With a triple spiral symbol on her right ankle, Jessica Wiggs, a junior public relations and English and textual studies major, shows her allegiance to the Celts of Ireland. The tattoo is a token of her cultural identity.

But it wasn’t always easy to have a culture to call her own.

At 18 years of age and on the fringe of high school graduation, Wiggs was suffering from an identity crisis, finding it difficult to define herself among her peers and family. To make it even more difficult, her true heritage remained a mystery.

“I never fully knew what heritage I was,” Wiggs said. “There were friends around me who knew theirs, and even other members of my family who knew where their ancestry lay, but because my father never knew his father, I never fully knew what I was and who I was.”

Wiggs’ heritage remained an enigma until the end of her senior year, when her grandfather passed away and she finally met his side of the family, ultimately revealing her true Celtic background.

“When my biological grandfather died, I found out everything about him. It always bothered me,” she said. “I finally found out that I was 75-percent Irish, and this was such a relief to me.”

After finding out her true heritage, Wiggs felt the need to celebrate her youth and newfound heritage with a tattoo. Claiming to have put a fair amount of thought into the iconography, Wiggs decided on the triple spiral, a symbol known throughout multiple sects of many religions, but thought to originate in Celtic tradition.

In Christianity, the symbol is known to stand for the Holy Trinity, but to Wiggs and her ancestry, the symbol stands for “birth, death and eternity,” with each spiral corresponding to one of the three ideas.

“At the time, I was feeling rather existential,” Wiggs said. “I was thinking a lot about everything, the world and how I wanted to change it. I wanted to know the meaning of everything, and I spent a lot of time overanalyzing and overthinking anything and everything. The idea that birth, death and eternity meeting together in the middle meant a lot to me at that time, though I can’t say it still does.”

Wiggs has always thought of getting another tattoo, but hasn’t found anything that means as much to her since the revelation of her true heritage.

Though she will always bear allegiance to the Irish culture, in retrospect, Wiggs said she feels differently about her tattoo.

Said Wiggs: “I have no problems with the tattoo, but I can totally see the crazy 18-year-old in me when I look at it. I wouldn’t get it removed or anything, but I’m not so sure I’d do it over again if I had the chance.”

Published on April 1, 2013 at 11:19 pm

Contact Ian: imfeiner@syr.edu