real people
Groups yesterday in Glasgow, a fairly thorny and sensitive subject matter and I’m reminded, for one, how remarkable people are and for two, what an extraordinary and peculiar job this is.
One lady in my group was in a motorcycle accident years ago. She broke 36 bones. She was immobile for a while, wheelchair bound for 3 years, walking with 2 crutches for some more years and is now down to one crutch but still needs fairly frequent pain relief. I made some utterly inadequate expression of sympathy and she said ‘well it’s a tribute to how far you can go if you try, isn’t it?’ Isn’t it.
Another lady had all sorts of medical complications and a few years back, lost both her kids in the space of 8 weeks. Her 16 year old daughter and then her 21 year old son. As she said, they hadn’t really had a crack at living by then. She cried a little bit and then pulled herself together.
A further lady then apologised because she’d “only” had a stroke and that was a couple of years ago and now she felt fine.
I hope I am delicate enough in these situations. For what an extraordinary privilege this window into other people’s worlds really is.