The Irish Times June 26, 1993, All we have to do is love each other unconditionally Last Saturday, Sinead O'Connor's brother Joseph wrote of his bewilderment on reading the poem by Sinead published in The Irish Times on June 10th. His article has prompted, the following response from Sinead By SINEAD O'CONOR MY brother has made a serious misinterpretation of some of the lines of my poem. The problem is that, as a family, we do not communicate. Therein you have the answer to everything. How can we claim to know what each other's truths are when we don't know each other's experience? When we don't even speak to each other. There are some lines in the poem which read: I have run a way from the pain of not being held For all my life, Until now Three lines. My brother has read them as one, and consequently I feel I have been misrepresented. If he had discussed the poem with me personally, or if he had spoken to me at all over these last years, feel sure he would have under- stood what I was saying. I did not say that I have never been held, I am aware that my father lived with us for a number of years until 1977 and must have held us. I don't remember. I am sure that our mother did not hold me! I can't speak for anyone else on that, but I am sure of my own experience. I am also aware that I lived with my granny for a short time when I was a baby and she held me. However, my father was away a lot. There are quite significant periods of time during which he was not there. This is not something I blame him for, I do not know how I would cope with what he had to cope with. Plus, I am aware that he was working hard to make a life for us. My father I remember as being very lovely. Once me and my sister beat a girl up in kindergarten because she said her dad was better-looking. Once we made rock buns and threw them at each other in the garden. I have not said that he was not a lovely father. I have absolutely never suggested (or meant to suggest) that he was either physically or sexually abusive. I have only said the truth, which is that fortune took him away from me and in fact I haven't had him as a father. Because of life he has not been "available" and this has been the cause of great agony to me. Even without my knowing it. It is important for it to be seen that not everyone's experience is the same. That people experience the same situation differently. What is true for Joe is true for Joe and what is true for me is true for me. These are my truths. My parents split up when I was nine. My experience of our house-hold up until then was that it was terrifying. My mother was terrifying. My father was the protector, Their fights were terrifying. His absence was dreaded and feared. My sister sprained her ankle jumping out the window once to get away. She used to hide in the boot of his car when he was going to work. I ran away quite a bit when I was that young as well. Always had to go back, though. He got custody of us after a while, and myself and my sister and my younger brother went to live with him and Viola (my stepmother). Joe stayed with my mother. I don't think we stayed very long. I think not quite a year. I missed my mother. I did love her. So did my younger brother. I feel that we were in very great pain, My father was away a lot then also. I think he found it hard ,to bear the pain of seeing us in pain. I used to lie under my bed "keening" according to my step-mother (and I remember it), and my father would be out in the garden mowing the lawn. I don't think he could bear to listen and so healing did not take place. He didn't know what to do when we displayed the evidence of our grief and distraction. I don't blame him for this. But it is reality for me that my grief has not been heard yet. Or healed. With love I need to say that, in fact, I feel I have been punished for its expression. WE went back to my mother, foolishly, and I lived there until I was 13. These years were particularly terrifying and insane. I plucked up the guts to run away twice to my father's house. (Usually if you run away, you always end up having to go back. Or someone brings you back! Thinking they're doing a good thing.) Both times he was away on holiday. Fortune is a hard bitch. So I had to go back. Finally I ran away for good. I went to my father. He took me in. My sister arrived later the same day. I think Joe stayed for a year or so. John stayed with her until her death. I didn't adjust very well to "normal" family life. I had no idea what planet I was on having just come from "there". I bunked off school. I stole money off my sisters and my dad. I was angry and difficult and a cause of great disturbance in the house. And great strain on the relationship between my father and stepmother. They brought me to a shrink who said I was a "problem child" so I got up and left. I finally got caught stealing a pair of golden shoes from the BHS in O'Connell Street. They weren't even for me! My father and my stepmother were worried that I might "end up on the wrong side of the tracks", so they sought the advice of a social worker. Between them they came up with the suggestion which they made to me, that I go to live in a "nice boarding school" where I could learn typing in the afternoons. Where my behaviour would be restricted and I would simply not be able to steal because I wouldn't be allowed out. It was called An Grianan, The Sun House. Its title is that of a "rehabilitation centre for girls with behavioural problems". I agreed to go because I was worried about myself. I went when I was 14. The people there were good to me. The sister in charge bought me my first guitar. But my complaint has been that they also failed to provide healing. In all of the discussions which took place between social workers and shrinks and parents and "rehabilitation" centre, not one of them raised the subject of child-abuse and what I had been through at home which might have given an insight into my "behaviour" and therefore a possible cure - which I suggest may have been tender loving care and a proper family, which we have never been. And so I felt punished and rejected. Unfortunately the system failed to provide healing. I was not rehabilitated. I was frightened into stopping stealing and I'm glad about that. but at no stage did anyone sit me down and talk to me about my family. So that I ended up feeling blamed. Not understanding why I was such a bad person and unable to bear the pain of not being with my family. Particularly Joseph. They were actually going to go on holidays without me until I kicked up such a fuss that they took me! And my dad couldn't stand it anyway and went back home. I caused a lot of trouble on that holiday. I still have the reputation in the family, as we can see, for being the "troublemaker." It is still going on you see, for me. An Grianan had a system of punishment which very much pushed home the message of rejection. It was called "out of the sitting-room". What it meant was that for whatever transgression (usually running away in my case!) you had committed, you had to eat your dinner at a table by yourself. You had to sleep on the floor beside your cubicle. Or sometimes upstairs in the old people's infirmary. You weren't allowed to talk to anyone and they weren't allowed to talk to you. It was left this way until the following Wednesday when there would be a group meeting during which you would be questioned about your "behaviour" and basically bullied into admitting that you had "misbehaved" and accepting some menial punishment. You'd be told not to have "an attitude" if you tried to actually discuss your feelings and be fairly heard. One's pain was never to be discussed. It certainly was no excuse for "bad behaviour". When you accepted whatever it was you had to accept, they'd all suddenly be talking to you again. People who had been silent and disapproving since possibly the previous Thursday! I feel that that system of punishment was not rehabilitating in any way. Again I say that healing was not provided. DIDN'T see my family. I did not often see my father. I stayed there until I was ready to go into fifth year at school. Then I was allowed to leave on condition that I agree to go to boarding school. So I did. I spent a summer at my dad's house and then I went to Waterford. I didn't see my family much. I went home about every three weeks. My dad wasn't great at writing letters. I went home for the summer holidays, during which time I joined a band. When I went back to sixth year, I missed the singing and I left school when I was almost 8. I got a bedsit in Dolphin's Barn. I have not lived with my family since then. All in all, I feel I have not actually lived with my family since I left my mother for any significant length of time. We as a family had not really ever lived together under any kind of "normal" conditions. Yes, my father paid my rent for me. Yes, they all showed up at my gig in Dublin, but that was nearly six years ago. It was an occasion. I don't feel that it means they have been"supportive" of 20my career.In fact, I don't feel that I have been supported emotionally at all in my life by my family. Except by my sister and occasionally my step-mother, who is a good woman. In actual reality, I have been accused by my family over the last three years of rejecting them when I became famous. Of surrounding myself with acolytes and arselicking deacons". Of not caring about anyone except myself. Of being the archetypal "pop-star". This is what is responsible for all this madness. I have been trying to illustrate the ways in which I feel I am being blamed for manifesting my family's dysfunction. I did separate from my family. I did it when I was 14 - and I'd been doing it before then. I did it because I had to, because they were not "there" for me. I feel that they separated me from them It is not because I'm "on some sort of upward spiral" and some kind of pop-star trip. I was separated long before Nothing Compares 2U ever came out. Do people ever listen to the songs? In actual reality, my brother hasn't really spoken to me for years. My father does not respond well to me, either. That is the cause of all this pain and so-called "crazy" behaviour. I have been accused of being everything I would hate to be. I feel that I have been wrongly and unfairly blamed and punished for manifesting my pain. Our family is very messed up. We can't communicate with each other. We are all in agony, I for one am in agony, That's why I'm doing all this screaming and shouting. In the hope that someone will hear and a miracle might take place. Just because people say they love you doesn't mean they do Love is not supposed to be conditional or material. I can see how our family's situation mirrors that of the whole human situation. We can't communicate. We can't, hear each other because we are all in such pain. We haven't healed it yet or resolved it and we are making it worse because we are taking it out on each other and blaming and hating each other. We don't know how to love each other and understand each other. We don't really know that we can stop all this hurting if we want to. All we have to do is want to. All we have to do is love each other unconditionally, All it takes is for us to realise that we are separated from each other. That fortune has divided us and taken us away from the truth. Which is that we were never meant to live like this. So far away from God, If we love each other it will stop. And then healing can take place, The last few weeks have served to illustrate a very important point which is this, a situation exists wherein it becomes impossible for those of us who are feeling "crazy" and "mixed-up" to say so and be helped for fear that it will be used against us - as it is - as a term - of abuse. We find that we cannot break down when we need to and ask for help for fear that we will be hurt for needing it, This is very dangerous. Yes, I am a "crazy mixed-up kid?', How can I be expected to be anything else? Why should I be insulted for being that? Why should I not ask the world to help me? I am a member of the human race, Love. Sinead O'Connor