I grew up away from my family, away from other Travellers. It was the 1970s; assimilation and rehabilitation for Travellers were very much part of general thinking and reflected in government policy.
My experience of this was felt while living in a home for disabled children. It was clean, clinical and cold. Despite living in care, my relationship with my family was very strong; however, it was still considered best for me that I be fostered by a settled family. It never worked and I am glad.
As a child I was sometimes very sad and lonely. I wanted fresh air, I wanted to live in the trailer, and I wanted to be in the front of our van with my father, looking for scrap or second-hand toys in the dump. I wanted to be with my sisters, to talk and play with them and be automatically understood.
Sporadic contact with my family was not enough; with them I was affirmed as Rosaleen, their disabled daughter, and accepted for who I was. They never knew me as other then being a Traveller. Surrounded by settled people felt strange and foreign.
A family can love and support a child but they cannot challenge a whole system on which they were dependent. Because they were Travellers they were encouraged to put me into care; but care provided without regard for the fact that I was a Traveller inevitably led to cultural conflict. I could not understand or explain why settled people's values, opinions, histories and ideologies were drilled into me.
It was often said I was lucky, I got away, I got opportunities. For me it never felt like opportunities, in fact I felt bullied into being something that I could never be. It is strange how access to education - which ignored Traveller culture - and access to basic services, were seen as opportunities rather than basic human rights, which I should have been able to access in a Traveller-friendly way.
My family were brilliant with regards to not pushing or demanding that I choose one identity over the other, but the experience of being caught up in a cultural conflict was difficult and was destructive. Service providers saw themselves not only responding to support needs regarding my disability but they also had a very definite approach that would have resulted in getting rid of any Traveller residue that I had.
Contact with Traveller activists such as Catherine Joyce and Martin Collins enabled me to understand my experience and name it as a form of racism. This gave me the freedom to be comfortable in myself and have pride in being a Traveller woman. Now as an adult and a Traveller feminist, I can construct a good argument around cultural conflict and the importance of Traveller identity, but it is always infused with emotion, anger and loss.
There were other Traveller children in the home whose experience were not unlike my own. I thought of them when I was watching the programmes States of Fear. Some of them are now married and their partners do not even know they are Travellers. Others have serious drug and alcohol addictions.
Racism, and its impact on a personal level, can destroy not just someone's identity but someone's life. Some, like myself, through the support of families, Traveller friends and Traveller organisations, have found a way to take ownership of our Traveller identity.