'I never stopped looking for you.' Mothers and children of our most barbaric institutions

This Mother’s Day, as we remember our mothers and all they did for us, we should remember too, the mothers and children whose lives have been blighted by Ireland’s barbaric mother and baby homes and Magdalene laundries, and those institutions’ legacy of heartbreak and pain

Mothers and children whose lives have been blighted by Ireland’s barbaric institutions and their legacy of heartbreak and pain write letters for Mother's Day

A Mother’s Loss

by Sheila O’Byrne 

Sheila O’Byrne. Photo: Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie

The pain, the joy of life, my baby brought

 Into the world; suddenly gone, taken.

Left wondering why, emptiness.

No Happy Birthday, no Happy Christmas, 

No Happy New Year, no Happy Mother’s Day.

Taken from birth, a mother’s heart broken, 

wondering, waiting, wishing, no choice, 

For the mother is left with empty years.

Mother torn paying for the sin.

A mother’s loss.  

Sheila O’Byrne’s baby boy was born in 1977 in St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home on Dublin’s Navan Rd. Against Sheila’s wishes, he was taken from her and put up for adoption. 

Heartbroken, Sheila spent four decades searching for him, and she was at last reunited with him in 2018.

Ann O'Gorman. Picture: Brendan Gleeson

To my baby Evelyn.

I love you.

I love you, and I miss you. You have sisters and brothers, and I can only picture what you look like. I think you would be very pretty, like your sisters.

I never stopped looking for you, and I never stopped thinking of you. You’re always in my thoughts, and I pray to you, that you might look after me.

I carried you for nine months Evelyn, and I’m so sorry that you didn’t get the life you deserved. I thought for a long, long time that you were adopted in America, until I got your birth cert, and your death cert.

I know now that you are buried in the grounds of Bessborough, and if we get the justice we need, we will put a memorial there to you and to all the babies.

I know that you’re playing with all the little angels in Bessborough, and I know that there are mothers there too to mind you until I go home, and then you can be with me.

I love you so very much Evelyn, and I miss you.

God bless.

Mam.

Ann O’Gorman’s baby Evelyn died, shortly after birth, in the Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork in 1972. Ann believes Evelyn is buried in the grounds of Bessborough, in the land beside the nuns’ graveyard. Ann’s fight for justice continues.

Colleen Anderson

Dear Mum,

I am so grateful that I met you in 1999, and that I resembled you. I am so sorry for what happened to you, being violated, and how the Church and the nuns treated you. I have shared my story, our story, for us. I respect you and I am a part of you. I wish we could have had time to know each other. Happy, Happy Mother’s Day to you! You made me who I am today, a strong, caring, loving person.

Thank you. xx   

Colleen 

Colleen Anderson’s mother, a rape survivor at the age of 14, was sent to the Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home in Co Tipperary. Colleen was born in 1965, and adopted in Chicago in the late 1960s. She met her mother once, in 1999. Colleen’s mum died in 2011. 

Terri Harrison

To my son Niall,

I hope this letter finds you well, happy and content with your life.  My first encounter with motherhood was harsh, cold, and cruel. Yet when you struggled to live after a birth so very terrifying, and you and I both survived, I knew you were a true little warrior.  I know you cannot have any knowledge of your true beginnings, or of how much you were loved, wanted, and adored.

I named you “Cuddles” while you grew inside of me.  I pictured you in my mind’s eye. But nothing could prepare me for when I first saw your tiny little face.

You gave me the most precious gift ever, the gift of unconditional love.  I learned from you; and with my fears gone, I was floating in the warmest glow of pure love. 

 I have our memories, held nearest to my heart, nearest and always. Our unnatural separation is our natural loss.  

Love you always.  

Your mother.  

Terri Harrison’s baby Niall was taken from her in 1973, in St Patrick’s mother and baby home, when she was 18. Now 66, she is still looking for him.

Cindi Bonny

Dearest Zoei, 

Where do I begin? Words are not enough to tell you what I feel, so I’ll just keep it short for now. Not a day goes by without you in my thoughts. I carried you for as long as I could, until you decided you wanted out! But you arrived strong, beautiful, dark hair and button nose.

You would be 27 in August. You have an older brother, Kevin, and two younger siblings, Dylan and Tilly. I think you would have looked most like Dylan. He’s a real Bonny, as were you! We all have matching tattoos of an elephant with your date of birth, because an elephant never forgets.

I’m sorry you never got to meet everyone, but I know you will, some day. I can’t wait to see you again, my beautiful little baby, as perfect as you were.

I love you Zoei.

Mummy x 

Cindi Bonny’s baby Zoei was two days old when she died on Wednesday, August 10, 1994, the last child to die in the care of Bessborough.