Fáilte abhaile!

That means "welcome home." And there it is. I’m finally home after a 16-hour travel day from Scotland, to Ireland, to Chicago, and here to South Dakota. I'm so grateful to be back in the bosom of my family, as they say—the two-legged, the four-legged, the winged, and the gilled (and I'm probably so jet-lagged that I'm just weepy to be on the ground).

This will be my last blog post here, at least for a good while. I’ll compile these posts and save them. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with them yet, or the eventual shape of the project, as I imagine it will take me some time to distill, process, and review. There’s SO much.

I loved Edinburgh, but today, a little jet-lagged and napping on and off, I’m really missing Ireland. I expected the trip would be transformational, and I think I’m feeling that a little today. I only caught a wee bit of TV on the trip when I stayed in hotels, never in the Air B&B’s, which was most of the time, but as I woke from a nap today in front of CNN at low volume (almost as good as the Golf channel for napping), I changed the channel and found an old Netflix doc on St. Patrick. I’d been interested in the intersection of Celtic paganism and early Christianity since visiting Brigid’s Well and reading about the Brigid/St. Brigid evolution, and St. Patrick turns out to be another important figure in that historical road.

Also, in my FB feed this morning, someone posted a link to this recent article in the Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/honouring-the-magdalenes-when-you-start-talking-you-open-your-mouth-and-it-all-comes-out-1.3938043?fbclid=IwAR0TKN7ofQ6gjrikOE-kUnpjMj_DoByw1Af2Qaa7PWkbc1eyMmj4v_wIDkM

The article points out that RTE (Ireland’s public broadcasting network) will be doing a feature next Tuesday called Coming Home, about a “welcome home” reunion of Magdalene laundry survivors held in June 2018 in Dublin, attended by 220 laundry survivors who came from all over the world. For some of them, who left Ireland as soon as they were released from the laundries, it was their first time back in the country. The feature will include the voices of survivors themselves, the most powerful testament we have to the need for much more awareness about the laundries and their aftermath. Thanks to the miracle of the Interwebs, I’ll be able to watch the broadcast, and so will you, here: https://www.rte.ie/player/

Anyway, as I slowly ease out of Ireland (mentally) and get back to my South Dakota life, I want to thank you all for coming along on my adventure; it was good and very helpful to know you were there with me. Until the next phase, go raibh maith agat!

Traditional thatched-roof house, Kildare, Ireland.