Meet the Irish Mammies staying connected
Ami McLean’s 1800-strong band of Irish-Kiwi women, known as the Irish Mammies, are a slice of Ireland in Aotearoa, 18,594 km from home.
“Here, Kiwis have aunties - they know everything, they sort everything, they do everything ... in Ireland, it’s mammies,” McLean says.
“We’ve got members who might have four-legged babies, or they’re step parents, or they’re just Irish women with no interest in ever having kids travelling – the basis of the mammies is just Irish emigrated women.
“It’s just that ‘Irish Mammies’ is so much catchier. But if you think about it, we’re not Mrs. Brown ... some of us have better fashion.”
Six years ago, pregnant with twins and moving to New Zealand without a village behind her, Irish-born McLean decided to create her own.
“By seven or eight months [pregnant], I was desperate to meet more people because I realised how lonely I was going to be, and how scary having twins in a country where I didn’t know anybody was going to be,” McLean said.
“You can’t really ring your own mammy at two in the afternoon New Zealand time if they’re sitting in Ireland.”
Within six months, the page boasted 500 members. Now, the Irish Mammies is a community of more than 1800, doing “whatever people feel that they can give”.
Those could be actions as small as sharing the details on where to get sausages that taste like the ones back home in Éire, or leaning on each other through loss and hardship.
Chirstchurch-based Sal Dixon remembers a mammy who had suddenly lost her husband, and how McLean “rallied the troops” to provide in-person support, meal trains, and donations.
“They were both Irish, and had no family here, so you don’t have that immediate collective of your family when something goes wrong,” Dixon says.
Dixon had the task of setting up a Givealittle page to support the mammy through her husband’s death, and after being shared around Ireland, eventually raised enough money to help her move back home.
“She’s living in Ireland now, her child is probably about five-years-old, and she still comes to us to say thanks every now and then. It’s all about what people can do,” McLean said.
There was another mammy whose home had burned down – what made it worse was the fact that she had just restocked her beloved collective of Irish tea.
“All she needed from us was replacement teabags and a ‘here if you need us’, so the fund raising that we did allowed us to place an order, get her those teabags, and give her that ‘OK, we’ve got you,’” McLean says.
Sometimes, the mammies organise the community support themselves - like the one who has taken it upon herself to create a call list of other Irish women to call to help them feel closer to home on Sunday.
Occasions like St Patrick’s Day, while joyous, can also trigger grief and other difficult emotions for the Irish expats.
“Anybody that’s emigrated from a place that is known for alcohol is obviously going to have a few triggering moments from alcohol and St Patrick’s, but also, big celebrations make you realise that you’re further from home,” she said.
Helen Renwick is a mammy based in Wellington, who also hosts a sunrise social club on the first Saturday of every month to connect with new Irish travellers and curious Kiwis.
“It’s not necessarily only for the Irish, its for whoever wants [to be a part of it],” Renwick says.
This year, Renwick and her three daughters were marching in the St Patrick’s Day parade in the capital, where they hoped to meet members of the Irish Mammies – present and potential future – in person to deepen connections. Half a dozen years and nearly two thousand members later, McLean intends to keep her mammies linked and sharing “good karma” between each other.
She’s forever grateful for the support the group had shown her while she was undergoing surgery, and had mammies take care of her children day and night.
“My husband knows that if anything was to happen to me, his first thing to do is lift my phone and go to the Irish Mammies.”
“You can’t really ring your own mammy at two in the afternoon New Zealand time if they’re sitting in Ireland.”
Ami McLean