Tawnya Gibson's essay, "Stretched on Her Grave"

This summer, I am running a series of essays about Sinéad O’Connor to celebrate the publication of our almost-here book: Nothing Compares to You: What Sinéad O'Connor Means to Us. AND, lest I forget to mention, the book is out in a week!

Today we have a great piece by , which originally appeared on her Substack, Off the Record.

Past entries in this series:

• April Nance’s original essay, “Sinéad and Barbie and Me.”
• Emily J. Orlando’s original essay, “‘You Asked for the Truth and I Told You’: For Sinéad”
• Eileen Toomey’s “In Defense of Sinéad O’Connor,” which originally appeared in The Rumpus.
• Jocelyn Jane Cox’s essay “Sinéad O’Connor Helped Me Find My Voice,” which originally appeared in in Sari Botton’s .
• Jeff Dorchen’s essay “Ketch Vampire”
• Erika Meitner’s poem “Sinéad O’Connor Was Right All Along,” which originally appeared in LitHub.

Do you have an essay, flash piece, or a few paragraphs about Sinéad you'd like to share? Please send pieces of 2,000 words or fewer to sineadanthology@gmail.com. We’d like to run these through the summer so you can consider the deadline to be August 31, 2025. Pieces selected will appear in Summer 2025 as they are received on Sonya Huber's Substack “Nuts and Bolts.” All rights revert to the author after publication, and if at any point you need us to take down your essay for the purposes of future publications, we will be happy to do so. Compensation for those chosen for publication will be one copy of the hardcover anthology.

Stretched on Her Grave

Tawnya Gibson

I’m 16. I’m sneaking peeks of her on MTV, mesmerized by her disembodied head and that extreme close-up on her face and knowing my unrequited love of skater boy or my best friend or the football star or the one that was taken absolutely matched that tear rolling down her face. Because she felt it, I felt it as well and deeply, for whomever I was in love with that week.

She was everything our mothers hated. She was everything we wished we were.

I’m 49. It’s early in the afternoon and I’m sitting on the couch; my legs crossed beneath me. I see one photo pop up on my Instagram feed from Glen Hansard’s account. Sinead - again disembodied and an extreme close-up. This time much older. Still with pain in her dark eyes. No words were captioned, yet. But still, even in the absence of words I felt that pang of recognition. I knew. I immediately exited and searched and confirmed her passing.

I am absolutely gutted.

It was just weeks prior that I had watched her documentary. I can’t stop thinking about it all - her life, her music, her movements through an unkind world. I remember watching her rip the picture of the Pope. I had just started college. I can’t remember how I felt, for sure. Conflicted, probably. The first of many instances where I would wrestle with what I know and what I don’t as I tried to find my voice.

Her music a constant. Always. “I Want Your (Hands On Me)” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes” at home with Alison Moyet, Florence and the Machine, and Fiona Apple on mixed CDs and playlists. Music to raise my son by. And Three Babies. That one was never high on my list until I became a mother. Very little can gut me as it does, now, my son grown.

She gave me images and thoughts about what a feminist could look like while being a mother. She gave me the first blooms of who I would become, of why Alanis sunk so deeply into me to never let go and of feeling my own personal trauma. She gave me the pictures to start coloring and wonder what it would be like to be unapologetically me. Dear heaven, she was magical, and we were so terrible to her. She was slaughtered again and again and again, and we just watched it. Even then, I knew it was wrong but 18-year-old me had so few words and even less audience that cared.

So much was said after her death about feminism, about mental illness, about a sick and perverse system where we use people up and spit them out and not a word of it was untrue. And while I read it all, another part of me simply reeled from the loss, from not being able to settle who and what she was to me coherently enough to matter. My mind jumps from lyrics to style to coming of age through it all and finally lands on this:

When Delores O’Riordan of The Cranberries died, I was stunned but still able to grab the tragedy and adjust my worldview to make some kind of sense. But with this one, I’m realizing that the hits will keep coming more quickly as the world spins faster for our generation.

And? I’m not ready.

I’m not ready to lose my heroes. My friends. There is still too much to say, to learn, to digest.

I placed a notification button on the book Why Sinead O’Connor Matters through my library right after I finished her documentary. They’ve yet to procure a copy. I abandoned the library and bought it. It seemed more urgent I read it, now. Desperate almost. Because I’m not ready to let go. To let the world trouble me still.

Tawnya Gibson is a freelance writer who grew up in the high desert of southwest New Mexico. Her work has appeared in TODAY online, Newsweek, Zibby Mag, Under The Gum Tree, Sky Island Journal, and Blue Mountain Review (among others) and she was a longtime contributor to Utah Public Radio. She currently writes the Substack newsletter, Off The Record and lives and works in the mountains of Northern Utah.

We’ve got more events and we hope you will join us for some!

• July 15 @ 6 pm: Dublin, IrelandHodges Figgis Bookshop: Martha Bayne, Mieke Eerkens, Sinead Gleeson, and Allyson McCabe in conversation with Una Mullaley
• July 17, 2025 @ 8:30 pm: Bantry, IrelandWest Cork Literary Festival: Martha Bayne, Mieke Eerkens, and Allyson McCabe in conversation with Eoghan O'Sullivan
• July 22, 2025 @ 7 pm: New York, New YorkBooks Are Magic, 122 Montague St., Brooklyn, NY 11201. Launch event with Sharbari Ahmed, Martha Bayne, Sonya Huber, Porochista Khakpour, Millicent Souris, and Zoe Zolbrod, with musical guest Monique Bingham. And on YouTube live!
• July 28, 2025 Doors @ 6:30, Show @ 7:30: Chicago, IllinoisGMan Tavern: (Bar attached to Cabaret Metro) Book talk and party with Martha Bayne, Sonya Huber, Zoe Zolbrod, Megan Stielstra, and Gina Frangello -- plus musical performances of Sinead O'Connor songs by Amalea Tshilds, Marydee Reynolds, Jane Roberts, Nora O’Connor, Jeanine O’Toole, Eiren Caffall, Julie Pomerleau, and L. Wyatt. 3740 N Clark St. | Chicago, IL 60613
• August 7, 2025 @ 7 pm: Westport, ConnecticutLaunch and conversation with Sharbari Ahmed, Sonya Huber, and Nalini Jones. Westport Public Library, 20 Jesup Road Westport, CT 06880 203.291.4800

Let me know if you have any questions, if you want a review copy, if you want to host an event, or anything else!

xoxoxox

Sonya