Dympna McGuire walked past the imposing red brick building with its tall arched windows, slate roof and spire, and suddenly felt waves of nausea rising from the pit of her stomach. As she neared the Irish orphanage where she had been placed in the care of Catholic nuns as an eight-month-old baby, she also began to shake uncontrollably.
Dympna spent the first four years of her life at Nazareth House in Belfast before she was taken to a ship and dispatched – alone – to the other side of the world. Decades later, the mother and grandmother from Canberra, now 72, returned to Belfast to try to unearth details of her childhood and the birth mother she never knew.
“My daughter was with me that day and she was very distressed because she’d never seen me react like that before. It was awful. I have no visual memories of my time in Nazareth House – I think because I’ve blocked them out – but throughout my life I’ve unexpectedly reacted to certain things without knowing why,” Dympna recalls.
“During that visit to Ireland I learned I was known as number 4314 – I wasn’t even worthy of being called by my name at Nazareth House. Unless you’ve walked in my shoes, it can’t be understood how
