SO MANY CLOUDS, SO FEW STARS.

 Now I have really gone and done it!

My blog has been live for a little while now, but there had been no indication that anyone was reading it, and that was just fine...until last night!
Suddenly it seemed that so many lovely people actually were, and they were generous enough to comment.
I thank each and every one of you for your kindness, especially my Twitter Sisters.You know who you are, gorgeous and kind kindred spirits who have made me laugh, cry... and brave!  You have helped to change everything. Bless you.

Now, am I to continue with this?
Am I actually under any obligation to inform my siblings, and what am I to do if they disapprove?
I haven't yet actually told anyone about it. Do I have a moral obligation to do so?
My life involved their life, therefore my story is partly their story.
My past is their past also, but being boys, are they automatically more entitled to it than I am?
Being older than them, however, the past has actually been mine for longer than it has been theirs...does that count?

It was tough being a girl in my world.
Although the women in my family were proven to be academically smarter and emotionally stronger than the boys, being male they automatically assumed that they were.
They were allowed to continue to believe that this was the case.
They thought that they knew best, and, truthfully, it sometimes it felt as if the women colluded in this mith.
So is it now the case that their memories are the correct ones?
And what if they have actually rejected everything that I have embraced?
Ireland and my Irishness makes me what I am, my tumbleweed roots are firmly embedded there.
I was born in Eire.
They were not, and that was always considered an issue.

I would obsess over details in Irish history as if somewhere in the mists of time I would discover the very moment that would explain everything, the very moment that would explain all that was cruel and untrue in my world.
In the 1950s 50,000 people left Ireland for the UK.
Desperate people, impoverished and invisible with their identity concealed by appearance, living in England but not really feeling that they belonged there.
With their large families, as encouraged by the Church, often remaining back in Ireland, and little real support for offered them in their new homes, life was lonely and difficult.
I guess that it is inevitable that some of us simply fell through the cracks.

I knew that something profound must have happened to have caused such distress, such a loss of faith and hope, so many clouds and so few stars.
It was as if something had been stolen in the darkness of my family history, leaving nothing of any truth when the sun finally made its way up...only tears and fears, rain and pain, and, of course, the secrets and lies.
I had no idea why things were kept so secret.
Why we were kept so secret.
Was it perhaps the whole Catholic thing, or perhaps a misguided attempt to gain some sort of status and pride, or maybe just some quirk of personality?
Perhaps I should not allow my ignorance to run too loose through such a subject.
All that I did know for certain was that my history appeared shrouded in a veil of sadness.

And this was all that I actually knew...until one day I found a battered old suitcase!

And that battered old suitcase was stuffed full of answers!!