Should Sinead be using social media to share her agony over Shane’s suicide?
Star I found ‘lost in her own world’ comes out flailing over the tragedy of her son 17
Should social media ever be the place to share your horror and heartbreak as Sinead O’Connor is doing now?
Sinead went. over a short period of her life, from being the beautiful, ethereal face of the Nineties to become a subversive, divisive and heart-broken harridan of politics and religion.
She became the girl who had everything and lost so much of it to mental health problems.
Sinead, the Irish girl with the golden voice, became lost in the tinsel of pop stardom, the gypsy swagger of boots and tats as she hit what she saw as the hard road ahead.
She wanted her voice to be heard everywhere.
Her impromptu performance decades ago of Bob Marley’s War on Dylan’s anniversary bash was stunning, powerful and outrageous. But more than anything, it was emotionally pure and provocative.
But from there on in the girl who for some years there was nothing to compare to, became more and more erratic and difficult to relate to.
People, including many former fans, actively started to dislike her.
Sinead is intelligent and political… but it was her politics and peripheral way of being that ultimately damaged her artistic career.
She had ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II live on US television.
|And in 1999, she was ordained by a breakaway church in Lourdes.
In 2010, she called for Catholics to boycott Mass until there was a full investigation into the Vatican’s role in the issue of child abuse.
And she had – and still has – a right to do with what she will with her own voice. But so many other things happened and she has been accused and derided for what is described as ‘over-sharing’. It had become her modus-operandi, just as it does for some many of us who feel hurt and lost.
I met Sinead briefly in the 1990s in a pub in Birmingham. A friend of mine was writing about her … she was still a star with the ability to shine over her own narrowing horizons. Sinead was enigmatic, mysterious, vulnerable and gentle. Nothing like the firebrand of skewed politics and skinless tub thumping she was becoming known for.
She sipped her drink but smoked heavily. Her fingers were brown. She had a fashionable gypsy quality back then and I liked her.
But now she is sharing again, graphically, angrily and despairingly over the suicide of Shane. He went missing in Tallaght, South Dublin, with Gardai launching an appeal to find the teenager. The police confirmed on Saturday that the search for Shane had been ‘stood down’ after a body was found. Shane had hanged himself.
In a plethora of tweets Sinead has said: ‘Suicide will not bring you peace. It is a lie. Therefore the next poor well meaning sod who says to me about my son “at least he is at peace now” is going to get their lights punched out. How does anyone know he’s at peace?”
In another she said: ‘I can tell you his face was as tormented as it’s been for months. No difference at all.’
O’Connor went on to rail against Tusla, promising retribution for her son’s death and alleging that a CAMHS psychiatrist said ‘planning a wedding is no different to planning a funeral’ upon her son being discharged, despite him having left ‘detailed funeral plans’.
‘Message to Tusla, a storm is coming that you haven’t rehearsed for. Kids are dying in your care every day. Now my kid is one of them. Big mistake.
‘My child has now been dead on Tusla’s watch for over 48 hours and the only contact I have had from anyone representing Tusla was yesterday from their media office, concerned for themselves over the negative publicity.
‘A month ago Shane was brought to CAMHS after vanishing leaving suicide notes including detailed funeral plans. They discharged him. Said he had no plans. When objections were raised by the adult with him she was told “planning a funeral is no different to planning a wedding”
‘That was the CAMHS psychiatrist… I’m here to tell CAMHS that planning my child’s funeral is nothing remotely similar to planning his wedding. Which will now never happen. Because you’re unfit for purpose.’
The Irish singer also alleged her son learned how to make the noose he used to commit suicide on the computer in the child’s psychiatric ward at Linn Dara hospital.
And if her allegations are true, then the method of making a noose – or so many other ways of taking your own life – must be viewed as a major iniquity of the internet.
But is Sinead, with her own problems, doing herself and the memory of her son a disservice by sharing her despair and anger in this way for the world to see? She still, despite the tattered flag of her career, has a major publicity machine at her disposal and, I’m sure, sympathetic advisors and indeed family members she can turn to.
It won’t be long before the social media dragons and other media beasts will turn against her as they have done in the past and this will only serve to have a long-lasting kick in the guts of her obvious agony.
The shallow angry world of social media cannot be the place for people to share their personal agony…
#suicide #shane #sinead #sineadoconnor