IRISH MUSINGS - MY CULTURE 2
SESSION TWO — VULNERABILITY
This is a link to the ‘Principles’ tutorial video - ‘My Culture - Session 2 - Principles’
Alongside the Principes video, I have included the ‘Activation Narrative’ that is part of this session in the self-guided workbooks. The stories I tell aren’t comfortable, nor are they trauma porn. They are designed to elicit a specific response from the reader, tied to the topic our clients are working on in this session.
The Second Red Rule:
“Treat people the way you want to be treated, is a warning label, not a bumper sticker.”
― Robert (Sherpa) Millar
The country road outside my grandmother’s cottage was packed for half a mile in either direction with men from every walk of life Ireland had to offer. In that crowd of humanity, military personnel, and police officers —both active duty and retired — rubbed shoulders with protestant paramilitaries, who were standing beside Catholics, alongside landowners, talking to farm laborers, all in their Sunday best, to pay respects to my grandmother, Sarah Gilchrist. She had twelve children and 54 grandchildren, as well as numerous great-grandchildren, by the end of her life. I was sixteen, and Sarah was my maternal grandmother. She had been the only grandparent we had known, and despite the unorthodox nature of my childhood, I was grieving her loss. I was stuck in the middle of the crowd and getting seriously stressed, for it was almost time for the procession to the graveside.
Her daughters, daughters-in-law, her granddaughters, and great-granddaughters had already said goodbye to her inside the cottage. Alongside this host of female relatives was an equally broad cross-section of Irish female society. All of them were standing inside, or just outside the cottage in the garden.
It was 1987, and in our part of Ireland, we still kept to the old ways. Women weren’t permitted to go to the graveside for fear their tears would upset the recently departed and cause them to return in sympathy and haunt the living. So, the crowd getting ready to carry Sarah to her grave was all men and boys. We each step forward to do a carry, a set amount of steps, while the other mourners walk behind in silence. In Ireland, at that time, boys were taught not to cry from a very early age. At one point during my turn at the ‘lift’, I almost shamed the entire family by spilling a few silent tears. My Dad gave me a rough glare, my brothers a panicked look, and then the full weight of five thousand years of Irish ancestors stiffened my spine, and I made it through the rest of the service without a single tear. It took another eight years before I cried again. By then, I had undergone a radical spiritual transformation and met healthier individuals who encouraged me to embrace vulnerability. At 24, when I first wept in a church service, it was physically painful. I have lost count of the times senior leaders in dozens of fields shared similar stories of being trained to control their emotions from an early age.
Like all the activation narratives, this actually happened, and it will stimulate a subconscious response as you read it. Some of you will likely relate to my story, while others may find it truly unthinkable, wherever you find yourself coming from as you read this, “welcome to session two of My Culture. Here you will add two ways you access vulnerability to locate and relate to Isolation and Connection.”
In the next post, we'll explore the first vehicle you'll learn to drive—Imperfection—and how it allows you to travel between Evaluation and Safety without losing your home.
— Robert (Sherpa) Millar