Trigger warning: this email contains a brief reference to miscarriage and pregnancy loss. If you need to step away from that today, please do - the blog post linked below doesn't contain this material and is safe to read.

When I first read about Crom Cruach and the first-born sacrifice, I was doing what I usually do with mythology - approaching it academically, looking for the patterns, thinking about what it tells us about how our ancestors understood the world.

And then it hit me differently.

I have only been pregnant once. That pregnancy ended in miscarriage.

The first-born sacrifice is a motif that appears across ancient cultures precisely because the first-born represents something specific - the most precious, the most full of promise, the one you gave everything to have. The offering of that, in exchange for the harvest, for prosperity, for the continuation of the community - it was the ultimate statement of what your ancestors were willing to give.

I didn't expect to feel that personally. I wasn't prepared for how much it landed.

I'm not suggesting Crom Cruach caused my miscarriage, or that there's any literal connection. But sitting with the mythology of first-born sacrifice when you have lost a first pregnancy is a particular experience. It gave me a way of understanding the grief - not as something random and meaningless, but as a loss that had weight, that mattered, that deserved to be acknowledged as fully as it was felt.

Mythology doesn't fix things. But sometimes it gives you a container for something that otherwise has no shape.

I wrote about the broader themes - sacrifice, prosperity, the trade-offs that modern life demands of women - in this week's post, which doesn't include this personal material.

[Read it here ]

If anything in this email has stirred something for you, I'm here. Reply and I'll read it.

Bríd libh

Órlagh

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