Mother and daughter to be reunited 56 years after leaving tuam home

By Siobhán Holliman

A MOTHER and daughter who were separated in the late 1950s after spending just 11 months together in the Tuam Mothers’ and Babies’ Home are set to be reunited again, 56 years later, in New York this December.
The meeting could be the best pre-Christmas present Bernie Kerridge has ever had and she admits she’s both petrified and excited about the reunion.
Bernie arrived with her mother at the Tuam Home a week after she was born in Galway Regional Hospital on October 24, 1957. She has no memory of her natural mother who was just 17 when she gave birth.
As far as she knows, the woman never returned to the village where she came from on the Galway-Mayo border and has spent over half a century living in Connecticut in America where she went on to marry and have four more daughters.
Her birth mother is 74 years of age now and the planned meeting is the result of many years of turbulent emotions, patience, understanding and a recurring longing by Bernie to find out more about her background.

Read the full story in this week's edition.