{"id":299181,"date":"2026-01-23T09:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T09:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/299181\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T09:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T09:11:10","slug":"ruth-medjber-meets-mj-obrien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/299181\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruth Medjber meets MJ O’Brien"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nIn a new project, photographer Ruth Medjber is asking ordinary people to share their extraordinary tales. This week, she meets MJ O\u2019Brien, who left Dublin for America in the 1960s with her biracial sons\n<\/p>\n

\"MJ<\/p>\n

MJ O’Brien photographed by Ruth Medjber for the series, Sin Sc\u00e9al Eile.<\/p>\n

\"MJ<\/p>\n

MJ O’Brien photographed by Ruth Medjber for the series, Sin Sc\u00e9al Eile<\/p>\n

\"thumbnail:\"thumbnail:<\/p>\n

I meet MJ O\u2019Brien in her home in the middle of Dublin city centre. Her back garden is the canal dock, which makes for a wonderful vista. She\u2019s funny, charming and flirting with my sound engineer\/partner who is recording our podcast interview today.<\/p>\n

MJ is a woman who seems to have always broken society\u2019s divides with love and laughter. Like when she first met her lifelong friend Ann, at the time she started studying nursing in Essex. \u201cShe was from the northside of Dublin, and whenever I opened my mouth, she used to tell everybody: \u2018Don\u2019t pay any attention to her, she\u2019s from Northumberland Road.\u2019 And then I\u2019d tell people: \u2018Don\u2019t listen to her. She\u2019s a commoner. She\u2019s from the northside.\u2019 Even to this day we joke about it, she still calls me \u2018Dublin 4\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

MJ\u2019s talks me through her life, with some poignant ups and downs, but what hits me most is the disparity between her life and the obstacles she faced in the 1960s in Ireland and how different today\u2019s society is.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got into some trouble,\u201d MJ begins with a little smirk on her face \u2013 the kind that tells me there was a man involved. She recounts how her nursing college in the UK was located near to a US Army base, and they would send bus loads of soldiers over for dances. MJ would wait all night for \u2018ladies\u2019 choice\u2019, describing herself as a bit of a plain Jane who was constantly looked over.<\/p>\n

It was at one of these dances where she met Al and fell madly in love with him. \u201cI was 17 and I thought he was the second coming. He was lovely and, of course, he was a different shade.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MJ<\/p>\n

MJ O’Brien photographed by Ruth Medjber for the series, Sin Sc\u00e9al Eile<\/p>\n

As I look around MJ\u2019s apartment, the family photos come into focus, and the smiling faces of all different skin tones start to make perfect sense.<\/p>\n

MJ and Al went on to have two sons, but being of mixed heritage wasn\u2019t straightforward in the 1960s. MJ\u2019s parents \u2013 both well educated and respected doctors \u2013 were supportive, and MJ had so much love for them and for her siblings. However, she made the difficult decision to leave Ireland with her two small children and move to America.<\/p>\n

She felt it would be the less scandalous option for her family, and would also take the pressure off her mother (who had tried to convince the neighbours that the children were half Spanish).<\/p>\n

With Al unfortunately gone from the picture, MJ raised her two sons by herself. She worked hard her whole life, living all across America, from New Jersey to New Mexico.<\/p>\n

Now, with her children grown, she has come back to Ireland to get to know her siblings and friends again.<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t been an easy journey, she has faced all kinds of hardships, losses and injustices, but MJ feels it\u2019s important to forgive those who have done you wrong, or even inadvertently hurt you. However, it\u2019s most important to forgive yourself \u2013 something she says she has only learned to do later in life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a new project, photographer Ruth Medjber is asking ordinary people to share their extraordinary tales. This week,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17,4746],"class_list":{"0":"post-299181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-life-magazine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115943642505709257","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}