and a scarf, which I did.

I thought I’d made a huge mistake. When I returned, I asked if they would mind me turning in, claiming to be tired from the journey, but truly because I was heartbroken at mum’s tears and wondered if it had been worth my curiosity, sitting here with these relative strangers and hurting my mum as I felt I had.

My dad was a very kind soul. And my siblings were all very excited and fascinated by me. We found our way, and we became very close during that first visit. Over the years, and across the miles, my biological father, and my half siblings and I developed a loving and cherished relationship.In 2007, on our first trip to Ireland together to introduce my then boyfriend Pierre, Jim and Marion both decided to welcome us at the airport.

 

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