Got home to find the bunny on the table, for goodness sake what’s she up to?
While I was on the school run I was thinking how Dr Kinouani has got it wrong. For me the writing in the dark is about writing from the dark into the light. The light of health, happiness and joy.
Some days when I’m writing the misery I can understand why it might not seem that way. But like Stacy Johnson says we choose optimism.
I had to leave just as she was asking the question. How do we capitalise on difference? What is the shared vision of culture? (Buge Ampampa)
And here I am drawn back to the oppressor, into the system of hate. Weird hey, that strong magnet, that internalised stuff that Dr Turner talks about in his book. Here I am trying to make sense of myself once again.
Perhaps the pockets of resistance are to be a cause for optimism, searching as they are for a new way. I didn’t see silo’s yesterday, another reason to celebrate, open collaboration, willingness to hear the heavyweight burdens of those marked as other.
I find myself brought back to Buge Ampampa’s words about team based learning. Such a powerful tool as long as the ego’s don’t get in the way. Thinking about how I get in my own way, how others have limited growth. Words from yesterday resonating, act as if you’re welcome…
There is an impasse here. A sense of repetition a sense of the round and round. Mine, others, both?
I’m mindful of how the children are back at school. No change in ventilation, now no longer wearing masks, nothing meaningful has changed when numbers have escaped Bolton.
The story of long covid hidden, not so secret lockdowns like they were never really just the standard practice of public health. Pretence, like systematic ‘whiteness’ does.
Sounds like the trials of party time went well. And how many people were infected by those few, how many contacts traced? Only half the story mentioned in the news, work load hidden.
Like I say, we’re back to the round and round, some media outlets making gain on the misery of division, misinformation, stirring the pot in the way of colonial practices.
I was looking at my diary from last year. “I haven’t written for a while, seem to have been busy on twitter. Losing track of days and neglecting most everything else.” A year to the day (tomorrow) of my cousin’s mental health assessment. How she was so fearful she would be ‘put away’. How the so called friend was making everything worse.
A plan to attend a group that presumably because of covid never transpired. The ongoing support never happened and the phone calls now stopped. There was a plan for a ‘tablet’ but that just turned into tablets. A feeling expressed by professionals that she needs less support – that’s what I recorded at the time. Doesn’t make sense and now I see my cousin’s words in the context of historical trauma. Ancestral trauma. Hopefully different now though not through anything our local services have achieved.
I recorded her response to their assessment of need for less support “I don’t think so.” How right she was.
I recorded that we ended up talking more. Funny she just phoned, I told her what I was doing, how I read about last year. “They were wrong, weren’t they”. Yes, they were.
I read how I didn’t listen to the Dr, he’d been right about which network was the one to try. How I spent all day faffing about trying to buy a phone. Something she’d decided, rather than the tablet.
I wrote about how the provider had teamed up with the NHS and how there was a new app. None of that matters, a year on and she can’t use the phone. Has brought another that suits her, can’t access texts or emails let alone an NHS app. A bright idea from our health secretary that results in no meaningful change. Dispite the costs that we can’t afford.
I wrote in the diary of how this so called friend who borrowed money never to be repaid, the bully who my cousin was scared of, who I’d spoken to safe guarding about, how she too was all alone. How we talked about advance care planning. But apparently she’s with someone else now…
I wrote in the diary of how “our local MP came out in favour of Cummings going. Mostly to favourable response. Some Brexiteers not happy. I’d love to know more about that but I’ve spent a long time on twitter today so took a break instead.”
This time last year a book arrived. Hood feminism. “I learnt today that pictures of white picnics is massively triggering because of lynchings. A black man called George Floyd was killed by white police – they were ‘terminated’ – I guess that means fired. I haven’t heard anything about them being arrested. I’m learning about a very different world”.
So a year on where are we?
Think I might go for a walk after I’ve cleared the table.
