Breaking Generational Silence: From the Irish Troubles to .
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I was five months old when a young British soldier used the butt of his rifle to unwrap my swaddling blanket.
My Mum told me this story before she died. It happened on a trip home to Ireland in the summer of 1976, the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland. All five of us kids squeezed in the back of the car, and me, so small, in a bassinet resting on the seat (no car seats back then!). We drove through Scotland, boarded the ferry to Belfast, and continued down to the army checkpoint at the Derry–Donegal border.
My Mum recounted that as our car got to the Derry border, the soldiers surrounded it, guns pointing at my parents and all of us through the windows, as they always did. But when the soldiers saw my bassinet, things became chaotic. They ordered my parents out of the car with my four siblings, aged six and under.
The IRA had been disguising bombs in baby carriages around that time. They thought my parents were concealing a bomb. Me.
A young soldier approached the car. He was as white as a sheet and visibly shaking as he pushed the butt of his rifle into my bassinet and began to poke at me, unraveling my swaddling blanket.
Mum said she had never felt such fear—this young soldier, surely no older than 18, was so scared and at any moment, his gun could go off and blow her baby girl to pieces. I don’t know if I was awake while it happened, or how long it took him to understand I was just a baby, but the memory of it never left my Mum. Having to quiet down all her maternal instincts, so as not to spook this scared young man and control what she could of the situation. And yet—this was just another day at the border, another Irish family’s humiliation, another day in the life of a country torn apart by colonization.
Of the many traditions and stories passed down to us from our parents, there were some that were rarely spoken aloud.
These were stories of “The Troubles” that reached a peak in Ireland in the 1970’s and 80’s. My family is from Donegal, on the Northern Ireland border, from a town that saw its fair share of sectarian violence. But my siblings and I were born and raised in England, because, like millions of Irish, my parents were unable to make a living in a country severely impacted by colonialism and war.
And so we spent many summers and holidays moving between the two—the island of our heritage, and our home in the country that colonized it.
In our British school history lessons we learned little about Irish culture. We were taught that the Irish potato famine was a natural disaster, and learned about the Home Rule movement that tried to give Ireland self governance, but we absorbed more about the stigma that Irish folks, particularly Catholics like us, were “slow” or stupid.
My parents moved to the UK at a time when signs reading “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs” were still posted on the doors of lodging houses.
That stigma was something I came up against even in the Corporate world as a young woman thirty years later, disguised as jokes about my Irish heritage, which with my Gaelic name and abundance of freckles was hard to disguise. But disguise it I tried. I carried shame inside my heart about my religion and my Irish-ness for years—until I lived in America and Canada, where being Irish is celebrated, and I had my eyes opened to what we had become so used to in the UK.
And it infuriated me as a young woman, that the realities of what we saw and heard in Ireland—the atrocities committed by British occupation forces, systemic discrimination against Irish Catholics, and worse—were either hidden or justified by the British press. Yes, there was horrific violence and acts on both sides, but the press only reported it one way. Most people I grew up with in the UK had no idea what was happening across the water, and we were seeing it with our own eyes, even as small kids.
I credit this for my lifelong habit of looking beyond what I am told and being curious—always.
The local silence around the conflict was not due to ignorance—it was fear. People who spoke up about what was happening risked recriminations and they were legitimately scared of retribution from local republicans if anyone dared to question their methods, or being targeted by loyalist violence, or by British forces who viewed all Catholics as suspects.
My parents carried the wounds of that with them all their lives, and to this day, “The Troubles” are often only talked about in whispers, with stories of horror and abuses spoken quietly, if at all. The fear of retribution is still very much alive.
We never really know what we grow up with, and how it impacts us, until we are old enough to reflect.
I inherited from my parents a fear of speaking out or saying the wrong thing, and I learned in subtle and not so subtle ways to avoid talking about things that felt dangerous, or that were not “mine” to speak of.
Years later, when I discovered Yoga, I began to see how the lessons of my childhood—both spoken and unspoken—connected to something much larger than our family’s story.
The yogic principle of ahimsa—most translated as non-violence—isn’t just about avoiding physical harm. It’s about examining how we contribute to or interrupt systems of violence through our thoughts, words, and actions. It’s a call to examine how we live day-to-day, how we speak, and how we show up in systems that perpetuate violence of all forms.
It can also be a daily reflection: How am I contributing to harm? How am I interrupting it? How can I help those in need? How am I living in Yoga?
It’s one of the elements that drew me to the practice of Yoga in the first place, and Yoga is an ongoing study of trying our best to live a life that causes the least harm possible.
But growing up as part of the Irish diaspora in the UK—where silence was so connected to survival, where speaking out could be dangerous—I have often struggled with what it means to practice ahimsa authentically.
Was staying quiet about injustice actually non-violent?
Could speaking up be something that was “mine” to do?
Or was my silence itself a form of violence—complicity with systems that cause harm?
Ultimately, staying silent about harm is something I have reflected on a lot lately—maybe it is a coming of age, or circumstance, or all that is happening in the world, but there is power in using our voices. Harm thrives in silent spaces, like a toxic bacteria, but there is community, connection, and great freedom in using your voice to speak out.
And this is where Yoga and the matters of the world truly intersect for me.
Watching what has been unfolding in Palestine over the past 22 months, that familiar sense of injustice that began in my history lessons started to raise its head again. A pattern of misreporting in the press, and an increase in suffering made it impossible to look away.
A good friend inspired me to dig deeper and learn more about the history of the land in Palestine, and like so many others I came to understand that this was something much deeper, bigger, and far more malevolent than most of us here in the West realized. And yet, not so “complicated” as we might be being told.
Speaking up was terrifying and took me a long time—a respected Yoga podcast host was warned she would “get cancelled” for speaking out; she was sent such horrifically abusive messages that just like my parents, I felt the fear of saying anything.
It was not “mine” to speak of. Or was it?
Eventually, I got braver. And spoke up more. And recently, we even took our sons to a march for Palestine, which was an incredibly powerful and very emotional experience. We are teaching our children that their words and actions can be impactful, and powerful, too. I wonder how such actions might have helped my ancestors.
Irish people all over the world speak up loudly for Palestine because we have a shared history. The Great Famine occurred in Ireland from 1845 to 1852, killing about one million people and forcing another 1 to 2 million to emigrate. In my British school history classes, we were taught that this was an unavoidable tragedy caused by potato blight. But of course, that is not the whole story.
Because although the potato crop failed, the country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed the population. Those crops continued to be exported as the Irish starved, and those caught stealing food faced harsh punishments, even when it was a matter of life and death.
The parallels to what we’re witnessing today are heartbreaking.
Just as food was exported from Ireland while people starved, just as those who tried to survive were criminalized, we see similar patterns of oppression and dehumanization playing out in Palestine and around the world.
The silence that allowed my ancestors to suffer is the same silence that allows suffering to continue today.
This is why I believe in speaking up not just for the people of Palestine, but for people all over the world who are being harmed by systems of silence and oppression.
When we are silent, our silence serves the oppressor—never the oppressed. And when we live in such privilege that we are able to turn our faces away, that is exactly when, I believe, we must turn toward those that are suffering, and help in any way we can.
I have been learning, talking to friends, and sharing what I can because I refuse to pass down another generation’s silence about suffering. And I pray, meditate, and take care of my mental health too, because being alive in the world today feels like a lot sometimes.
Yes, things are always political, and feel complicated, and maybe they don’t feel like “ours” to speak on, or our pain to hold—but before anything else, we are human. And every human being deserves to eat, to breathe, and to live in safety.
~
author: Sinéad O'Connor
Image: Personal Image of the Author
Editor: Molly Murphy
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