I call my podcast KnotWork Storytelling because it evokes the image of the Celtic knot. I like the pun about how it’s “not work” because I’m someone who tends to overwork and overcommit.
And, it’s called KnotWork because the old stories and the the past centuries they evoke are almost always a tangle. As we fuss with the contradictions and the stuff we’d prefer not to remember, these tales give us a chance to look at all the knots and tangles of modern life from a renewed perspective.
Sometimes, the tangles feel impossible and I just want to grab a pair of scissors rather than take the time (and do the work) it takes to tease out the threads of ideas. Sometimes, I think its important to let you see me sweat and swear as I try to clarify the narrative and the meaning.
This is one of those posts - tangly and sweaty, if not overtly sweary.
I nearly tossed it several times over and decided my original idea, tying the story of the banshee with International Women’s Day, was a strange, personal preoccupation that no one needed to hear about.
But, I think the message might be in the mess on this one, and it might be best to be wrong or only half-understood in public as I reckon with my relationship with a difficult woman of folklore, my identity as a woman, and celebrating all the women in the world.
When I scheduled this week’s KnotWork Storytelling episode, I was thinking about Colin Farrell and Jenny the Donkey.
Well, no, wait, that is not exactly true.
I was thinking about the film, the Banshees of Insherin and the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony. After having collected so many prizes this season (Golden Globes, BAFTA, etc.), it’s easy to imagine that the movie, the director, or any number of the actors will be recognized with Oscars too.
This week, I am so excited to have Caoimhe Nic Giollarnáith on the show to explore the folklore of the bean sí, the “fairy woman” who was said to be a herald of death for members of Ireland’s oldest families.
Stories of the Banshee: an interesting choice for International Women’s Day?
What I hadn’t realized when I scheduled this episode would be that it would coincide with International Women’s Day. With all the brilliant, accomplished women who have walked this earth, I set my podcast calendar to mark the day with a rather terrifying, though decidedly female, otherworldly creature.
Oh well, I am rarely skilled at following the latest cultural trends.
(When I was young, that looked like being a bookish old soul who just couldn’t find my place in that liminal space between childhood and adulthood. Now, that looks like never knowing any of the Super Bowl halftime acts and wishing they would have Brigid’s Day decorations at Party City in Kingston, New York.)
So, rather than releasing an episode that spoke to women’s strength and brilliance, I share a story about a supernatural being who is associated with death and fear and other things we find hard to talk about.
But then, maybe this is a worthy choice for IWD.
Being a woman has always been complicated and nuanced. Womanhood and “the feminine” brings us close to topics that we find tough to talk about on our patriarchal “follow the sun/son” planet, after all.
An International Women’s Day that Celebrates the Difficult Women Too?
In the Banshees of Inisherin, the neighborhood bean sí goes by the name of Mrs. McCormick.
She’s craggy and ancient and smokes a pipe while creeping up on the folks of the island like an unwelcome shadow. Younger characters duck behind stone walls when she appears, because the old woman says “things that are not nice.” (And being nice matters in this movie in a way that feels human and true.)
Whether it’s because she’s mean or dull or simply reminds folks of their own mortality, Mrs. McCormick is a tough, black wool swaddled pill no one wants to swallow.
And yet, she’s a resident of the island, and even if it feels like a curse to see her coming, doesn’t she have a right to the fireside just like anyone else?
What Exactly are We Celebrating Again?
I tend to find myself in
sentiments about this day:Well here we are, International Women’s Day once more. A day that leaves many of us a little divided, somehow. Who is it really for? Who created it, etc? And to what purpose? My feeds today have ranged from pictures of proud mamas and their daughters, to the call for naming women who’ve been violently killed by partners, to bemoaning the need for the day and much more.
I devote my professional work to not just exploring mythology and folklore, but “heroines’ tales” specifically. I’ve only told one story on the podcast that didn’t feature a prominent female character, and that was for Saint Patrick’s Day last year. My writing coaching and healing clients are overwhelmingly women, and I run a community program called the Heroine’s Knot. (While “heroine” doesn’t just mean “female,” my group is for cis and trans women, as well as non-binary folks who are comfortable in a space that centers the experience of women.)
I spend my life celebrating women, and yet, I still have reservations about International Women’s Day.
In large part it is because it feels crazy that still we need a day to recognize 50% of the population (à la “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit” signs held by elders at pro-choice rallies). In part it’s because putting all women into one lady-shaped container feels just plain wrong. There are more women than I can bear to count (including the more than 55% of white women who supported that guy in both of the most recent US elections) who are anything but pro-women and pro-women’s rights. Beyond chromosomes and some universal experiences of misogyny, it feels we don’t have all that much in common.
But, again the ambivalence… Maybe we do need a day to think about all the other days we could spend finding common ground and coming together to eradicate all the dangerous, damaging ways that “it’s different for girls” continues to be true.
One way to explain the ambivalence is that IWD can feel like something of an “internet holiday.” This is, of course, an assumption that is the product of privilege of being a white woman in America with an iPhone in hand.
(It’s becoming clear why a “quick newsletter” about an Irish folk tradition has exploded into hours of writing and deleting, isn’t it?)
And it reveals to me all the subtle ways in which I feel I was born too lucky to need a holiday in my honor. It’s immense good fortune that sets me as an educated GenX(ish) white woman in progressive upstate New York with the means to pay the bills, even if I don’t have the funds to take a vacation. I am blessed to deal with little more than the casual sexism and internalized oppression on a daily basis. I am in a position to leverage my privilege for women in my community and across the world. (And feel shitty for not doing enough.)
Survivors of domestic abuse who have been incarcerated for protecting their own lives.
Women who stand at the intersection of misogyny and systemic racism.
Survivors of the Mother and Baby homes and Magdalene Laundries of Ireland.
The women of Iran, of Syria, of Afghanistan, which is said to be “the most repressive country” for women.
This day should be about them, not me.
But then, the disconnect. The way I step away from one of the most cherished, most me aspects of my identity because I somehow feel unworthy of it. The way I create more “them and me” binaries.
Oh look, there’s that internalized misogyny and oppression showing its teeth. It’s not that I never felt I could be a feminist. I had all the tshirts and listened to all the Ani Difranco. It’s that the small gains through my lifetime, the changing understanding of gender as a spectrum rather than a binary, and the rounding of the edges that comes with age somehow made me think that it would be more polite to set aside WOMAN and speak to “an everyone.”
When the internal process gets to tangled and contradictory, seek out others’ stories and perspectives
Kerri ní Dochartaigh sits with the questions that sprout up around IWD and concludes with celebration, “Society tries so hard to keep women apart, set us against each other but we know that we are stronger, happier and safer together.”
And I'm grateful for
reflections too because she calls in the way we're not just called to fight against, but to fight for:…when we are most under attack, it is even more important that we recognize and live in the moments of safety and joy that we have. And on this day celebrating women, there is so much to celebrate, because no matter what everyone else is doing - some of us are doing some pretty fucking amazing things.
We live in a world that has tried to destroy us for hundreds of years, and we’re still here. That’s fucking amazing. And we’re still here because we insisted on living while we fought.
This is a thing that I’m always telling people and also forgetting to apply personally quite often: We aren’t just fighting against something, we’re fighting for ourselves and our communities. And if we neglect what we are fighting for, if we decide that we can’t appreciate our beauty and love and humor and creativity until we are sure that absolutely nothing can harm it, it will be too late because the harm will already be done.
If Myth is Medicine…
Back to the ghostly banshee and the faces of womanhood we find it hard to celebrate - including the real-world women might who scare us and repel us.
When I search for stories to tell on KnotWork Storytelling, I find myself skimming countless pages of warriors discussing tactics and priests searching for souls to save. These tales are important, of course, and they create the vast body of myth and folklore, particularly in the Irish context, but they’re rarely the stories I am meant to tell, the stories that light me up, that I believe I could bring new light to.
It’s the women’s stories that draw me in - even when they’re hard to digest.
I’m called to the stories that seemed to have seeped through the cracks, to assert the feminine, the messy, the grief-ridden, and the generative - like stories of Medb, of Deirdre, of Macha. I’m called to stories of difficult heroines, and, as a friend’s tshirt says, I love an “unlikeable female protagonist.”
Auld Mrs. McCormick might be the “ghoul” of her community. She was maligned for her age and her attitude, for being a difficult woman who spoke of difficult things like portents of death. As much as I speak of the power of the Wise Woman, I am not so sure I would enjoy her company either.
In the Banshees of Inisherin, as in our KnotWork episode, we keep the difficult woman, the other, the scary otherworldly feminine at arm’s length. She’s a symbol and a motif, an ancient idea with a few key lines toward the end of the show. It doesn’t begin to seem possible to get inside her head and make her the protagonist of the story…
As I tie off this particular newsletter knot (goddess bless you if you’ve made it to the end with me!), I am realizing that the next difficult story I must tell is going to flow from the mouth of the Banshee. It will take a little while, but stay tuned!
And, in the meantime, do listen to In the Company of the Banshee with Caoimhe Nic Giollarnáth. As is the way with MythWork and remythologizing an old tale or character, we need to know all there is to know about the stories of the past before we can recreate in the present to recast the future, and Caoimhe gives us an excellent place to start
.
The Banshee and the Celebration of Women (Even the Difficult Ones)
I am sincerely looking forward to the story you craft of the banshee. What a strong person she must be: a prophet whom nobody loves and everybody fears. Already, I am feeling inspired by her for doing the hard work no one wants to do, and few have the clarity to understand. I love that this is the character who arose to the surface on IWD! She demands we look at ALL the women, not just the ones we approve of. Thank you, Marisa!
Loved reading every word!! Thank you xx