What will Irish writers talk about now we have lost our shame?

I voted yes first thing on Friday morning. I came home. I failed to get some work done. From my window, I could see the entrance to my town’s polling station. There was steady ingress. I checked national reports and it seemed turnout was high everywhere, which often signals approval for the proposed motion. I sat on the bed and watched the cars driving in and out. A voice in my head said: “It’s a landslide.” I wouldn’t listen to it; it was impossible.

It’s often I’m told we’re experiencing a golden age of Irish writing and asked why I think that is. Much as I’d like to say that it’s because Irish people have silver tongues and titanium typing fingers, I believe it’s because Ireland has been redefined over and over in the last four decades. From poverty to Celtic Tiger to recession to recovery. From a conservative view of marriage to resounding support for expansion of the constitutional definition to include same-sex couples. From a staunchly Catholic society, rotten with judgment and condemnation, to the collapse of the authority of the church. And now from having one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe – in the world – to the emphatic approval for legislation for safe termination of pregnancy. How can the writer not be inspired when the ground keeps shifting like this?

Women should give birth only when ready, willing and able; I had no doubt about which way to vote. After such a painful history, I was hoping the majority felt the same. We’re a small country coming out of the shadow of two occupations: the first by the British, the second by the Catholic Church, whose representatives, aided by Éamon de Valera, swooped in at the birth of our republic and smothered so much of our revolutionary vigour. We suffered Magdalene laundries, the selling of babies to America, “churching” new mothers, child abuse scandals, vicious warnings about the immorality of contraception and divorce and LGBT rights.

Almost 100 years into statehood, I feel we’re an inherently decent lot busy unknotting an unforgiving religion and learning what it means to be kind to ourselves. I have always explained to European neighbours and people of Irish descent that we are not some bastion of Christian piety but a nation of tolerant people who have seen much of the world and brought the best of it home with us. And still, the last few weeks of the repeal campaign rattled me.

Abortion will not immediately be available to women within Ireland.

The eighth amendment – article 40.3.3 of the Irish constitution – which prohibited abortion, will be replaced with a clause stating: “Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy.”

The Irish government is planning to bring legislation before the Dáil, providing for abortion on request up to the 12th week of pregnancy, with a three-day “cooling off” period before medication is administered.

The prime minister, Leo Varadkar, said he wanted the new law to be enacted by the end of the year.

Between 12 and 24 weeks, abortion will be available only in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, a risk to a woman’s life or a risk of serious harm to the health of the mother. After 24 weeks, termination will be possible in cases of fatal foetal abnormality.

There will be provision for conscientious objection among medical practitioners, although doctors will be obliged to transfer care of the pregnant woman to another doctor.

There was talk about swathes of shy no voters, of an underestimated urban/rural divide, of rejection of expert testimony, of new hatred shaped by “alt-right” ideology. We were told that 18- to 24-year-old men sought to retain the eighth amendment out of spite, as a backlash to the #MeToo movement. We were told that the tone of the yes campaign was offputting. We had watched Brexit, then Trump, prevail; I was afraid we’d been shown how things would go for us, too. My friends – male and female, parents and non-parents, activists and allies – worried that we were headed for a no. How could a grassroots movement compete with the established Christian fundamentalist machine?

And how could I hope to understand and defend my country if my country voted no?

I tend to have low expectations. Like many Irish people, I’m afraid of being perceived to have “notions”: ideas above one’s station. I was raised by my grandparents because my 19-year-old mother was not in a position to raise me. My grandparents adopted me by way of protecting me from the legal concept of illegitimacy, abolished only in 1987. This was the decade of the eighth amendment, which prohibited termination of pregnancy on the grounds of the unborn having a right to life equal to that of a pregnant woman, but until 1987 Ireland did not afford equal rights to its born children. In the 1980s, Irish Christianity was of the same flavour as Orwell’s pigs’ communism.

My grandparents knew what hypocrisy smelled like. They lived by Catholic teachings but never trusted the fervently devout. They didn’t have “notions”. This may have been humility or pragmatism. It doesn’t matter; the concept is meant to keep you in your place. Don’t expect too much, because otherwise you’ll start demanding it.

How long that kept Ireland down. It was what snuffed out the voice in my head on Friday, watching the cars from my room. I am so grateful to the activists who recognised the legitimacy of their notions, who demanded change and worked so hard to enact it.

As a storyteller, I ask myself why I didn’t heed the anecdotal evidence that we would have a yes majority. The Together For Yes volunteers were reporting positive canvasses. My family and friends were yes voters. I saw repeal jumpers in my tiny Connacht town. My 16-year-old reported that their 18-year-old friends had registered so they could vote yes. Their parents were yes voters. Thousands came home to vote, including my friend Clara, who travelled from Tokyo to have her say. Low expectations, though; I didn’t trust the signs. None of us did.

And it turns out that we really are the liberal, empathetic, well-informed people I always swore we were. At the start of Saturday’s live election coverage, broadcaster Bryan Dobson said: “The country has not spoken; it has roared,” and now it feels like anything is possible. So, as Fintan O’Toole tweeted, what will the Irish writers do now we don’t have shame and guilt any more? What can’t we do? We have started the first page of a sequel, with the same warm and wise and funny characters recovering from a brilliant twist no one had seen coming.

Just after 10pm on Friday, 25 May 2018, the Irish Times exit poll was published. “It’s a landslide,” it said. The hand in which I held my phone was shaking. I read it again and went downstairs to tell my husband. “It’s a landslide,” I said. My voice wobbled. “For yes?” he asked. I put my hand on my forehead. I could only nod. We stared at each other, mouths open, eyes shining.

• Lisa McInerney is a novelist