Her Story/Our Story: Rewriting the script of motherless motherhood

Trigger warning: femicide. Views expressed are those of the contributors, not our organisation, which does not accept responsibility for their accuracy, legality, or content.

By Sinéad Nic an Ghaill

There is a road that has no name. A road that too many of us are forced to walk upon - the road of The Motherless Mother. This is a road paved with countless questions, ruminations, long-sought-after truths. The road I have had to walk upon, and continue to try traverse daily, is the road of the motherless mother due to femicide. My mother’s life was taken in her own home at the hands of another person. This is a road, a truth, I have found near impossible to make sense of and navigate for many years now. This is a road that has been compounded further by having to share this loss with others - others completely unknown to me.

Before continuing, I will say this: I know my mother’s life has not been, and will not be, the first and last to be reported upon in the media. But for anyone whose loved one has died and whose life has been documented upon in the press, many more layers of grief are added to the story. My mother’s story, her life, was reduced to mere headlines, words without understanding. A summary without the main body. When I think of the reporting that occurred, that is, from the reduction of my mother’s entire existence to her perceived role, to detailing her death - rather than her life - it is difficult not to imagine vultures hovering, looming large in the skies of a desert, waiting to prey upon her. It is difficult not to feel enraged when I think of how this was a far cry from journalistic responsibility or integrity - it was the seizing of an opportunity to sell red top print. Layers of anger fuse and form in my mind, crowding out any space for thinking about who she was to me – a beautiful, caring, inspiring woman to her daughter. 

Where I would like to remember my mother for her, instead there are rage-fuelled fires burning, smoking out my memories. To know that she was read about over someone’s morning coffee, whispered about by those too small-minded to actually ask: ‘Are you ok?’, means I am forced to straddle the liminal line between two griefs – learning to live without my mother and knowing that her time upon this earth has been minimised to many moments of mindless gossip. In essence, the narrative of my mother’s life, and my own as her daughter, has been severed by society’s insatiable glamourisation of femicide. How many Netflix ‘documentaries’ now exist, sensationalising a woman’s killing? The exploitation of grief is a lucrative business, and it seems that ‘true crime’ is only becoming more popular than ever – indeed, it has had a 700% increase in global interest in the past two decades alone.

I wonder – do the makers of such media stop to think of the woman whose life has been taken? Do they think of those who loved her? Each woman’s memories erased by the seemingly endless and compassionless greed of major corporations. To add to this, these exploitative ‘documentaries’ are consumed by the masses, with women’s deaths ‘topping charts’ in too many countries. This onslaught of toxic consumerism means, at least to me as a daughter of a woman killed by femicide, that two crimes occur simultaneously – firstly murder, followed by the real ‘true crime’ that is the exploitation of bereavement. How often do people remember the names of those who have killed women, but cannot recall the names of the women themselves? How would they feel if it were their loved one? Do they think of the 2-3 women each week that are killed in the UK due to femicide? Lives redacted, expunged, and then capitalised on by vultures.

Losing my mother due to murder has been an impossibly difficult cross to bear, and to contend with the knowledge that money is being made off women’s lives globally takes my grief and fills it with further unnavigable feelings - feelings of sorrow, rage and injustice for all the women whose lives have apparently become profitable to those who seek a quick buck. But, after years spent trying to grapple with the sudden loss of my mother and spent trying to make sense of a world that seizes upon such loss, I find myself in a new space. A motherless mother space. I find myself in a space where I want to rewrite the narrative and keep my mother alive - for me, for her, for my daughter.

To try to live, to try raise a child, to be a motherless mother, without my own mother’s love and guidance, is a road paved with so many layers that sometimes words are hard to come by. But I believe in the power of words. I believe in true storytelling. I believe that our mothers each have a narrative that belongs to them and to those who loved them so dearly. So, years on, after too many days spent trying to navigate a narrative that I know doesn’t belong to either my mother or I, I sit down to write a new one. I sit and remember who she was, who she is, to me. I stop and reflect and feel her memory come gently to me – her smile, her laughter, her kind-heartedness, her compassion. I surrender and allow her truth to be told in a way that is just that – true.

My mother’s life was not her death. My mother’s life was filled with a love for many different things – from the natural world to the world of words, books, and literature of every kind. My mother immersed herself in such verdant spaces – living places lush and green both with plant life and with language, and she, in her quiet generosity, lovingly passed these passions on to me. And so, I bring these joys to the surface of my mind. I bask in the delight of them daily, soak my soul in their healing balms. I wander through woods, words and the places of my heart I have not walked in too long a time. I invite my mother back into memory on my terms. This is our narrative. And, to rewrite this script, I remember how her life filled mine. How her kindness was so great that I know if I carry only a fraction of it with me through my life, I will be doing some good in this world. 

Instead of imagining vultures, I envision hummingbirds. Tiny, beautiful beings of joy, sucking and relishing the nectar of life. Instead, I try to bottle the magic of little things: the kind remark from a stranger on the brightness of my child’s eyes; the way she is completely awestruck with the world around her; the feeling of warmth as I hug and kiss her so many times she needs to wriggle to be freed. These might not seem like monumental moments, but I think they are the little maps I have that make me think of my mother. I think, for me at least, they are like many small North Stars, guiding me on the path through motherless motherhood. I choose to keep my mother alive by remembering these ‘true Norths’, the seeming minutiae that keep me afloat in a sea of grief. I keep my mother alive by placing one foot in front of another, as she did, despite the many trials and tribulations she faced. I keep her alive in my writing, in my storytelling. She is the Goddess and the Myth, and she has filled the pages of my life, illustrating chapters with the kind of love I wish everyone could feel. She has decorated my days with the brushstrokes of understanding and the gentleness of compassion. Her memory has softened my heart when it is her very absence that hardens it. There is a Mary Oliver poem, ‘The Uses of Sorrow’ which says:

‘Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.’

I don’t know if I will ever get to a stage where I can be grateful for the loss of my mother, for the loss of my mother due to murder, for the loss of my mother due to murder in her own home. I don’t even know who it is, this ‘someone’ that I may have loved – The world? Society? Who, or what, can I blame for robbing me of my first love, and in her place, burdening me with a box of darkness? Who, or what, can I say ‘gifted’ me this? What I do know is that the darkness that entered my life the day she exited mine has permeated into every pore of my body, every lining of each cell. It has ripped, ruptured and wrecked me. It has besieged my brain on more than one occasion and planted seeds of desire for my own departure from this world. However, what I also know is this: the depth of loss I feel only exists because I have felt the same level of love. I have been one of the lucky ones. To have been held by my mother and know that I matter. In a world that can be as cold as it is, is there any greater tonic than love, even if that love is contained in a memory? I will make of this box of darkness a box of light, a box of joy. I will carry my mother with me and share her life, not her death, in my words and deeds. My hope is that the love and light my mother brought to my days can be the very medicine I bring to my own, to my daughter’s, to maybe the world around me. That is how I will rewrite her story, our story. That is how I will keep my mother alive.

Here is a poem I have written for all the women whose lives have been taken due to femicide and for their loved ones left behind:

The rose

In each of you, I see a rose.

I see your beauty, your velvet touch upon the world.

I see the daily efforts you made to make each space

warmer, more light-filled.

I see the space you carved out for others,

how you sowed our days

and tended to our tomorrows.

I see your space – the places you loved, got lost in.

I see your memory; the mark you left upon us.

I see the garden that you sought to create.

I cannot bring you back the way I would wish.

I cannot hold your hands the way I would wish.

But what I can do is reach down into the earth

And replant the seeds you had stored.

I can hold your memory

and make new ones with my own rose.

I can build a rose garden, tend to each bud

as dearly as you did us.

I can sow the seeds of a life that is still ongoing,

knowing you’venever truly left.