As I continue to adapt to the change in circumstances just a nod to A&E Window Doctor Care & Repair LTD Window & Door Repairs Essex | 4.9 Rated A&E Window Doctor for a great job with a bespoke project we were working on. I’m sure we will be in contact again very soon. Sometimes a new and sparkly window is not what’s needed. This was a stained glass window that we wanted to preserve and they made that happen and fully understood what was needed to help with insulation whilst still keeping an original feature. Great job!

We were waiting for the train. It was cold on the platform and we sought some warmth

Excuse me is there anywhere to grab a coffee I asked the person on the platform in uniform. No it’s all closed after 6

A crowd of police on the opposite platform as we looked on, a change of shift?

Into the sparse, cold, dirty waiting room we go. Sit on the freezing metal seat, chatting excitedly about the art exhibition we’ve just seen. The stories shared.

Sharing, reminiscing, days of waiting rooms like in A brief encounter. Yes we’ve let the country go to shit.

A person offering chocolates, sharing the story of having covid, undecorated door, booby prize, a little cup, crap bus to the back of beyond, the person with the scowl with comic red tie.

Oh how we laughed

So here I am waiting for the webinar to start and I thought I’d use the time to think about my grief.

A long and complicated story that I’ve shared in snippets and choosen not to repeat again today. But it does make me think about the multifaceted nature of grief.

I wonder what I’ll learn to build on what I’ve experienced, what I’ve witnessed in friends, family and patients. What I’ve read about, People I’ve worked alongside and people I’ve let go.

I’m still reading the body keeps the score (Bessel Van Der Kolk) so there’s that too.

Oh I’m in, listen, make comments, click on the link…

It was interesting for $200+ and something you too can learn how to heal… shame. The course sounded good and everyone has to make money. Healing for whom?

In other news a job interview coming up. Please please can we stop with this term “short shifts” short for whom? Nope not doing 12hr shifts ☺️ I’ll die on this hill.

Here I am in tears again. It’s so weird, some days I’m up beat and enthusiastic other days ongoingly devastated. This has gone on for years, made worse by the daily gaslighting of friends in desperate situations.

I can’t help but look to blame at the lack of support I’ve had from organisations allegedly set up to help. It’s Autumn and good kind, people pleasing, recovering from their own traumas friends tell me to let go, be like leaves, make way for something new. A friends words resonate “I knew I had to break my own heart”. I’m raging that my Nurse registration is slowly slipping through my hands. Advice from the RCN and other Nursing “colleagues” “just get a job so that you can make up your practice hours”. It’s bull shit. No one wants a part-time Nurse. Senior Nurse leaders who I have spoken to assure me of my transferable skills, yet the applications aren’t progressed so their words are hollow and offensive. Others who proved unhelpful and unsupportive when asked tweet about how Parish Nurses are ideally placed to check on inhaler technique and prevent asthma deaths and I feel a need to role my eyes at what feels like this constant need of mine to point out the blatantly obvious. Here I am being prickly again. I wonder why? Oh yes it’s Friday 🙂

Get over the redundancy and the silence at abuse of power. Focus else where and don’t let it mess up your next steps…we’ve seen how speaking up goes…for all the pretence of levelling up.

I’ve signed myself up for a webinar, this time on grief and trauma, though nothing translates into paid employment

I went on an away day years ago enthusiastically shared my vision of service development wasted energy as no money for the service and the service reconfigured out of existence. Meanwhile I resist with all my might the slow creep of providing that service alone, because the need hasn’t gone away. Watch as others provide some of it free of charge, them too having been used and abused, discarded.

There’s a growing group of us now all with a similar story. I’m inspired and excited by how people are finding their voice, will no longer put up and shut up.

I’m distracted by scrabbling, the bunny running round and round the sofa, making me laugh, she’s settled now, under the ironing board, slightly out of puff

rewrite and revisit, edit like I’ve been told not to as I go.

Friends have joined a writing group. I remember when I first woke up about thoughts of a writing collaboration and then remember the rolling eyes of a friend about how the rise and fall of voices is a circular exercise that fails to move. Another conversation about hope. Surely we have to have hope?

I’m not sure where I am with hope. I watch along with friends as services get involved but they seem to see a different person to who we see and I’m left confused, frustrated and powerless at the what feels like a now too late slow death.

We’ve rescued someone else. Another connection, a growing band on a journey rolling the waves

The rain has cleared and the clouds race across the sky.

I lean out of the window into the wind and whipped up wetness, strain to capture the moment of this new dawn, changing by the second. The photo looks nothing like what I view.

The clouds are back lit now with edges of pink, moving moving moving, ever changing.

The three birds play on the gusts, in and out of view.

A slow tapping now on the glass, tap, tap, almost creaking.

A distant plane

It’s October and the trees I see waving from my window hold on to their leaf, another lone bird, an empty sky, two more birds, six now, gulls this time, four droop like vultures balancing themselves in the wind

Four wood pigeons, a starling, empty sky

Wispy clouds now, four clouds that a child might draw, sunlight beneath behind the fronds of the pear tree now, sun just the tiniest speck if I strain round the back of the painting of the sunrise on the window sil

Good Wishes to all those who are celebrating

It’s utterly depressing how injustice and assumptions continue. People quick to judge when they perhaps no less about the person than those who become close. Systemic racism looming large. Professional opinion clashing resulting in disconnection. Out of respect I bow out as requested.

I attended Race Reflections 2nd conference which helps in making connections and developing thinking. I’ve joined another group of thinkers and the thinking is deep. I sat in awe looking at people who are within our community. Connecting, chatting enjoying the laughter. My mind is blown by the injustice and the talent the multiple ways in which we are excluded and the joy that is unexpectedly found within our groups of connection.

The connections continue to be made, other connections lost for the moment but ever hopeful that they will be renewed at some point in the future.

It was interesting that it’s said racism is viseral. I go to look up who said it, face an article about why it isn’t viseral but the article that comes up can only be accessed through a school or university account, some of us have neither. There are other options for independent researchers where you can access 100 articles in a month if you can access the internet and it is reflective of the systemic racism that we choose to perpetuate. People

I go off the page (a flight response perhaps) and turn back to this and as I do so reflect on Simone Kolysh’s thoughts about how racism results in the flight, fight or freeze response. The bodily response under my diaphragm telling a different story to the article I found. Why is my visera inflamed?

A colleague on twitter who’s name cannot be shared for fear of reprisals (yes you read that right!) reveals how in trying to answer her child’s questions only finds white bodies on her search yet global majority. Representation matters. As I write that I become aware of a niggling fear that that might be received as a dog whistle and question if it’s even safe to reveal anyone’s names any more and as people question how some people even came to be in the conservative party I become lost in questions…people have shared their fears that have gone unanswered now we have a squatter Prime Minister who has “resigned” but hasn’t resigned, rather like the complaint that wasn’t seen as a complaint. Plans for a celebration at public expense and know that nothing has changed despite the excess deaths, and enabled disability, community let down.

Meanwhile family down with covid again, others rescinded conservative party membership. I find myself updating relatives on masks as the ones they are wearing are inadequate. Why is it me having to give them this information? A Nurse but not a Nurse. Why is that.

I’m pondering on how group think can be avoided. Fending off. Interrupted by a pigeon tapping on the window. I swear to God they want in. I try to get a photo but it flies up on to a neighbouring roof.

I’m reflecting on bravery, looking at my notes from yesterday. Contemplating those fleeting moments of joy, fluid and mobile (Telemaque 2021) enabled through connection.

I have so much more energy. I no longer feel sick. My body is more connected and I’m practicing the smoothness of dancing as we enjoyed yesterday. I have a long way to go but I’ve come along way too. I love that I can now do the hip movements that had escaped me and I aspired to. We practice with our hula hoops too, a fun game for all of us, some of us back to the football I’m guessing, perhaps not today? Theorising in the flesh again (Moraga and Anzaldua 1983) (how do you put those little accents on in wordpress…)

Leaning into the systemic ways people are turned away from help. The complainer who was taken away from the work, search Sara Ahmed: On complaint, “the oh here she goes, the same thing over and over. Locked in locked out, paths narrowing, increasing costs”.

The air thick with projections. “We find each other through complaints and yet we combine”.

Queer and none binary people are shouting for help they’ve always suffered the harm that white women are now living through in the USA. The same harm of denied humanity connects us. A story of how a pregnancy and post code lottery determines safety an old story.

I was thinking about some people I met. How quick some were to dismiss the pain shared. Assume it wasn’t true, the carrier of the message dismissed. There is a need for restorative justice. A chance meeting with an old friend, her fight for education has worn her down. Dismissed as the angry parent with no questions as to why and yet the same people do they know about the social determinants of health?

This week I saw a GP, the care I had was great. A privilege noted for what that was; a privilege to be extended a demand to be involved in research. Nothing about us, without us.

I’ve never been a fan of tolerance. I remember back in the 80’s people used to talk about gay tolerance. Who wants to be tolerated and face denial of appropriate care.

Dr Kolysh, themself a biologist, talked about how there is a pressure for transnormativity, gate keepers of diagnostic criteria how healthcare is never trauma informed let alone trans-competent, how it’s arbitrary if people get the right care. How people have to navigate a dangerous process and hostile environments with nothing beyond the stickers and in the UK I wonder if it’s the same beyond the rainbow lanyard. “Tolerance” hides the harm. How there is multi jeopardy as outlined by Dorothy Roberts when it comes to body autonomy, (amazon.co.uk/s?k=killing+the+black+body&i=stripbooks&adgrpid=1188572968461679&hvadid=74286013775854&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=131511&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-74285949404620%3Aloc-188&hydadcr=10804_2102148&tag=mh0a9-21&ref=pd_sl_2rfxnp4xga_e) how this harm too goes back to the coercive nature of the provision of birth control with it’s long long history of harm and violence. If ever it needed stating THIS is why people have to be, demand to be involved in any research that directly effects them. I note Dorothy Roberts calls for redress and wonder how the work will impact actions in governments.

I’ve witnessed how harm is reproduced across continents, across time. Those most effected left alone to figure out what they did wrong when they had done nothing wrong. The same people marginalised.

If people have got to here I wonder if they are approached this with the idea that they would take issue with the text before they started? The concept of paranoid reading something I’ve just been introduced to by Lucia Samiento, where the reader expects to take issue with the subject matter before they’ve even begun contrasted with the position where the reader anticipates with an open mind: reparative readings (Eve Sedgwick). Anyway I’m thankful to Mariah (girlpower1.wordpress.com Paranoid vs. Reparative Reading Dec 2013) for clearing that up. Ones humanity should not be “problematic”.

What would be the name for this kind of parental fatigue? Another example of hermeneutical injustice? (Sojourner Truth and later Miranda Fricker’s epistemic injustice) and societal harm felt more acutely in healthcare? Though felt in the shops too as clothes remain problematic

I was alerted to this (see link about how the conservatives are actively preventing career progression https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-60491719 the next tweet on my feed just happened to be from Dr Nicole Christian Brathwaite a child and adult psychiatrist talking about the effects of psychological trauma on the child’s brain taking into account the latest horrific shooting in Texas. How children can’t learn when they are afraid and the pressures on teachers literally putting their lives on the line, again (see link https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/texas-elementary-school-shooting-05-26-22/?tab=The%20Victims.) Where’s the action to safeguard children from guns maybe even by the same people who are saying they want to protect unborn babies. At this point my mind wanders to the teachers, were any pregnant? No one safe guarded from this latest horror.

Anyway, talking to Muhammed he has agreed to go with my idea for now, that we write together about school until we can do something more. I told him that when I went to school the teacher used to shout at us. The maths teacher used to swear and throw things. My earliest memories are being scared of my teachers. Though I loved English and my English teachers and all my other subjects. It was just the maths that let me down, though not enough to prevent me from getting my degree.

When I asked about Muhammed’s schooling he assures me that he always worked hard, until he had to drop out because his Dad died. I too tried my best at school but O Levels were disrupted when my Mum died. Everything turned upside down. Muhammed was in school from age 13 to 19 while his father was alive, me from 4 to 16. I left because it was the expectation to go to work, I guess for Muhammed it was the same.

Muhammed’s moto is “Never stop trying, never stop believing, never give up. Your day will come.”

So when governments roll back on access to education, impacting those who can’t afford it they need to know that it has a direct impact on the poorest.

Education has always been my sanctuary. The sacred nature of education we discuss “Oh Education it’s not easy Jane all you have to do is to step an try ur best God will help u the rest”.

And I wonder what those in a position of power feel when they know they are actively taking this away. Are they still talking about levelling up? All I see is the domination of power used to take hope away. By design.

How is the person who is home alone supported when they don’t get a response when they ask for help? It’s unfair to say there was no response there was. It just wasn’t a response that arguably supported need.

I think of how and the limitations of intervention verses the intensity of need. Arguments of what is social and what is Nursing are blurred by the reason for the need, the person still left feeling like they are on their own. Me caught up with my own life and responsibilities.

In this place of wanting to help but not helping because if I do I know that expectations will be greater and where that took me last time (down the rabbit whole of getting no where to my own demise). Systems that don’t change just send me on the round and round wild goose chase without any recognition of need. Where do we go with that? I want those involved in this violence to know that systems aren’t responding to actual need. Expectations over transport, expectations over care provision, patriarchal expectations over who will provide 24hr care, each impacting health, each ablest in nature.

For all the rhetoric of person centred care, concern for “what matters to you”, stated awareness over the social determinants of health here we are. Where has that gone when the person has no one to help them?

I’m waiting to learn about a job I applied for. I was asked to present 5mins on an issue. Research from that lead me to uncovering further systemic harm, the discourse met with silence and denial. I’m used to not being believed so I provided photos snap shots from conferences, personal photos. It wasn’t enough to get a response beyond silence and denial as I walked the tightrope of personal and professional. I think about people I met who had been repeatedly harmed and it resonates on a level. Was I too confrontational I asked, trying to reflect on the experience, do better next time, mindful of how you balance this with the duty of candor. Did you manage expectations at the outset, I was asked. Yep, I certainly tried to. I gave them a heads up that this would be heavy, perhaps hard to hear, took along some photos to add to the presentation to try to lighten the mood. Did it make a jot of difference? Sadly not.

I’m not sure if it resonated on a personal level. It didn’t seem to. Where was the sense of agency? Where was the spirit of this is horrific we need to make changes, we need to acknowledge where the harm is coming from rather than cling on to what was described as their bible and call it out louder, get changes made, pushing it to those responsible, challenging the department of health, recognising the harm, joining, collaborating, working together, pushing it to those who will rewrite the policies of harm?

I want to complain about the latest saga but there is fear of reprisal. The second time this week that I’ve heard those words. A feeling I have now that makes me hesitate to publish this today, until I’ve heard how it went with that job interview, not wanting to prejudice my acceptance, though of course what’s done is done. A communication failure. How can I be clearer? A noted backlash that is made extra hard to challenge, that just embeds harm.

“Accommodation conditions were not meeting
basic human standards, which contributed to
poor health. This included poor food, access
to basic sanitary products, inability to store
medication or have professionals visit to
provide care.
• People reported a significant mental health
impact of the loneliness, isolation and
feelings of being imprisoned engendered by
the conditions.
• Service users presented with a broad range of
health needs, many people required intensive
support to access and navigate the system
which often took weeks or months of delays in
access to care.
• People were unable to get prescriptions,
medical care for pregnancy and children,
referrals to specialists and ongoing support
for medical conditions both chronic and acute.
People did not know how to get and pay for
medication they were prescribed and some
could not access medication needed to control
serious conditions.
• Most people had no access to information
on how to meet their basic health needs
and no formal sources of support from the
healthcare system.
• Service users were forced to rely on hotel
staff to answer their medical questions and
access support, the staff were often unhelpful
and reluctant to offer help around medical
needs. Staff were also poorly informed about
residents’ entitlements to healthcare.
• People struggled to get access to dentists and
opticians and again didn’t have support to pay
for these fees.
• Lack of access to timely and continuous care
meant people were left without treatment and
were left to suffer on their own.
• The evidence in this report shows that initial/
contingency accommodation is unsafe for
asylum seekers due to the lack of access to
adequate and appropriate healthcare services
and the nature and conditions, which risk
directly harming service users’ health.
Recommendations
In order to not cause harm to people’s health and meet
their essential health needs:
• Asylum seekers should be accommodated in a
humane way that enables meaningful access
to full NHS care to meet health needs and
provide continuity of care. Conditions should
not risk harm to physical and mental health.
• The Home Office should introduce a centrally
funded system that houses asylum seekers in
safe and sanitary housing in communities across
the country where they can access decent food
and toiletries and that enables access to local
GP and specialist health services.
• Home Office contracts with accommodation
providers should be amended to include
provision of direct support for GP registration
for everyone in Home Office accommodation
and to access all NHS services and provision
of health information and support to complete
HC1 forms as key performance indicators.
• All asylum seekers receiving Home Office
support should automatically receive a HC2
certificate for 12 months”

Although this was a report talking about asylum seekers I wonder about the similarities with people who are also living on the margins.

“…access to adequate and appropriate healthcare
services and that poor living conditions exacerbate or
generate mental and potentially physical health problems”. and all the while the sound of running water is keeping her awake and she has to repeat the procedure that was made inaccessible before

As I reflect on agency, I feel that lack of agency when you’ve called things out and don’t seem to get anywhere and fall into silence because it doesn’t get you anywhere only just more of the same.

Anyway, I’ve applied for another job, and enquired after another. Perhaps what is meant for me will find me, or some such saying