Pyramids of Love

The idea for this pyramid came from me @herstorylondon(Instagram). This Pyramid of Love honours the Unknown Children, past and present, traumatised through abusive systems under the guise of benevolence.

On 12 January 2021, the Irish government released reports of the Commission of Inquiry into Mother and Baby Homes. Out of only 18 institutions investigated (hundreds more in Ireland, the UK and beyond), it found that 9,000 babies had died from neglect and starvation, and the nuns could not remember where they had buried them. In 2014, historian Catherine Corless discovered 786 babies buried in septic tanks in a Mother and Baby Home in Tuam.

My Irish birth mother was banished from her community because she was unmarried and pregnant. She fled from Ireland to London to give birth to me. We lived in the St Vincent's Mother and Baby home in Westminster, run by the Sisters of Charity. All adoptions through the Catholic Church were set up to benefit the church. So long as you were Catholic and could give a donation to the church, they would give you a baby.

But those adopted away infants - deemed illegitimate and devil spawn - belonged to mothers who were banished and shunned by a misogynistic, racist, child-abusing patriarchal sadistic institution that had no conscience about violently separating babies from their life-givers, and neglecting us at the most critical, vital time of our lives.

We deserved to belong to a world without the cruelty of being outcast and made illegal. We deserved love.

This pyramid is going on tour to give love to people who were traumatised as children in institutions where abuse was normalised. We also give love to those institutions that violently tore children and mothers apart, so they may be able to atone for their atrocities.

"The Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house." We honour mothers, children and adoptees with love, and we reject the cruel ethics of institutions that are blind to their legacy of violence.

#motherandbabyhomes #tuambabies #tuambaby