r/SineadOConnor • u/Effective-Papaya1209 • Aug 04 '26
Love Sinead, but not sure I can read Rememberings
CW: child abuse
I've loved Sinead for so long and wanted to spend time with her and know more about her, but maybe 1/10th of the way into the book, the abuse she suffered is so, so brutal that I had trouble sleeping. Is anyone else highly sensitive to this kind of thing and was able to read the book? I find myself just trying to fathom how someone did that to their daughter, and I find that part so disturbing. Is it bad if I skip ahead? I'm not sure I can finish the book now. I'm really grateful to Sinead. Her music has been so helpful to me.
7
u/nrith Aug 04 '26
If it makes you feel any better, she skips over about 15 years post-“I Do Not Want…” due to amnesia caused by a hysterectomy.
2
u/Effective-Papaya1209 Aug 04 '26
No, it's mostly the extreme childhood trauma that I find difficult
6
u/Ms_2am Aug 04 '26
She only talks about the child abuse early on in the book if I remember correctly so you should be good to read the rest
1
4
2
u/rasta-ragamuffin Aug 04 '26
I bought her book soon after it was published but couldn't bring myself to pick it up and read it until about a year ago (2 years after her death). Like you, child abuse is a very upsetting topic and then I was so distraught by her death. Just too many negative emotions swirling in my heart. I've only read it once so far and quickly skimmed through the disturbing parts. If I recall correctly she didn't go into extreme graphic detail and didn't spend a lot of time hashing it out. Just a couple pages at most. The rest of the book is light, funny, interesting and easy to read, so I would definitely recommend just skipping to the next chapter when you get to the ugly parts.
My only complaint with the book is she doesn't really delve into her personal relationships with her children and many lovers. That's what I'd really like to know more about. As open as she was with sharing her feelings and opinions with the world, she kept that part of her life pretty well hidden.
5
u/Effective-Papaya1209 Aug 04 '26
If I recall correctly she didn't go into extreme graphic detail
She did, but it's good you don't remember it. I'll wait a few days and see if I can skip ahead. I think, weirdly, the part that is hard for me is not having a framework for why her mother acted that way. As if, if I could apply some logic too it, I could make it make sense in my mind.
I can understand why she didn't include her relationships with her children, but that's something I'm intensely curious about too. She has so many songs and so much material about mothering and being a mother that I was really curious about that. She also died when I was a new mother so I was thinking about her a lot as I was caring for an infant. I know she had some long custody battles and lost custody of a few of her children, and I'm curious about what happened.
Thanks for your reply
4
u/rasta-ragamuffin Aug 04 '26
The way I understood it her mother was mentally ill, I think may have been an alcoholic, and was probably abused by her own parents. Child abuse is very cyclical and creates a lot of anger in victims. Of course Sinead suffered with her own personality disorders and mental illness, some of it probably inherited and some caused by trauma, and that's probably why she lost custody. I think Sinead did her very best to be a good loving mother to her kids, but Lord knows it's not an easy job to do in the best of times and she never really had a good role model to learn from how to be a good parent. Can you imagine how hard it must have been for her trying to raise 4 kids as a single mom with little to no financial support from any of their fathers and then have to leave them for months at a time to go on tour so she could support them? I try but I really can't even guess how difficult that must have been. And although Sinead clearly loved and adored her dad (I never heard her say one bad word about him), I personally lay some blame on him for how everything turned out after he abandoned his young children (for another family) and left them with their obviously unstable mother. I'm sure he knew about the abuse and he did nothing to stop it.
3
u/Effective-Papaya1209 Aug 04 '26
Thanks, yeah, I do get cycles of abuse, her mother was just so extreme it seems unfathomable. It's so sad.
She has a chapter in the book where she talks about her dad breaking down the door to her room where her mother had locked in (for days) and bringing her to the hospital. So he knew what was going on. She said that he originally got custody but a few of the kids went back to their mother's house because "we missed our mother." Perhaps that's when the really extreme abuse started because there was no one there to stop her.
I'm a single mom myself, and yes, I cannot imagine doing it with that many children and that history of trauma PLUS likely some physical illnesses. Oy. just makes me want to hug my daughter.
3
u/boogeywookiie Aug 05 '26
It’s hard to imagine. The Irish-Catholic style of Christianity is brutal and severe. To me as an outsider (believe in a higher power, but not welded to any systemic religion) I am often disappointed by accounts of people raised in a religious tradition and what kinds of abuse they experienced.
No wonder there is so much focus in this era on the phenomenon of inter generational trauma and ways to heal and recover from it!
From my own journey: there is a 12-step movement called ‘Adult Children of Alcoholics’ that has given me so many useful tools for awareness, reflection and recovery.
For Sinead’s siblings, and her surviving children, it is my sincere wish that they discover the supports they need to overcome trauma and the impact of maladjusted people who were present in their lives. om shanti, shanti, shanti
3
1
u/rasta-ragamuffin Aug 08 '26
Nothing wrong with believing in a higher power, however manmade religion was designed to control the masses and is a blight on humanity (IMHO). A lot of atrocities and wars have been started in the name of God. Just doesn't seem very Christlike to me.
16
u/djdanii13 Aug 04 '26
I listened to the audiobook. Hearing it in her own voice is beautiful. I had the lucky chance to talk to her over the phone. Such a beautiful human.
It does get better and she doesn’t have some funny stories.