An artist responds to the Home Baby saga

By Mary Ryan

HAVE you ever thought about your emotional make-up? Are you yourself solely responsible for who you are? We’ve all heard grandparents, aunts or uncles say about a young person, s/he’s just like … and then they mention the name of an ancestor that young person never met.
How do characteristics and even health issues get passed down in families? I once heard the psychologist Dr Tony Bates say “You see, depression and anxiety were passed down to me in my genes” and as he said this he placed one hand on the pocket of his trousers.
A book published in 2017 may now explain those matters to us. It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn examines how we can internalise matters we know nothing about but which result in unexplained conditions like depression, anxiety or even shame.
Wolynn provides empirical evidence that such conditions as well as chronic pain, phobias and obsessive thoughts, often have their origin in our ancestral traumas and are passed on from one generation to another. The book gives ways of easing ourselves out of those situations.
It doesn’t always have to be family traumas which cause emotional upset in people. It might be a local happening like the Tuam Mother and Baby Home scandal. There are certainly people among us who are personally touched by what went on: stolen lives, the trafficking of young children while their mothers were put into slavery; denial of knowledge to surviving siblings by State and Church – even today. Those who are doing their best to support survivors might also be affected.
An instinctive understanding of this is what gave artist Holly Mullarkey no option but to become engaged in a process of restorative justice through art. Two of her daughters are also involved. Specifically, it’s about how the remains of dead babies born in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home were dealt with.

Read the full feature in this week's edition of The Tuam Herald