Over the past decade and a half, Nigeria has witnessed a deeply troubling pattern of violence in which Christian communities have suffered large numbers of fatalities. For example, one comprehensive monitoring report found that between October 2019 and September 2023, out of a total of 55,910 people killed in nearly 10,000 deadly attacks in...
The archetype of the wounded maiden—a vulnerable figure who denies her own betrayal and unconsciously aligns with a predatory force—appears across mythology, literature, and psychology. This archetype reflects real psychological mechanisms such as betrayal trauma, identification with the aggressor, and shame-based attachment. By bridging archetypal...
The Great Famine (1845–1852) reshaped Irish society in ways that outlived the immediate demographic catastrophe. Beyond mass mortality and emigration, the famine taught behavioural lessons about vulnerability, authority and survival that became embedded in cultural practice. When the famine is read as predatory trauma—a crisis in which existing...
The human skull has served as a potent emblem in many cultures, conveying ideas far beyond the simple fact of bodily death. Historically, skulls have symbolised mortality, transformation, memory, and spiritual thresholds; more recently, crystal skulls—skulls carved from quartz or other hard stones—have become central in modern spiritual practices...
Unfortunately, the heaviness of a cultural legacy of shame, restriction, repression, conformity and adherence to a strict set of social expectations I was neither attuned to, nor had any idea how to navigate, toppled with multiple bouts of bullying, as well as sexual abuse created an internal landscape full of torment, pain, and suffering. The...
I previously wrote an Instagram post entitled "The Butterfly Effect", which was a testimony of my own personal journey of pain, abuse, bullying, trauma, mental illness and ultimately, growth, healing, love and transformation. I had detailed in it how the decision of one boy in my childhood to reject me romantically and bully me about my weight over...
The Irish nation was once dominated by an oppressive religious doctrine that formed the scaffolding of the country's institutions, culture and society. Although steps have been taken to at least acknowledge some of the hurt caused by this quasi-theocratic system, the generational legacy is once in which shame is pervasive, and the individual wounds...
Before Catholic emancipation in 1829, Irish Catholics lived under a regime of legal and social discrimination. The Penal Laws of the 17th and 18th centuries had barred them from political life, owning property above a certain value, entering the professions, or openly practicing their faith. Catholic worship was often clandestine, with hedge...
The Great Famine of 1845–1852 represents one of the most catastrophic events in Irish history, not only in terms of mortality and emigration but also in its enduring psychological and cultural impact. Its legacy profoundly shaped the Irish spirit, altering the ways in which resilience, defiance, and communal solidarity were expressed and...
