IRELAND
Literary Hub
January 11, 2021
By Caelainn Hogan
Caelainn Hogan Traveled the Country to Speak to Survivors
At a random apartment viewing in Dublin a few years ago, the woman moving out, who happened to be born the same year as me, told me she had been adopted as a baby from an institution run by nuns, where “unmarried mothers” were sent in secret. These women were usually forced to work, had their names changed, and were separated from their children. As a millennial whose generation mostly thought these institutions were part of a distant past, she was only beginning to search for answers.
For the last few years, these strangely intimate and sudden revelations have been a part of my life, because almost everyone in Ireland has a story about how these religious-run institutions have affected someone they loved. Sitting hungover with a friend in the sun or asking someone at a shrine for directions, I would suddenly find out they or someone they knew was a survivor of these so-called homes.
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