"Sorry For Your Troubles Missus"

I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to do a Women of Belfast ‘Troubles Tour’. Everyone told me I should do one and as far as I know there isn’t one, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend time talking about what is such a sensitive topic in this part of the world.

So at the end of 2025 I started to put something together. I didn’t want to do a ‘Troubles Tour’ as such - plenty of others would do a much better job of explaining the political intricacies of the time than me - but I had started to wonder about the experiences of women during that time, including my own. I knew what it was like to be a teenage girl during that time, but what was it like to be a Nurse, Waitress, Innocent Bystander or Active Participant?

 After careful research, I came up with “Sorry For Your Troubles Missus”, a phrase we would use often in this part of the world, and another euphemism often used to avoid a sensitive topic. On this tour we talk about some of the events during that time and I hope this tour will grow and change as I start to uncover more stories which relate to them.

So, like I say, this is not a ‘Troubles Tour’, but rather the stories of some women’s experiences from the dark days of the late 1960’s to the hope and optimism of the late 1990s. There’s a fine line between treating the narratives respectfully and sanitising some of the stories which come from our troubled past.

I hope I can do them justice.

Further Reading 'The Sorrow and the Loss, Martin Dillon (2025)

Getty Images (Belfast residents queuing up at a checkpoint leading out of the city shopping area