Not all strength shouts.
Some of it sails quietly, side by side.
Last week, while visiting Wexford, I came across a story that stayed with me.
At Johnstown House, in the Agricultural Museum, tucked between exhibits of farming life and hardship, there was a panel about the Wexford girls—the young women who left the workhouse in Ireland during the Great Famine to sail to Cape Town, South Africa.
I hadn’t been looking for them.
But finding them felt like uncovering a quiet thread of history—one of resilience, shared pain, and the strength we find in each other when everything else falls away.
Their story still matters.
And it deserves to be told.
Who Were the Wexford Workhouse Girls?
In the heart of the Great Famine, between 1849 and 1850, 52 young women from the Wexford workhouse boarded ships for Cape Town.
Wexford, in southeast Ireland, was devastated by hunger, disease, and loss.
These young women didn’t leave for adventure. They left because there was no other way to survive.
The workhouses they fled were overcrowded and grim.
Families were separated, children perished, and those who remained faced relentless hardship. When they set sail, many carried grief and hope stitched tightly together.
Their voyage was harsh—particularly for the second group, who endured delays and typhoid fever before arriving physically weakened into a Cape Colony filled with resentment.
Poor, Irish, and Catholic, the girls were unfairly caught in the hostility of the Anti-Convict Movement.
And yet, they endured.
Not alone, but together.
In the holds of the ships, and later in strange new towns, they leaned on each other.
Survival came not through toughness alone, but through companionship—the shared burdens, whispered comforts, and small acts of care that stitched resilience into daily life.
The kindness of Matron Furlong, who accompanied them, and Reverend McCarthy, who met them, mattered too.
It reminded them: even in a world of loss, human kindness survives.
Most of their names and what happened to them are lost to history.
A few remain—Catherine Curry, who died in 1853, and Alice Kelly, who lived until 1909.
But it is the collective strength—the standing side by side—that endures.
Today, their story speaks loudly.
It reminds us that in hardship, having someone beside you—someone who sees you—can make all the difference.
In the work with Painting for an Education, the same thread continues.
Young women in Kenya, sharing a thread, creating art, building futures, standing together.
Across continents and generations, the truth holds:
Resilience is rarely solitary. It grows in the spaces between us.
It still matters.
And it’s up to us to remember—and to keep building spaces where no one has to endure alone.
For the girls who crossed oceans together—and for all who carry hope beside one another still.