Stonebird

For thirty one years I have struggled to answer this: How can people not see? Or know? Or hear? Or empathise? Or reach out to genuinely comprehend the most ill? Surely family, neighbours, friends have some idea of the ongoing suffering? Surely medical and other professionals are aware on some level, of the ongoing neglect and profound isolation? Surely there are some who really care, who want to help, who want to reach out? What a difference just one genuinely concerned, aware, interested, committed individual, can make.  

  Sometimes I am amazed at how I cope, get through each day with Linda; her suffering is so intense. I am so relatively helpless to relieve it. However I have learned the power of presence and how that can lead to a place of peace : Once I let go of trying. Once I let go of my far too fragile ego. Once I let go of fear, of despair and flow. Just be. The mystics often refer to how God is found simplicity,in being still. Yes, that has been my great learning, these many years. How in letting go, you fly.

On the radio this morning they were talking about how there is ABSOLUTELY NO NHS PROVISION FOR SEVERE ME. In what other disease, Maeve Boothby-O'Neill’s father asked, would zero provision be tolerated? In what other serious physical disease, I want to shout, would baseless, psychiatric lie after lie be tolerated as truth? In what other serious physical disease would psychiatry be allowed to get away for decades with inflicting great , lasting and even deadly harm upon the most sick and vulnerable ? In what other serious physical disease would sufferers, paralysed, in agony, unable to tolerate sound, light, touch, movement, chemicals, be left with nothing whatsoever, not even respect? In what other serious physical disease would those who have it, simply not be believed? In what other serious physical disease , almost 70 years after it was identified, would a complete lack of treatment and not even a hope of a cure, be tolerated? For over 31 years, I the carer, have had to witness m