I was born of women
who learned strength from stone and sea,
from bodies bowed to wind and weather,
from prayers whispered into famine air,
of women who never retracted.
Their feet were known on bog roads and boreens,
they understood hunger and waiting,
they knew the arduous journey between
loss and survival.
They buried children.
They buried husbands.
They buried dreams,
beneath fields, they were still expected
to harvest.
And still,
they made bread.
they made jam.
They made stories.
They made room in tiny cottages
for laughter to survive.
Their grief learned discipline.
Their love learned endurance.
Their rage learned silence.
And all of it —
every unshed tear,
every unspoken truth,
every unwanted touch,
every swallowed prayer.
Has travelled forward and found a
home in me.
I sense them in the Atlantic pull of my sorrow,
in how my heart swells and breaks
like a tide against a rock.
I feel them in my stubborn persistence,
in my refusal to disappear,
in my bones that remember.
How to endure dark nights of the soul.
They were not praised.
They were not recognised.
They were not preserved in books.
Their names faded into parish records,
into headstones softened by rain,
into “someone’s mother,”
“someone’s wife.”
But I know them.
I hold their hands in mine.
I hear their voice in my ear,
I carry their ache in my womb.
I carry their courage in my spine.
And when I rise,
they rise.
And when I speak of what they were forced to swallow,
their ghosts exhale.
My softness doesn’t equate to weakness;
it’s part of my legacy.
My exhaustion isn’t a sign of failure,
but part of my heritage.
My strength isn’t coincidental;
it was earned through battles fought
by women who never had the chance to rest.
I am the daughter
of women who remained behind
when escape was impossible,
of women who endured in a merciless world,
and of women who transformed
holiness from their struggles for survival.
And now.
When I choose healing,
when I choose my voice,
when I choose tenderness and love
instead of silence,
I am not betraying them.
I am finishing
what they began.
by Siân Williams
