Edel Coffey: It's time for Ireland to reflect on misogyny and injustice

"The part that was most difficult to explain was how women could be incarcerated without having committed any crime, and how babies could be taken away from their mothers without anyone stepping in."

Edel Coffey: time for Ireland to reckon with a legacy of misogyny. Photo: Ray Ryan

I WAS reminded of a phrase last week, a form of therapy called ‘life review’. It’s a technique used by therapists with older patients as an exercise to help them make sense of their lives. The first time I heard about it was when Jane Fonda spoke about it. She had done a so-called life review when she turned 60 in the hope of having a happier, more fulfilling “third act”. She wanted to address the issues that had affected her when she was younger — her bulimia, and her people pleasing, amongst other things.

A life review is a way of looking at your life up until now and seeing if you can reflect on it, learn from it, maybe even redefine yourself as someone completely different to who you were when you were young. As Jane Fonda put it, you could even become the person you might have been.