Why we feel so bad about Sinéad O’Connor
What happens when we lose our truth-teller?
The sudden passing of Sinéad O’Connor last week has been gut-wrenching, not only for her fans, but for fans of protest, of courage, of speaking truth to power.
For GenXers, we are about the same age as Sinéad, and were also in our early to mid 20s when she first became famous. Looking back now in our mid 50s, we understand exactly how vulnerable and naïve and fragile we were as young adults, even if back then, we had the full conviction of the power of our youth.
Now we can look back at 26-year old Sinéad O’Connor and appreciate just how courageous and strong she really was, standing against not just thousands of people in a stadium or broadcast on TV, but standing against thousands of years of one of the most powerful institutions on Earth.
In storytelling, we use characters that fit into prototypes. The hero, the damsel in distress, the magician, the clown, the truth teller. Storytellers did not conjure up these prototypes; they were already there.
The job of storytellers is to observe human behavior, and the societies and structures we create, cultural, political, emotional. And shine a light, or provide a new perspective and a new interpretation for us of our own humanity.
Storytellers simply categorized and codified the very real people that prototypes are based on, and employ them as vehicles to help tell our stories about ourselves. Every culture, every society, every community has a hero, a clown, a magician, and a truth teller. And Sinéad was the truth teller for ours.
When you are young and beautiful and full of fire, as a truth teller, you are enigmatic, entertaining, and in some ways easily dismissed — the powers sitting in our institutional structures can dismiss your passion as the passion, and perhaps folly, of youth.
But when that passion persists, and when it gets too close to revealing truths that can shake the foundations of institutions of power, that’s when the truth tellers become dangerous.
Sinéad O’Connor used her voice as a tool and a weapon — this petite, the wide, very young Irish woman with a clear and true voice. And part of the trouble she caused was knowing just how powerful and true of a weapon her voice was and, worse, being willing and able to use it.
It is no small act to stand against an entire society, it is no small act to risk excommunication not only from a religion, but also not only from the church, but also from society itself. It is an act of immense bravery, that many people are only understanding now that Sinéad is gone.
The diagnosis of mental illness and madness to shut truth tellers down, especially when they’re women, is as old as witch hunts.
One of the most common ways to quiet the voice of a truth teller (and specifically women truth tellers) is to call her mad, and get everyone else — including the truth teller — to believe it, too. “She must be crazy to be saying these things!” say the institutions, and that we parrot back. Because neither the institutions nor ourselves can imagine ever risking losing the protection of those institutions by speaking out.
Disturbing videos have surfaced of Sinéad from recent years, with her pleading on camera for connection, begging her family to give a shit, reaching out for love, and to alleviate her loneliness, her aloneness. She speaks of her own mental health issues, which she both claimed and rejected over the course of her life.
When the truth teller is no longer young and beautiful, when her body begins to change thanks to childbirth, hormones, menopause but she continues to speak truth, she is no longer an inspiration, but a burden. She is downgraded to being mortal again; add to that our society’s habit of treating women in their 50s as invisible, a mid-50s truth-teller is reduced to practically nothing.
Part of the role of celebrities and entertainers is to inhabit these prototypes for us, to help us make sense of the world around us. When someone dies, it says if that part of ourselves that this prototype represents dies as well. It’s why you may feel a surprising sense of loss at the death of a celebrity you didn’t even realize you identified with.
For me, the first time that happened was when David Bowie died. I am absolutely a Bowie fan, but not to the degree of idolatry that I thought was necessary for a celebrity death to actually affect me on a very personal level. But he was the magician, and as long as he was alive, no one else needed to be.
We assume our idols will always be there; that they are a little bit more than human. They are half deities, and we assume immortality of them. We forget their humanity, no matter how loudly and beautifully they may cry it out.
The same is true for Sinéad O’Connor. As long as she was alive, we had someone else to tell the truth for us.
Now that she’s gone, we have to tell the truth ourselves.
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I’ll be giving a workshop and AMA on Medium Day called Balancing Act: How to Learn to Trust Yourself, from 11AM-11:30AM ET, and followed by an AMA: survival & storytelling, from 2PM-2:30PM ET on August 12.
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I’m the founder of Pretty Deadly Self Defense, a women’s self defense program that promotes body literacy over bodily harm. And I’m the CEO of SINGE, a social impact company focused on the safety and security of women in mobility. I like interacting with readers, so feel free to leave comments and, if you’re not already a member and like what you’re reading, buy me a coffee (and fuel more articles!).
