Song of the Week

Peace by Hozier who is IRISH and I admire how consistent he has been in his support for Palestine.

Listen to this song as you read to help open you up.

Updates

I am in Ireland, and it’s been a long time coming. I’m half Irish and since going to Japan a few years ago was so transformative for me, I doubled down on trying to get here. When my dad died in 2021 I frequently found myself checking ticket prices to Ireland because I knew my grief was incomplete until I better understood the grief of Ireland.

I waited to come here until I could assemble a group of beloveds who also wanted to explore family grief work and research family history. Six of us are here now and I’m glad I waited.

There are so many ripples hitting me in waves. Like a lot of people I know, calling and emailing relatives I’ve never met is a wee bit intimidating. I’m thankful to have a supportive partner who eggs me on at crucial deadlines. A lot of these phone calls have actually happened on the trip, “Hi, I’m here. Which prison were our relatives in? How did they escape?” It’s a common question that many families in Ireland have because so many of our people have been incarcerated as a result of resistance to colonialism. As an Irishman at Kilmainham Jail told us when discussing politics in Ireland and the U.S., ”Ireland has no shortage of prisons.” “Neither does the U.S.” we responded. “Wherever there are inconvenient people, you will find a prison” he assured us.

One of the reasons I am so interested in figuring out my family’s incarceration history is because it’s an old trauma origin for my family.

The story I’ve carried with me my whole life is that my great grandpa Peter ended up in the U.S. because the British Army came to my great great grandma’s door and demanded she tell them where her two sons were. They had escaped from prison and were on the run. The soldiers told my great great grandma that if she didn’t procure her sons, they would take her youngest son, my great grandpa who was fifteen years old, and imprison him or enroll him in their army. This was the equivalent to using Irish children as human shields like we see happening in Palestine right now.

She chose to put Peter on an overnight boat, likely to Liverpool, then to the U.S. This rupture, and all the kinds of ruptures that 900 years of colonialism caused, impacted my Irish family in ways I’ve half understood. It’s been a partial understanding because I never knew what landed Peter’s brothers in prison, what happened to them, or to their mother. Peter died around age 46 in Chicago, my father never met him, but his wife told stories about him. Sadly his wife told my Irish father and Japanese mother when they married that “oil and water don’t mix”. This mixture of everyday heroism, not selling out to the Brits, paired with the racism that left my Japanese family feeling ostracized at times positioned me in a hard place. Freeze is what it felt like as the mixed-race kid who admired my Irish family, but also felt wary of the stereotypes that infiltrated these relationships.

Did I really want to know this family history?

Now that I understand that racism functions as a result of, and is maintained by trauma…yes I do want to know.

What I’ve discovered is enlightening. Both of my grandmas’ parents’ families took great risks to regain their land. My great grandpa’s brothers were imprisoned. They were a part of the movement to take back land. You can read more here about demolitionist experts and their role in tenant farmers rights in Ireland. There was no trial for them, but the brothers were slated to be executed for their work in the IRA. The Black and Tans burned down their village and terrorized their communities, and they did fight back.

If you haven’t heard of the Black and Tans, they were one of those specialized military units who intentionally used cruelty as their main weapon. Arson, murder, and targeting vulnerable people to break morale was their specialty. They went after children and religious leaders— the people who tended to the hearts of the people. I’ll spare you the details, but they murdered my great grandpa’s Gaelic teacher for teaching in the hedge schools and tortured his friend for walking down the road.

The other side of my family used their home as a safe house (the house in the above photo), storing weapons and people as needed. The Black and Tans visited their house as well, but it seems their village fared better overall than my great grandpa Peter’s village.

It’s worth noting that the Black and Tans were created in 1920, after the Irish resistance movement became more of a threat to the British empire. With success, comes an escalation of violence from the oppressor. With increased repression, may come unity. We might not all agree on the same strategy, tactics, or political leader, but we can all agree that killing children, elders, and people with disabilities is bad. That’s something the Irish people didn’t have in common with the British empire who used those tactics liberally. The unexpected thing is this gave them something to rally around, and is worth thinking about today as we organize.

I’ll write more about what I am learning in my next post. In the meantime if you want to learn more about Irish resistance history I recommend watching Say Nothing and The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

Tree Poem

My uncle Joe wants to replant a native mixed wood forest on the family land, and use some of the lumber to rebuild a house. I’m for it. He recited the first line of this poem when I told him I loved trees too.

Schedule With Me

OTR/L, BA, MHP, LMT,
she/they) Integrative Therapies

I offer trauma informed somatic informed therapeutic coaching, craniosacral therapy, Swedish massage, Thai bodywork, myofascial release, group workshops, and healing through art, play, and connecting to nature.

Community Events

Intergenerational Mingle

Are all your friends the same age? Minneapolis can get really siloed, break it up by making friends intentionally of different ages. This is organized by a friend.

Thanks for READING! xoxo Eiko