My husband and I can't have children. This isn't something I talk about constantly, but it's part of my story and it's directly relevant to why Tailtiu matters to me - so here it is.

When I first came across her, I wasn't looking for anything in particular. I was following the thread of Lúnasa back through the mythology, trying to understand what my ancestors were actually doing at this time of year. Tailtiu was there in the sources - the woman who cleared the plains of Ireland until it killed her, the foster mother of Lugh, the figure whose death the harvest games were held to commemorate.

The foster mother detail stopped me.

In Irish tradition, fostering wasn't a lesser relationship than blood parenthood. It was sometimes the more significant one. The foster parent who chose you, who shaped you, who gave you what you needed - that relationship carried real weight. Tailtiu chose to raise Lugh. She gave him what he needed to become who he was. And then she cleared the land so that the people of Ireland could eat, and she died of the labour, and the festival that bears his name is actually, at its core, a commemoration of her.

She didn't have children of her body. She fostered one instead. And what she gave him, and what she gave Ireland, was everything she had.

I didn't expect to find my own situation reflected in a figure from Irish mythology. But there it was.

My husband and I have ended up - unofficially, organically, without anyone planning it - as a kind of anchor for a collection of teenagers and younger adults who we refer to collectively as "the kids." They're not ours in any formal sense. They drifted toward us at various points and stayed. Between them and my nieces, I am thoroughly surrounded by the next generation in the best possible way.

Tailtiu's story helped me understand that this was not a consolation prize. It was its own thing - valid, significant, and in its own way, a kind of clearing of ground. Making space for people to grow into who they need to be.

This week's post is about her - who she was, what she did, and why the quiet necessary work she represents matters just as much as the more celebrated kinds.

[Read it here ]

Bríd libh

Órlagh

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