Born That Way: Kilkenny heroes, a birth in Gaza, and the Christmas story

This Christmas, if you get a chance, look at the documentary film Born That Way (airing tonight, December 18 on RTE or on the RTE player), a true story that explores how we may be born to a certain destiny.

Eamon Little's portrayal of Patrick and Gladys Lydon, along with their family and extended community, highlights the monumental task of building a community in Kilkenny based on love and shared values. The review from the film festival says: ‘It weaves together different times, places, and emotional layers, drawing the audience into the nuances of community-building and the challenges that come with it’.

After seeing it recently, I was listening to the news on my way home, and as I heard a story from Gaza, my thoughts drifted, and I imagined that place where the evening’s pale light likely sifted through dust hovering above the many piles of rubble, heavy with memories of walls that once stood. We have all seen the pictures and know the narrative of what might remain of a hospital ward, and the reality that, within a close distance, several children had just been born.
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In my mind, after seeing the film, I wondered what a mother might whisper to her child’s cry. That phrase, born that way, carries different meanings depending on where you hear it. Beyond those ruins in Gaza, it echoes in songs, films, and the personal histories of people told they were “too different,” “too strange,” or “too impossible” to exist as they were. Yet those voices sang anyway.

If you enjoy contemporary music as I do throughout the last decades, the expression ‘Born That Way’ has frequently appeared like a comet forewarning us regarding a certain truth about identity and acceptance. Lady Gaga’s voice pulses through headphones, clubs, and pride parades, insisting on radical self-love and unapologetic identity. “I’m beautiful in my way,” she wrote, a declaration that became a lifeline for millions. Her anthem Born This Way became more than a song; it became a reaffirmation, a soft hand on the shoulder saying, You don’t need to change for anyone. You came into this world right.
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Decades ago, when we were growing up and stepping into young adulthood, you may remember Carl Bean had sung a similar truth in a world far less willing to hear it. “I was born this way,” he insisted, swimming against the cultural tide, certainly in Ireland. His voice was a witness to being different. His voice carried the warmth of someone who knew authenticity is not a choice but a fact.

His soul-infused song echoed across decades, weaving itself into the story of queer liberation. He sang for those told to stay invisible, offering them a melody they could live inside.

Patrick Lydon’s Born that way weaves this same thread through a different loom, stories of people whose lives defy expectation, who speak of ecological truth, cultural belonging, identity, and the strange ways society tries to shape what we are allowed to be. His life, based on his realisation and choice of a radical choice, carried the weight of being misunderstood, yet he found power in simply living his truth. Faor Patrick (and Gladys) Born that way is no, was not a slogan; it is an invitation to look again at the world, to recognise the quiet insistence of nature in every one of us, the innate truth that refuses to be buried.

In the war-ruined maternity ward in Gaza, another meaning emerges. I hear the doctors are still exhausted but gently carrying on, handing the newborn to the mother. I imagine it's not easy to receive a child into that chaos, with the knowledge of the world they are being offered. A world of scarcity, displacement, and fractured promise. In our world, some children are born into warm homes and storybooks, while others, like the children of Gaza, enter life under a sky filled with smoke instead of soft snowfall.

I imagine such a mother holding her child close will be thinking: You’re born this way, too. Born into rubble, born into struggle, born with nothing but the hope she can whisper into its ear. Still, even in the rubble, a baby’s grip around its mother’s finger can remain strong.
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What ties these stories together, the pop anthem, the gospel declaration, the documentary’s quiet revelations, and this time of year, is not merely the phrase born that way, but the inner truth it points toward. Every human arrives with inherent worth, shaped by circumstance but not defined by it. Identity, dignity, and hope begin as sparks carried into the world before anyone can attempt to extinguish them. The message whispered across all these narratives is simple but not easy.

To be born is to be worthy. To be born is to matter. To be born, no matter the way or the where, is to deserve a chance. Lady Gaga’s song tells us to celebrate the selves we carry. Carl Bean’s voice tells us never to apologise for existing. Patrick Lydon’s film tells us to listen deeply to how we belong to the world and to one another. And the newborn child in that war-torn hospital in Gaza tells us the message is not reserved for those dancing beneath neon lights or exchanging radical philosophy. It belongs equally to those who enter life with nothing but breath.

The story of Christmas means different things to different people, but it has always been about a child born into poverty, in a barn, in danger, on the margins of a society that made no space. And in this modern echo, the message remains: the place of your birth does not diminish the possibility of your life. Think of that child, any child, starting. Think of a mother somewhere whispering the message that ties all these stories together: “You were born this way, but that means you were born enough.”