Alicia Simoni, Community Manager and Staff Writer

Commentary by Alicia Simoni
Community Manager and Staff Writer

“Dublin. 9pm and the sun is setting … This is my home. Not just for now. Even once June comes and goes it will be home. This will always be home―the place where I began to discover me; the joy, the carefreeness, the intensity, the rawness, the pain, the happiness that is all a part of me.”

I will admit that it makes me chuckle to read this journal entry now. I was 20 years old at the time and in the midst of a year studying and working in Ireland. I was reveling in a newfound sense of independence, immersing myself in a familiar culture that was now filled with exciting new discoveries. Mostly, though, I was just living.

Among the many memorable experiences I had that year was with a group of six Irish women, all of whom were at least two decades, and in several cases far more than that, older than me. One evening a week these women welcomed me as one of their own into an intimate discussion about Irish women’s wisdom. To this day―and perhaps even more so now, thanks to the clarity that hindsight brings―I am humbled and grateful to Aeveen, Rose, Kate, Ilene, Katherine, and Ilene for opening their sacred space to me,  a naïve, young, American (with Irish ancestry) woman.

We spent evenings immersed in the legacy of women like Eva Gore Booth. An outspoken poet, suffragist, and pacifist, Eva was mobilizing working class women at a time when it was frowned upon for women to be doing much of anything outside the home, never mind expressing themselves, whether through politics or poetry. Eva’s poems spoke to the fact that men own the so-called power structures, yet women lay claim to the cliffs and waterfalls. She argued that perhaps our feminist struggle should be to cherish the cliffs and waterfalls rather than to gain access to the corridors of power.

Our circle of women shared wisdom on death and dying. Death, like birth, is natural and requires the feminine energy of letting go. Letting go is not a show of passivity, it is an indication of openness and receptivity. I still wonder if what these women―individuals who had more than a few experiences with death (the Irish, after all, have had a fair share of war, famine, and suffering)―believe is true. Is death the ultimate act of living intensely in the moment?

There were lively discussions about Mary O’Donnell’s poem “Unlegendary Heros.” If we memorialize women’s strength as rooted in their suffering will other sources of strength and heroism emerge from women? In “La Corbiere,” poet Anne Hartigan expressed the gamut of women’s emotions in daily life. By naming and voicing the ordinary are we reclaiming our feminine power?

During these gatherings I learned―from the Irish women in the room and beyond―that our struggle as women is not simply to gain access to power or to ensure more female presidents. (It should be noted that the Irish had the privilege of the inspiring women’s rights advocate and human rights crusader Mary Robinson as their president from 1990 – 1997.) These women taught me that we need to fight to ensure that the spirit within all women is liberated.

In honor of the Irish women who have blessed my life, Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig (Happy Saint Patrick’s Day)!

About the Author

Editor and Community Manager alicia@peacexpeace.org