Transcriber: Mariolina Sanfilippo Reviewer: Keira White
For approximately 30 years, the small country
at the top of the island of Ireland was subjected
to an armed ethno-national conflict known as the Troubles.
While the roots of that conflict go back hundreds of years,
the concentrated span from 1968 to 1998 saw the highest rates of death,
destruction and chaos caused by a number of groups and actors
all over Northern Ireland.
Throughout that time around 4000 people died.
There were around 50,000 people physically injured,
and there were 37,000 shooting incidences
in a geographical location smaller than Connecticut.
Daily life was governed by this extreme level of violence,
as well as uncertainty, fear, bomb threats, army checkpoints.
Very little truly ended in 1998 though, something shifted, some things froze,
but very little actually fully changed.
While the statistics I just cited are now minuscule, comparatively,
there are still bomb threats and paramilitary violence,
and amidst the incredible, vibrant, wonderful life
that people are living over there,
there is still an undercurrent of uncertainty and fear.
It’s an island of constance, as I learned in that time,
in the time that I lived there;
this place that I have come to love with my whole heart.
It did not matter where I was,
a pub with a Bushmills in front of me and Ed Sheeran on the radio,
a chip shop with that very specific odor combination of grease and home,
or a bus stop outside of Marks and Spencer’s
which is like a Trader Joe’s and Macy’s had a baby.
The minute I open my mouth to speak, I’d likely hear:
’’See here, you an American?” “Yes, I am”. This would always lead to more questions:
Why was I in Northern Ireland?
If I missed my family? Did I like living there?
And the questions were always warm, if slightly incredulous
that somebody would choose to live life in the province.
But they were completely predictable.
A rhythm of my life that was natural like tides.
Stories about bombs, and death,
and grief, and fear, and frustration, were equally as predictable.
Those conversations happened in living rooms, taxicabs, pubs
and could range from deeply detailed disclosures to how human ash
felt on someone’s skin to how much someone hated going to Grandma’s for Christmas
because of how many army checkpoints they had to go through.
They would never happen if my husband was with me;
he’s from Northern Ireland himself and therefore not safe to disclose to.
You see, one of the chief cultural mottos of Northern Ireland is:
Whatever you say, say nothing, say nothing about your personal pain,
say nothing about what you overhear in the neighborhood.
Say nothing about what you think or feel, whatever you say, say nothing.
The problem is that humans can’t actually live like that.
Pain demands to be shared because our bodies are not actually built
to carry it alone.
We can choose how to share the pain or when,
in ways that will contribute to healing or contribute to more harm,
but that pain is going to get out of us,
it will vibrate out of us, against our consent;
an explosion of feelings we are probably only barely aware of.
In 1998, the major political parties of Northern Ireland signed what is called
the Good Friday Agreement or the Belfast Agreement,
depending on your persuasion.
The people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
were asked to ratify it, and they did, overwhelmingly so.
The document outlines a new form of government, access to social services
and more and so much good
came out of that document and the process of crafting it.
And a key omission is that there is no formal place
for a truth and reconciliation commission or any sort of place for people
to formally process their grief and seek restitution.
The prevailing cultural attitude at the time was one of relief;
things can finally get back to normal.
The issue is that normal is just a setting on a tumble dryer,
and there is no going back to it after the world has changed.
There’s only creating something new, and pretending otherwise
doesn’t do anyone any good in that new world.
I first travelled to Northern Ireland in 2005, to be a voluntary youth worker,
and I spent that first year asking as many questions as I could,
and I quickly learned that in the absence of ways
for people to officially and healthily process their pain,
they will find any way they can.
When trauma evolves from this origin, the path to healing is arrested.
I also learned that while I viewed every single person
as affected by the conflict, that was in fact not the cultural view.
In 2005 the majority of Northern Irish citizens
reported wanting to move on, never talk about the Troubles again.
Move on to what? I wondered.
As I wandered through neighborhoods that were deeply divided,
and taught in schools that were as well,
I learned that signing a document
and declaring something as over, doesn’t make it true.
The process of handing the emotional aftermath
over to a cornucopia of non-profits, religious organizations and individuals,
has left Northern Ireland grappling with what a victim really is.
This is not unlike other instances of massive global communal trauma,
like who’s the most affected by 9/11?
Or how do we deal with the legacy of the war on terror?
Or what do we do as we try to put COVID in past tense instead of present?
For the last 16 years I’ve been back and forth a bit.
I lived in Northern Ireland, got my Ph.D.
from Queen’s University, Belfast and married a son of the island.
And I’m alongside the incredible time
I had living there, the joy and vibrancy of daily life,
the incredible music festivals and the Game of Thrones shootings,
all of that, I watched as suicide rates steadily climbed.
As the rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, antisocial behaviour,
mental health waiting lists
and immuno-compromised folks
that have that disease because of internalized stress,
and every story, every statistic, every moment, my whole being cried.
It does not have to be this way.
I’m not alone in that, by the way, for the last 20 odd years
since ratification, there have been consistent calls
for a formal truth and reconciliation commission.
And yet, as of the autumn of 2021,
there has been no formal government response to the Troubles.
Trauma is a living creature, it’s a monster on a beach,
and healing is the path away from it.
We all have an origin story with that monster,
a lot of us have several,
and how we walk that path is how we move
from scar tissue to scar, scar to scar tissue,
and how we then also move from trauma, being something that is happening
to something that happened.
And walking that path is the only way to make that happen.
Pretending otherwise is going to be a little bit rough because let’s be real,
nothing ever changed because we ignored it,
no problem ever went away because we pretended it wasn’t real,
and doing that will only allow that monster to grow unchecked.
Instead of being healed from it, we are going to be consumed by it.
Again, we can pretend that nothing has changed, but everything actually has.
The years of 2000, 2021, 2029 are going to go down in history as years
of massive global communal trauma
based on the incredible, unending reach
of the COVID 19 pandemic and its associated crises.
And yet?
The prevailing narrative is let’s get back to normal.
It’s almost like we are saying whatever you say, say nothing.
What happens if the normal you had before the pandemic
isn’t actually possible anymore?
Your partner died, your business closed,
your lungs don’t work the same way anymore.
What does normal mean, now?
What if your job has vaccine requirements you can’t abide by,
or you can’t home-school your kid, but their health demands that you must?
Whose pain is the most valid? Whose COVID experience is the most real?
Who gets to decide victims, survivors and degrees of affected?
Because here is the truth, there is no creature on this planet
that has not been affected.
Because this thing has rewritten how we live and move
and have our being on Mother Earth.
So what do we do?
What do we do with this thing that is both firmly communal and firmly personal,
and how do we make it work? And what do we do? And... We listen to people.
We listen to people’s pain without any comparison to other pain,
and we come up with solutions for healing together.
Because the alternate,
ignoring the problem and pretending
that nothing happened, doesn’t work.
We don’t know where we’re going next or how to get there,
but we can take a page from Northern Ireland,
as a cautionary tale in what not to do
in the face of something that has rewritten the fabric of society.
The reason that people in Northern Ireland handed me their pain,
by the way, was because of that cultural dictum:
“Whatever you say, say nothing”, mixed with the fact that outsiders
who understand the Troubles are rare and treasured.
In the absence of any formal place to put their pain,
they did the next best thing, which sometimes was a complete stranger
with the right accent and a safe last name.
And as honored as I was to hold the pain of total strangers, they deserved better.
We all deserve better.
We can take a page from one of Northern Ireland’s
most famous poets, and let hope and history rhyme.
We can see what ignoring pain has done
and make a different decision because in this context,
it doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong, but who is in pain.
So we have to figure out ways to let multiple truths live,
even when those truths are lies.
As we do that we’ll create space for overlapping stories to exist,
and create a path towards healing and figuring out where we go next.
Northern Ireland taught me a lot of lessons: how to drive
on the other side of the road,
how to shuck an oyster,
that corned beef and cabbage isn’t actually a traditional meal,
but the one it continues to teach me the most strongly is this:
ignoring trauma only perpetuates it.
And invalidating the pain of others only forces them to hide it
in unproductive and harmful ways.
Instead, I beseech us all to heed the words of the Dread Pirate Roberts:
“Life is pain and anyone who says differently is selling something”.
And, life is also the healing of pain,
the coming together to make new life after old life has been eliminated.
The rebirth of hope in the midst of grief.
But you all, we can not be better by just saying we are better,
we can be better by being better and we can be better together,
not in competition, but in community.
Life is pain and joy and hope
and healing and love.
Let’s get back to living it.
(Applause) (Cheers)