u/zombieduck96

Both sides of my family left Ireland 200 years ago during the genocide that people are somehow still pretending was just a famine. I have Irish names, look very Irish (according to Irish people anyway), and grew up Catholic, but that’s it. I don’t speak Irish, have never been to Ireland, don’t know much about Irish history, and didn’t grow up hearing traditional Irish folktales.

I have never felt a connection to Irish paganism or witchcraft. I grew up learning Greek and Norse mythology, can read Ancient Greek, and know more about Native American spirituality and deities than Irish ones. I feel that being forced out of Ireland disconnected my family line from that land and its gods, and I have never felt Ireland or its gods calling me.

Maybe this would change if I ever visit Ireland, I don’t know. I used to feel that I should try to connect with my deeper ancestral traditions but would always put it off. I would buy Irish mythology books and subscribe to podcasts but never actually read/engage with them. I have rationalized this subconscious reluctance as in line with the wishes and choices of my more recent ancestors. The land could not protect them from British genocidal imperialism, so they fled it.

I am also too generationally distant from Ireland (fifth generation) to be eligible for Irish citizenship (if I remember correctly, you need a grandparent who was an Irish citizen or two great-grandparents), which I see as the collective, contemporary Irish people rejecting me (which is totally their right).

After rationalizing my hesitance to embrace Irish gods and traditions, I stopped feeling guilty for preferring Greek and Norse gods and Native American spirituality. I feel like I’m honoring the choices of both my ancestors and modern Irish people.

I’m curious if other children of the Irish diaspora feel similarly or if you’ve felt a call/connection to the practices of your more distant ancestors.

I’d also love to hear from children of other forced diasporas. I’m wondering how the different historical contexts that caused our ancestors to be displaced affect our connections to their cultures and gods today.

(I’d like to add that I engage with Native American spirituality by attending community events my Native friends invite me to. I never ask them to invite me/if I can come. I think it’s inappropriate for non-Native people to engage in Indigenous traditions without an explicit, unprompted invitation from community members.)

After getting my phone number, a guy sent me a three-hour podcast of him and his friend trashing the SSPX, which I had mentioned I occasionally attended.

At a singles mixer my friend was hosting, a guy asked me about my job. I told him I was teaching at the local university. He proceeded to explain to me that women should not be teaching anyone other than children.

When a “very traditional” guy took me back to my place after the second date, he wanted to come upstairs to my apartment. I said I wasn’t comfortable with that and suggested we hang out on the couch in the lobby instead so we could keep talking. Then he ghosted me 🤔

After talking online, a guy and I met for a first date. I had told him I was open to anything except mini golf, going into detail about why I didn’t like the mini golf place in our area. Guess where he took me for that date? Afterward, he insisted we get Indian food, which I love but he hated, because “I thought it would be fair if we did something you liked and I hate because mini golf is something I like but you hate”

A guy told me about a time another man pecked him on the lips as a greeting, which he felt warm and fuzzy over and greatly enjoyed “but not in a gay way” 🤔 He also said he wished men would do this more often

Not a date but putting it here because the guy later asked me out: In front of the church, a guy started ranting, unprompted, to me and another girl that he hates women, 99% of women are whores who he’s not attracted to, but that me and the other girl were each “one of the good ones”. On a separate occasion, I was hugging everyone goodbye after trad brunch (I’m a hugger and this was in the South) the same dude said, “no, no, I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable”, stared into my eyes and said, “I would never touch you against your will”. This guy also constantly talked about having a gun.

Once I got a message from a guy on a dating app calling me a fed because I mentioned Latin mass in my “typical Sunday” prompt answer and was wearing a Sabaton shirt in a photo. (Still have the screenshot)

On a lunch date, a guy demanded the waitress cancel the bill (after he had given her his credit card and she had run the transaction) because he was charged a dollar extra than what the menu said. She talked to her manager, and they offered to just give him a dollar. He refused and told them to cancel it and run the card again because the first bill had included tax on the extra dollar. The same night he called to ask me out again. I said, “No thank you I just don’t feel that we have much in common other than being Catholic.” He said “that’s not true! We talked about your X, Y, Z hobbies” (none of which we shared), so I hit him with, “Well I prayed about it and God doesn’t want us to be together”

When I was 25, a friend of my mom’s at a diocesan TLM tried to set me up with a 48-yo, who assumed I was 18-20 (I look young). (I was disturbed for several reasons and said nooooooo thank you)

Not a date but still unhinged: At a young adults event, the priest (FSSP) offered to let the young men know I was “available”. I was like wait they won’t just come up and talk to me? Such innocence 😆

Very excited to hear y’all’s stories 😘

When we’re in the throes of religious bullshit… we become convinced the most inane things are deeply evil.

When I was like 25, I tearfully confessed to “writing pornography”… by which I meant writing T-rated Twilight fanfiction as a teenager on ff.net, not even ao3.

My penance was “5 decades of the most holy rosary” (that’s how the priest said it). And this was from a say-three-hail-marys kind of guy (FSSP priest).

(I have done a lot of therapy for religious OCD and am all good now, never fear)

If you can out-stupid that confession, I’ll be impressed.

One time I confessed masturbation and this priest (young, in his early 30s at the latest) gave me a startled, horrified look and started lecturing me that it was much worse for me, a woman, to masturbate than for a man to masturbate because women are life-givers (i.e., can get pregnant). I said nothing to prompt this other than “I confess masturbation”.

This was in California in 2019 at a normal Catholic church (not even a more traditional one)

One of many in a long line of such unhinged comments and bad advice from priests till I got to the point where I thought, “why do I keep subjecting myself to this? Surely Jesus does not want me to constantly put my emotional well-being at risk by talking to strange men about my sex drive”.

Edit: Thank you all so much for your comments! I’ve read all of them and tried to reply to as many as I can. I hope this discussion has been as cathartic for all of you as it has for me 💕