"Assumptions!" declared a voice. I looked up to find a tall man in a cassock and dog collar, clutching a bible to his...
Humanity
Revolutionary: Spaces for Listening
What do you gift yourself when you have everything you can buy and are unable to have what you really want, for your...
Remembering that kindness works both ways
When my husband was called up urgently in the evening by a consultant haematologist to come into the acute assessment...
Re entering the wonderful world of work.
For the first time in six months, I felt I had a place in the world again. Six long months of uncertainty, of worry, or wondering if I would ever be needed in the ways that I was previously pre Covid. Not that we are post Covid at the moment, but we are...
Re-humanising at every encounter
“I’m not as scary as I look," he said, this young, wide eyed man standing in front of me. "I have been inside, for four years but it was for beating up my step dad, who beat up my step mum. I wouldn’t hurt anyone else. I’ve done my time and now I just...
Rejoicing in our history
My little girl was leaving her school that day to start at a new one after the half term break, so when a stranger appeared with her when she came out at the end of the day, I was a little surprised. Who was this woman and why was she accompanying my daughter off the...
Re-evaluating: limbo or life?
My husband is 53 today; I will soon join him in the same age. We have been married for 21 years. It is a hot day so we decided against a day out in the country and are lounging around the house and garden, looking forward to dinner a deux tonight as our grown up but...
Reflexivity and Emotional Intelligence
I should like to introduce you to two people. Both work with the public in healthcare, social work or the police. Both are people facing, hands on professionals and both see some difficult things in the course of their work – sadness, suffering and despair which lead...
Recognising the impact for all
What can we do? The moral dilemma of Covid 19. An old university friend used to say, “for every action, there is a reaction.” Physicists know this. Philosophers know this. The laws of the natural world and the laws of logic would appear to have more in common than we...
Relinquishing our obsession with technology.
A recent piece in the BMJ Opinion on 4 May highlighted the concept of “Covid Fatigue” among both patient facing hospital staff and those behind the scenes using technology to continue working. Where the former are tired, weary, irritable and disoriented, sometimes not...
Re-defining paranoia
“I’m probably being paranoid.” How often have you said this, as a preface to saying something you suspect will be dismissed? How often has a friend or colleague said it? And what does it mean, in our common usage of the term? Paranoia as many of us will...
Re-kindled memories – humanity at the end
She lay mostly silent and still, the occasional grimace the only indication of moments of intense pain and maybe fear. The freshly pressed, stark white bed sheet allowed little contrast against her cold skin; all colour had drained from her face and her arm...