Author: Gemma Kelly

Anne Lamott writes about how she is in the third third of her life. I wonder if that means I am in the second second of mine. I always thought I would know more by now, that I would have a successful job and career, a house, and most importantly a dog. Turns out, that I think I know even less than I did before. After more education than one person needs, I still cannot find the right job, and other than an unfortunate investment in an apartment I don’t live in, I have no house to speak of. And worst of all, there is no tiny ball of puppy fluff nibbling at my toes as I write this. But I wouldn’t change it for anything (well I would change the not having a puppy part) but the knowing less and not having the perfect life plan come to fruition, is not as bad as I thought it would be. It turns out life is not about a perfect plan, or the perfect job or the perfect house, it’s really all just about people and experiences and the tiny tiny things that give us joy. Everything else is a bit of a shit show really.

We are living through a once in a lifetime pandemic, people are dying, and not just from Covid, from all the other horrible stuff that was around before it and will be after it. Wars rage, people suffer and despite best efforts, people are still trafficked and women and girls are still murdered, in their homes and outside of them. Like I said it’s a shit show. I try to manage this difficult and painful world with a mix of idealism and stone cold cynicism. It has been brought to my attention however, that not only are these not working, I am not fooling anybody, not even myself. The irritating part of this, is that I pay good money to an annoying therapist to be told these things. I tell him cynicism keeps me safe, he tells me there is no safety from hardship. I tell him that Romeo and Juliet should have broken up, at least that way they would have lived, he tells me life without love isn’t life at all. I tell him that being open hearted means we make bad decisions and get our asses kicked. He tells me life kicks our asses anyway, so why not enjoy it, take the risk, and maybe in all the mess of living and loving, crying and falling, I might just enjoy myself. I think I hate him. I am running out of sarcasm and fake cynicism and he is of course right, which is obviously the worst bit.

Actually, the worst bit is that I keep relearning these same lessons over and over again. When my dad got sick a few years back, I was determined to live an open-hearted life, like he did, without even trying all that hard. He loved well and unconditionally. I do too. Once that love is for other people and not myself. Loving others is easy, loving yourself is a whole other ball game and one I don’t want to play. Turns out, according to annoying therapist (and Brené Brown) that to love others well, you also have to love yourself. To forgive well, you have to forgive yourself, and that being kind is wonderful, but showing kindness to yourself is revolutionary. I struggle with all of these things, who doesn’t? And so often I barricade myself away, behind my cynicism and sarcasm, building my impenetrable walls. I plan for disappointment, so much so that I live in it and I miss all the wonder and beauty around me.

Secretly though, I am still waiting for the plan to happen you see. The one with the awesome job and the apartment in New York and little Thor nibbling at my toes (and yes I have named my future dog, the way other people name their future children). I stare wistfully out the window, wondering when my life will start, when that job offer will come, when I can afford a house bigger than a shoe box for Thor and all his toys. When the call comes to tell me ‘I am enough’. And while I sit staring out the window, life is happening all around me. My life is happening, I just forgot to board the train again. When my dad was sick, I jumped on the metaphorical life train, I wanted the train and all the adventures it would take me on, good and bad. I was fully on board, for getting my ass kicked, my heart broken, for the elevating highs and the crushing lows. Then my dad died, and my heart got broken and I was landed with an avalanche of pain like nothing I had ever experienced. I did not like the train anymore, I wanted off. I wanted my old friend fear back.

I have written about fear before, the almost human companion who has accompanied me for most of my life. Fear is the one who told me not to get on the train, he told me that trains crash and ultimately end in despair. And so when the train did indeed crash, he once again whispered ‘I told you so’ in my ear. What could I say? He was right. Again. So we became best friends again after a brief period apart. And oh how comfortable it was, to be back with my old friend, hanging out, watching life go by, safe from all the pain and suffering, preempting all the pitfalls, and avoiding all those moments of joy that would inevitably be taken away before I could even enjoy them. How happy we were. Me and fear. And let’s not forget our friend disappointment. ‘Just stay here with us’ they would say, ‘it is so much safer here’. ‘If you live with me’, said disappointment, ‘I will never sneak up on you, you will always know I am here, you will always be prepared’. So, I have stayed with my comfortable friends. I have refused to open up, to anything; people, experiences, new friends and old; content with my fear, best friends with disappointment.

But something wasn’t quite right. It just didn’t feel like living. In fact it didn’t really feel like anything at all, other than safety at all costs. And that cost was me. And so in an act of madness I found the aforementioned therapist who tells me nothing but difficult truths. That life is hard, which I knew, but that it doesn’t have to be quite this hard. It comes in waves, he tells me; good things, bad things, good things and so on. That life is not just black and white, it is not even grey, it is every colour of the rainbow and more. That I will cry and laugh, but often not in equal measure. That people will leave and die and there is nothing I can do about it. No armour will protect me from the pain, pain is inevitable. But that joy is free for all who choose it. Yet another thing I hate. Both the choosing and the knowing that it will be lost. This, he tells me is life. And that I can choose to live it, or I can choose to hide from it, but that the latter is not really me. That the cynicism is a cover, and the idealism is an impossible task. Something else he is right about that I greatly dislike. For as long as I have had fear, I have also had hope. That other annoying friend, who pushes me, not away from the train, but towards it, telling me He will hold me, no matter what happens, no matter the waves, no matter the twists and turns. All I have to do is trust hope a little more and fear a little less, and accept that disappointment comes and goes, but that ultimately life is a rainbow. It is black and white and every colour in between. Self-forgiveness is redemption and revolution, self-love is freedom, I am enough, and hope, my dear friend, is everlasting.

One of my favourite authors wrote a book called ‘The five people you meet in heaven’. It’s the story of a man’s journey to heaven and the five people he encounters on the way. These five people had all played a significant part in his life or more to the point, he had played a significant part in theirs. And they tell him their own unique story of how he impacted their lives. I saw something similar in a video recently, of a man who saved hundreds of children’s lives in the early days of the Holocaust. He saw what was happening in Germany and he made a way for 600 children to leave Germany and find homes in the UK where they would be safe. He saved their lives. And then years and years later, his wife, with the help of a TV host, found as many of these people as possible and gathered them all in a room with him. The host of the show asked that whoever had been saved by this man to stand up. And as he turned around, as all these people stood up, he realised just how many lives he had affected, how many generations he had changed.

In normal life we don’t usually get this opportunity, we don’t get to see the numbers of people that we affect. We also rarely get to do heroic things like this man. Most of us won’t save 600 children from certain death but we do get to change the lives of the people we know and love and the people we don’t. I was on the tube today and a woman got on, she seemed really upset, she was crying and had her head in her hands. And I didn’t know what to do. Whether to ask her if she was okay or to leave her be. I looked around the tube but no one else seemed to notice. I was searching for an answer, I searched so long that my stop rolled around, and I had to get off. So I did nothing. But I can’t stop thinking about her, about if I could have helped somehow, or, at the very least if a kind word from a stranger could have eased her suffering a little bit. I think it could have. Even if she didn’t want help, or to be disturbed, even if she had told me to go away, maybe somewhere deep down she would have felt a little less alone. Maybe not today or even tomorrow, but maybe next week she’d have realised that someone cared. Isn’t that what we all want? To feel a little less alone, a little less stressed and overwhelmed. I have had the worst two years of my life, I have never felt so overwhelmed, sad, despairing and desperate, as I have these last few years. But I have also never felt so loved and so cared for in my entire life. It’s a weird thing to be so sad and so grateful all at the same time, to feel so alone and yet so deeply loved in equal measure. But it is the latter that gets us through. In this life we will have trouble, there will be pain but there will also be joy. Not always the joy we want, sometimes it’s laughter through tears or the dark jokes only you and your closest friends understand. But often it is the tiniest little things; the smile as you get your coffee, the person who gives you their seat, the song of a child on the train.

And what I am learning, very slowly, is that we can all be that for other people. We don’t have to save 600 children, but we can change someone’s day with a smile, a kind word. Sometimes, when things get far too hard and life seems just too impossible, I wish I could be invisible, to not feel, to turn it all off. To not exist for a little while, to find some peace. I wonder what the point is, when this world is so dark and people are so cruel. But then I remember the woman on the train, and how I could have helped her. I think about all the people I do help, not because I am extra special, but because we are all unique, because we all have the power to change the world around us, to change the lives of the people around us, by being a little kinder, a little braver maybe. By reaching out instead of turning in. I try now to find peace in connection, to find beauty in the ugly, to be light in the dark. I am realising, not for the first time and probably not for the last, that life may be hard and disappearing seems easy but showing up reaps far greater rewards. Even if showing up simply means looking up a little more often, and opening up a tiny bit more.

Now I like to think that all the people I will meet in heaven will have a smile for me, because one day I had a smile for them, and if nothing else, it helped them to feel a little less alone and helped me, to feel a little less afraid.

Since finishing my MA in Human Trafficking and particularly my dissertation on prostitution and sexual exploitation, I’ve been trying to give my mind and heart a break from the horribleness of this world. So, I’ve started reading happy, light-hearted, somewhat badly written novels where everyone is content and there’s no violence or death. Just lots of happy ever afters. I found a book titled “Cold Feet at Christmas” which seemed suitably mindless and cheery.  Set during a snowy Christmas, it’s a fairly typical story – girl meets boy, starts new life in Chicago, there’s ups and downs, but ultimately everyone ends up happy. The kind of book that leaves you warm inside and not wondering what percentage of the male population of the train you’re on have paid an underage girl or vulnerable woman for sex in one of the hundreds of brothels you know are all around London. About 80 to 100 in just the Westminster area alone, as of 2013, most likely more now. And the answer is one in ten.

But I digress. All was going as planned with this lovely novel of nothingness when I got to this part…

When I read this, I just sighed a deep exhausted sigh and thought “here we go again”. More normalisation of violence against women, more normalisation of violent sex, more normalisation of violence, full stop. And it just compounded what I already know, what I have been grappling with for the last few months and years. That if we are to ever end the epidemic of violence against women, we have got to start challenging the constant, tiny, almost invisible cultural narratives and norms that portray violence as normal, acceptable, unavoidable. The ones that teach boys that to be a man is to be violent, the ones that teach girls that to be a woman is to be submissive, and not only submissive but enjoyably submissive. We may not see it or want to admit it, but we live in a culture that is doing exactly this. Children are watching pornography at 9 and 10, and younger. It is getting more and more violent. And our little children are watching this, our lovely, beautiful, innocent sons and daughters, nieces, nephews, godchildren, grandchildren, are exposed to this world where boys are being taught that sex is about power and violence and girls are taught that you cannot say no, that this is what a healthy sexual relationship looks like. They are exposed to a world where women are disposable, objectified, where when a woman is raped, she’s asked what she was wearing, had she drank, did she voluntarily go home with him. A world where little boys are told that boys don’t cry, that big boys have to be strong. And then we scratch our heads and wonder why male suicide rates are exponentially high, why there are mass shootings, male on male violence, soaring rates of intimate partner violence, and teenagers being gang-raped by other teenagers in school toilets.

To make matters worse, people are taking sides, battening down the hatches on their own ideologies and belief systems. Women are standing up, calling out patriarchy and male violence, building on years of women’s movements and activism. For this I could not be more grateful, to live in a time where women have a voice, where they can feel safe to disclose abuse (I say this, knowing that the proportion of rapes being prosecuted in England and Wales is just 1.7%) but still now more than ever, there is space to raise these issues, things are starting to change, all be it slowly.

But what I also see is a huge chasm growing. I have conversations with wonderful male friends, who tell me they feel demonised and blamed for the harm that men perpetrate, and so we have conversations about inequality and our different realities. We very often disagree. And every single time I come away and I wonder what on earth we are all doing wrong. How can we stop this growing divide that I see, with men on one side and women on the other? When the reality is that both men and women suffer. When we write books that romanticise violence and abuse (yes 50 Shades of Grey I am talking about you and the less so obvious Cold Feet at Christmas), when we allow the objectification of women through pornography and prostitution, when we tell little boys, literally or figuratively that they are not allowed to cry, then everybody hurts. Everybody. This is not about women versus men, or women trying to make men like women, feminise them and undermine their masculinity. It’s about asking what femininity and masculinity are in the first place? What does it look like to be a man? To be a woman?

Jackson Katz in his book ‘The Macho Paradox’ describes the history of the word ‘macho’ – he says that for Latinos, the word macho, in the original Spanish meaning of the word meant ‘well-respected, embodying traits such as courage, valour, honour, sincerity, pride, humility and responsibility’. He goes on to say that the English mainstream usage of this word has lost much of its original meaning, associating the word macho with ‘hyper-masculine aggression’. (He also explains the colonisation of Latin America and the eroding of culture via language, but that is another day’s work).

But let’s take a look at those words again – courage, valour, honour, sincerity, pride, humility, responsibility, respect. These are traits to live by, to encourage, to teach and instil in our children, in ourselves. Male or female. We have to cross the divide, we have to start having difficult conversations, like the ones I have with my male friends and we have to wake up. We have to be more alert to the very subtle yet disastrous consequences of normalising gender inequality and violence; for men and women. We have to start asking ourselves difficult questions about how we are raising our children. As women we need to work with men, we have to explain what it is like for us, to walk home with our keys on the ready in case of attack, to never sit upstairs on a bus late at night, or more to the point, to never get a bus home late at night, but instead to watch the little Uber car on your phone as it drives you home. To make sure it is in fact, driving you home. We need to not tar all men with the same brush, to not blame all men for the actions of others. Yes, we live in a patriarchal world, but we will not change it on our own.

And men – listen to us. Listen to us when we tell you our stories, our reality. We are not always telling you because we want to blame you or ridicule you, we tell you because we want you to understand and we want you to stand with us. We want valour and courage, humility and honour. And we want to stop burying our young men because they were too scared or ashamed to ask for help. We want to stop incarcerating teenage boys for rape and murder. We want change that benefits everyone.

I usually end blogs with a direction to hope, which is both desperately needed and mercifully in abundance, if and when we look closely enough. But I will end with a story from some research I read for my dissertation.

There is a trend in Cambodia known locally as ‘bauk’. It is where groups of men go to brothels, ‘buy’ a woman and gang rape her repeatedly, or they kidnap a girl or woman and take her to the outskirts of town where they gang rape her and leave her for dead. Research with these men revealed that they got the idea from watching Western pornography where women were gang raped. The difference they said, between what they saw in the videos, and what they do, is that they have to beat the woman first into submission. In the pornography, she willingly agrees to it.

“It hadn’t been rape – God knows she was more than willing – but it hadn’t been kind either” – Cold Feet at Christmas, a light hearted, romantic novel.

I tried really hard to fill my day today, I went to the bank, I planned on answering emails and doing washing and going food shopping. I was going to catch up on reading and work. But the world is funny sometimes, it doesn’t always allow you to do what you want to do. In my quest to fill my time I decided to walk home, down along by the riverside in Richmond. But my sense of direction is terrible and completely lost, I found myself walking by all these park benches that line the side of the river. Each one is dedicated to the memory of someone who has gone before, they hold beautiful messages of lives lived and loves lost. And so in spite of my plan to ignore what day it actually is today, I sat on a bench and remembered that this day last year we said our final goodbye to my dad.

As I sat, I watched another dad play with his toddler, a wobbler really, a new little human trying to find his feet. I watched the dad watch him, as he climbed up steps and wobbled down tiny mounds and it reminded me of what dads do. They let you try things, they let you be adventurous, they let you fail, they let you fall, because they know they will always be there to catch you, no matter what. I got the bus to school when I was in primary school and my dad, at my insistence would hide up a little hill, behind a tree and watch as the bus collected me. He did this because I was too embarrassed to have him stand beside me, but he watched me from afar, knowing I was safe but letting me be who I needed to be. And this is what he did, he watched, he steered but never imposed. He never had to, we knew what he thought, he was our family’s due north, our constant. In my line of work, we talk about trail blazers all the time, the Martin Luther Kings and Malala’s of this world, it makes for inspiring communications. But so often we forget about the ordinary people who through their everyday lives do extraordinary things. One of the benches by the river remembers a man who ‘spent many happy times walking this path’ and so today I remember the man who walked the path of life before me and with me, who taught us all how to walk properly, to know right from wrong, to love with no limitations, to stand up and be counted. My dad treated everybody with respect, to him doing the right thing was always more important than personal gain. He didn’t give great abounding lectures or write books about justice, but he lived his life with integrity, people looked to him when they were in trouble and he always stood up for what was right. I could read a thousand books about justice and equality, but you cannot learn from books what our father taught us. We watched how he and my mother lived, their unconditional love for each other and for us and it has shaped our lives and the people we have become.

But I find it hard to talk about my dad, even writing this is extremely difficult. Some of my family do a much better job of telling stories and remembering times together. I can’t, it is too painful for me to do that, for others it brings comfort. I don’t believe there is any one right way to grieve, that the person who talks or cries is grieving any worse or any better than the person who says nothing. Anyone who has ever lost someone they love knows that there is no formula to grief, no right way. People say the first of everything is the worst, the first Christmas, the first anniversary but every day is another day without that person. Every day is a day further away from when they were here, from when you last spoke, or joked, from the last time they held your hand or winked at you about a secret only you both knew. Every day could be a day you sit on a bench by the river and feel a pain so deep within you it takes your breath away.

But today I want to remember my dad, to let the pain out a little bit so I can take in the good of who he was, so I can let myself feel his presence, like he is still watching me from the hill. Like he is still letting me fall and fail because his memory will always catch me and guide me. Today, for a little while I will let myself remember that everything he did in his life was for us, for my mum and my brothers and sister. Today I will remember that a life well lived, is a life spent in love, expending yourself for others, gently loving, never foreboding. Today I remember my daddy.

I heard a really good talk last week, it had been the first time in a while that I had gone to church. I don’t go to church very often these days, I don’t feel like I fit in anywhere, I don’t belong. So I avoid it, not from lack of invitation but motivation. But I had an hour to kill in London so I wandered in, the speaker, a man called Ken Costa began to talk, he spoke about justice and how the small minority can stand against the tide and change the course of history. He spoke about William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. I liked it, needless to say. Then he began to speak about something that completely captured me; he called it ‘Silent Saturday’, the day after Jesus has been crucified. When you grow up in church you hear about Easter all the time, Jesus died and then He rose again and that is our Easter story. Along with chocolate and Easter eggs. But I have never heard anybody talk about the Saturday in between, the Saturday when the whole world goes dark, when the story seems finished, the disciples scattered, their hopes dashed, when they are grief stricken and broken. He talked about how actually for a lot of the time we live in the Silent Saturday, when all hope seems lost, when joy is absent and the world seems beyond redemption. When no one even knows that Sunday is coming.  

Later that week, with this talk still floating around in my head, I went to see my GP, I thought she might be able to help me with the exhaustion I feel at the moment. Instead she talked to me about grief, she talked about how when someone dies and the funeral is over, other people go back to their lives, life continues, it has to. But for the people who have lost the person they love, their whole world has changed, nothing will ever be the same again, their reality has been altered forever. They now live in Silent Saturday, days are dark, grief is a constant, joy is lost. I thought about the girl at the centre of the Belfast rape trial, about how soon the marches will stop, the media will move on, but she will remain. Living in her own Silent Saturday. We all live through and in our own Silent Saturdays. And not for the first time or the last time I wondered where God is, in this broken and lost world. Where was God at the rape trial, where was justice? Where is God in Sub Saharan Africa while children starve, where is He in the Syrian War, where is He in the brothels of South East Asia or South East Ireland for that matter? Where is He while I cry over all that I have lost.  

The thing with Silent Saturdays is that we so rarely speak about them, just like the Easter story, we can be tempted to skip past it, but Saturday happened. It had to, for the Easter story to mean anything, for Friday’s death to mean anything and Sunday’s resurrection to be the beginning of all things new, there had to be the day in between. The day when everything is dark, right before the dawn.

And a lot of the time this is where we live, in the day in between. It is where I live right now, I know an easier day will come, I know that one day I will laugh again and actually feel it in my soul, that the tears which so freely flow right now will not freely flow forever. Sunday is coming. I know that, deep within me. And it is with this deep rooted belief, that so often seems too far to reach, that I look again to the world around me. Slowly and in the most unlikely of circumstances I see pockets of hope springing up, glimmers of God in the darkest of situations. I see Him in the marches across Ireland this week, in the public outcry and the response to the Belfast rape trial, I see Him in the stories of resilience that come out of Syria; in the Lebanese pastors providing schooling for Syrian refugee children, in the women and men who fight on the front lines of trafficking and prostitution.

I see Him in the middle of the night when sleep alludes me and the only thing that brings peace to my battered heart is to whisper a prayer and know that I am heard, loved. I have someone, who when I am sad, tells me tomorrow will be a new day and sure enough, if I look hard enough I can see Him in the beginning of each new day.

Silent Saturday may be our reality but Sunday is not only coming, it is all around us. Beckoning us in, holding our pain, calling us home. The dawn which seems so far away, does eventually, break. Saturday becomes Sunday and with it, darkness turns to hope. And hope does not disappoint.

One of my best friends in the whole world called by recently, we had tea and cake and sat in front of the fire. We caught up on life and Christmas and family. And then she did what she so very often does and told me some things I didn’t want to hear. She told me gently but firmly that I need to start really grieving for my dad. I politely told her that I didn’t want to, she politely told me back, that I have to. You see I am well acquainted with grief, we go back a long way and I have always done my very best to avoid it. I see no reason in facing it now. Except of course for the wise words of my friend who pointed out that I won’t be able to out run it forever. I couldn’t before so why would now be any different. So I begrudgingly said, fine, I’ll do my best to face what I have to face but on the days I want to curl up in a ball and give up, I’m calling you. She said ‘I’ll be here’.

Those three words summed up some things that have been rolling over in my mind these last few weeks. I’ll be here. When things in your life all start to fall apart as they inevitably do, either through grief and loss or just life being overwhelmingly difficult, what is it that gets us through? More and more over the last year and particularly over the last three months I have realised that for me it is two things; faith and family and friends. Family and friends often being one and the same. My faith has been what has gotten me out of bed in the mornings. Not the type of faith like wise old ladies have, who have lived difficult and profound lives and so have this air of Godly knowledge about them but the other type of faith. The near non-existent faith that says ‘please God, help me get out of bed today. Literally. I can’t get up. It is too hard.’ And then you find yourself slowly inching your way out and managing to get dressed, some days even showering. And so with pure reliance on something inexplicable and much bigger than me I do the basics of eating, going to work, putting petrol in my car, even Christmas shopping. In between all of that I have people. So many people, so many more than I ever realised. Family, friends, co-workers, pastors. All saying the same thing; ‘I’ll be here’.

The thing with grief and loss and pain is that so very often it makes us shut down, close off to the outside world. When I am sad I disappear inside myself, I lose the ability to make conversation, I most certainly lose the desire for it. I want to stay in bed, with the lights off, weeping. I don’t want to talk about it because nobody understands, equally I expect people to understand without me ever having to explain it. I am not at my most rational when I am immersed in loss and pain. And yet every day without fail my phone will beep. Somebody will be checking in to see how I am, ask me if I am sleeping, am I keeping check on my alcohol intake. For those closest to me, they open themselves up to a long monologue of every thought I have ever had. Others will extend an offer for coffee or a walk or a movie. Or an invitation back to church. Sometimes the beep might just be a funny joke or an image sent to make me smile. But each one is saying the same thing; I’ll be here, I am here, when you are ready to come back to the world, I’ll be here. When you want to cry uncontrollably and kick and scream and yell at the injustice of it all, I’ll be here. When you want to sit in silence and stare vacantly at nothing, I’ll be here. Equally I know God is saying the same thing. Yell at me, cry out to me, I’ll be here.

So over the last while I have realised how very deeply loved I am by so many people and for reasons unknown to me, no matter what I do, these people keep on loving me. My family put up with long silences, my friends continually offer support, my boss takes me for coffee. And this love is the glue that holds me together when I am falling apart, or in really hard times it is the glue that puts me back together. Love is actually all that we need and without it life is unbearable. We were created for relationship, love and community. The two things I have learned throughout my messy life is that this world will give you pain, at some point we will all experience loss, sickness and difficulties but in those moments when you are at your lowest, when you are just about ready to give up, you can experience great love. People if you let them can pull you back from the brink. God, if you let Him will hold you in your sorrow. There is light in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

So I am grateful in the midst of grief. I am grateful for the people who have taught me that the true purpose of life is to love and be loved. I am grateful that the Heavenly love I know is unconditional and because of that, so too is the earthly love that I am surrounded by. I am grateful that I have known great joy in the midst of immense pain. I am sometimes scared but I know that I am not alone. ‘I’ll be here’ much like ‘I love you’, must be the three most beautiful words anyone could ever hear.

Coraggio was the theme of my breakfast with some friends this morning; coraggio is the Italian word for courage and this is something these particular friends are always encouraging in my life and this morning was no exception. I thought about this as I drove home to my parent’s house, what it means to be courageous, to live a brave life. I thought about how for the last few weeks and maybe months it has felt like I have been drowning, overwhelmed by life, the pain of it and the uncertainty, the responsibility and the sheer exhaustion of the everyday. I have being trying so hard to keep my head above water, to stay strong, to keep going but inside I have been drowning, struggling to hang on. And in the midst of this, almost right on cue, my old friend fear came along to play. And play he did, whispering those old familiar words in my ear; to run, to give up, to go back to what I know to be really true- that I am alone, abandoned. The same words that sent me to New Zealand in a quest for a new life, the same words that told me not to love but to protect myself, that told me that God is nowhere to be found, that this is a forsaken world. The same words that send me in a tailspin, that make me bunker down and do it all by myself. Convince me that I am the only person who can keep all my balls in the air, that if I just keep juggling, keep moving, everything will be ok. And suddenly the old familiar urge to run starts to kick in, to get away, to disappear, to start again, someplace else, someplace safe. So I revert back to type, finding solace in whiskey and wine, knowing deep down there is a better way; that I have been down this road before. But when fear has its grip, it can be so hard to see straight, to untangle the mess, to believe that there can ever be a different way.

But as I sat in work last week, overwhelmed by feeling lost, drowning under the weight of my sorrow and fear and wondering how I would ever come back from the orbit I was in, I had this image appearing before me of arms sweeping me up and holding me close. Rescuing me from the over powering waves, sheltering me from the onslaught. And for a very brief moment I felt peace, my soul momentarily felt rest.

As I drove home today I remembered this image and I thought about that word courage; coraggio, and what it really means. I began to wonder if maybe to be courageous is to ask for help, to tell someone how you are struggling, to realise you don’t have to cope all by yourself. To accept that there can actually be moments of joy in the midst of pain, to accept that in this broken world there can be rejoicing. To stop waiting for the next disaster, for everything to trip you up. To believe that you won’t just be ok, but that God has good plans for your life, plans to prosper and not to harm you. Sometimes being courageous means to just stop and stand still; to trust even when the storm rages around you, to look up instead of inward. To accept that you don’t have to have all the answers. To be courageous sometimes means to keep learning this same lesson over again. To face your fears and believe in a better tomorrow, to fight for the things you want and the people you love but know that it is ok to fail, to accept that perfect does not exist. To let yourself fall, even if it means getting hurt, to love without limitations. To not believe the whispering lies of fear. To believe you are not alone and never abandoned.

Courage for me, means instead of running away, to run home, like the prodigal daughter, to the arms of a father who loves me, who will not forsake me. Who will wait no matter how far I run, who will seek no matter how hard I try to hide, whose words whisper peace and give rest to my weary soul, whose perfect love drives out all fear, whose home is eternal and whose love is never ending.

Coraggio means letting go and daring to trust.

Written September 17th 2017

I often think that being able to freeze time would be the best super power to have. If I could freeze time I would freeze this moment right now. My dad sits at the top of the table, smiling and listening to the words of Elvis, my mam dances around the kitchen and myself and my sister laugh and look at each other knowingly. This is one of the moments I would freeze frame, I would stay here in it forever, this moment, where everything is well with our world. I wonder do other people think like this? That if I could just stay here and not move, if the world could stop spinning, just for a minute. Just so I can soak up this experience, drink it in, not lose it. But moments pass so quickly, quicker now than ever it seems. We move from one thing to the next at lightening speed. And I find myself wishing and constantly looking backwards, trying desperately to grasp onto things, to experiences, to conversations, to moments in time. I am realising more than ever the importance of making every minute count. I used to think that making your life count meant making huge differences in the world, doing a job that changed people’s lives, making people aware of the injustices in the world so we can do all we can to fight them. And I still believe in that, wholeheartedly, but for a long time I let that define me. I believed that if I could just make this world a better place then I will have done my job, I will have fulfilled my role on earth, my purpose.

But I wonder now about my purpose, I wonder what that really means. I look at my dad and I see his wonderful legacy on this earth but I don’t see it in a job he did or a car he drove or even the house he helped build for us. I see it in my nephew’s eyes, I hear it in my niece’s laughter. I see it in my brother’s as they pick up his mantle, as they get more and more like him every day. As friends and family phone and call by, to visit and chat. His legacy and my mam’s legacy is in us, we are steeped in it, surrounded by it and grounded in it. It is where we get our sense of justice, of right and wrong. It is why I have grown up with such a strong sense of purpose. But somewhere along the line I lost sight of the fact that all things matter, I became consumed with a mission, a good mission, a noble mission. But in there somewhere I lost myself. I forgot that the everyday matters, that the conversations and laughter I have with friends over coffee and ice-cream are just as important as the articles I write about human trafficking and slavery. I forgot that taking my goddaughter to the cinema now, will become a memory she cherishes as she gets older. That building the foundations of that relationship is what will more than likely bring her to my door when she is 16 and needs a break from being a teenager. I forgot that sitting in silence with somebody is better than sitting without them. I look at the people who have gathered around us, I feel like there is a protective bubble around my family made up of the people who love us. And the thankfulness I feel in my heart cannot be put into words.

But that didn’t just happen, legacies don’t just appear, love grows. And life is full of opportunities for love and moments of connection. But I miss them, sometimes I feel like we all miss them. We are desperate to get to the next thing, the next meeting, the next appointment. But what about this appointment, right now, this moment. What are you doing with it? Who are you spending it with?

The reality is, we can’t stop time, time moves; life changes. It is the inescapable reality of life. But we do have a choice with what we do with it. Yes we have a purpose on this earth, we all have gifts and talents and skills we can use. But I believe we were created for more than just a job or a role, we were created for relationship. Relationship with each other, relationship with God, with our world. And because of that we will change the world around us. But if I don’t stop and slow down I am going to miss it.

Often to make me feel better about some terrible situation, my lovely colleague in work says that the earth is just a blip in comparison to eternity, and this may be true. But it is our blip, life has been breathed into us, gifted to us from the Master’s hand. Moments have been wrapped up like glittering presents, waiting for us to unwrap them. And yes sometimes those moments are hard, some of them are near to impossible to cope with. But some of them, some of them are beautiful, unique. Some of them, like a smiling father and a dancing mother are magical. So I am learning to grab them, treasure them, be thankful for them. And to live and love like every moment is the last.

A friend of mine recently told me to find the beauty in the world. I am going through an extremely tough time at the moment, probably the worst I have ever been through. The kind where if you were to stop and really think about what is happening, the pain of it could swallow you whole. So my friend and one of my mentors who knows me better than most, gave me this advice-to find the beauty in the world. He knows that I have no problem finding the suffering, the pain, the deprivation and the sorrow but finding the good things, seeing a silver lining is not always my strong point. I know it is there, I just don’t always see it or even want to see it. And I think this is how a lot of us are. Life is hard, I seem to be repeating this over and over again at the moment. Everyone I know and love seems to be going through a really hard time. And we all seem to be looking around, a little bewildered, looking for some answer, wondering why no one told us it would be this difficult. And then comes my challenge: find the beauty in the world. I wish he had said go to bed and watch some Netflix and everything will be better in the morning. But he didn’t.

And so I have begun a search for beauty. I usually find it in obscure places-my work takes me to wonderful places like the Philippines and Ethiopia and it is really easy to find beauty and wonder here. When I go away I am transported to a different world, a world full of not just amazing scenery and remarkable people but to places where perspective is at the centre of everything. My world becomes realigned as I see people who are living in abject poverty, recovering from disasters or fighting injustice on a daily basis, rise from their circumstances and transform their lives. The world looks different when you are sitting on a mountain in the clouds 4,300 metres above sea level, sharing a moment with the creator of the universe. Or sitting on top of a jeep chasing a sighting of a rare Ethiopian mountain lion as dusk falls around you and fire flies dance around your face. In those moments everything is perfect, even when it isn’t.

In those moments you feel more alive than you ever have in your entire life. You become overwhelmingly thankful for the openness and inspiration of people. You meet people who let you into their lives and their stories and even though you know you will never see them again they are etched in your memory forever. You know you have shared in their pain and their sorrow as well as their joy and their hope. Seeing the beauty in this world is easy for me. Seeing the beauty in the world I live in is an entirely different challenge.

When I meet people for work and they tell me their stories, they have for the most part already overcome so many obstacles, triumphed over what would seem like insurmountable circumstances and transformed their lives. They tell me about the hope they have for the future, the dreams they have for themselves and their children. It is easy to come home inspired and mesmerised. Believing in the depths of your soul that people can overcome all circumstances; that bad can always, somehow be turned to good. But those feelings wear off, you forget, life takes over. Those feelings of clarity become a distant memory, you come home and life kicks back in. Perspective slowly but surely disappears. The hamster wheel of life begins again and even though you rally against it, inevitably that brief feeling where the world made sense is gone. And then all you see is the imperfection, the troubles of the people around you, the worries and the struggles. Until, someone challenges you- find the beauty in the world.

I realised as I searched for this beauty that I have a tendency to look for it in far off places. It occurred to me that maybe my friend wasn’t saying find the beauty in the world of Ethiopia and the Philippines, in those wondrous stories of hope and resilience. Maybe he was saying ‘find the beauty in your world Gemma.’ In this world where your life is hard, where you grieve and cry and scramble for answers that aren’t there. Where you see your friends struggle and your family’s pain, where you walk by homelessness and drug addiction on a daily basis. Where you look to a church that appears to be failing. Where you cry out to a God who feels more distant than ever. See the beauty in this world.

And so I am trying, and in my fight to survive my own thoughts and my own grief I am forcing myself to see things I would never normally see. I see my friends who text me every day to see how I am, to ask after my family. And the ones who just send me a funny picture or a joke because they know it will make me smile. I see my friends who make daily sacrifices for the good of their children and their marriages, who put other people’s needs before their own, who are quick to ask how you are even when they doing all they can to get through the day themselves. I see friendships that have grown over 15 years get stronger, as life gets tougher. As I start this piece I see two people in a coffee shop falling in love, messing and poking each other in those early stages of love and flirtation. I sit while waiting for my friend who has insisted on seeing me so he can check in with me and spend some time chatting over coffee. I see the waiter greet every customer with a smile. I see my friend preparing for the birth of her first child without the support of her mom – and for the first time I really feel her pain and lament not loving her more, while being forever thankful for her constant support. I see the joy in my nephew’s belly aching laugh as he watches his sister do the same funny trick for what must be the twentieth time. I see my own sister as we pull each other up and push each other on. I see the sun shining through the church window as the sound of a classically struck violin echoes around the walls. I see that God isn’t so distant after all.

And I see my dad as he looks at my mam, a smile stealing across his face as he takes her in. His eyes still shining for her like how I imagine they did, 55 years ago when they first met. I see her, still so eager to make him happy, still revelling in his presence. I see them, still in love after all these years, still laughing, still together in everything, still fighting on. Still loving us as we love them.

I see the beauty in the world. And it is perfect, even when it isn’t.

Ethiopia is a beautiful country steeped in culture and history, it is known as the cradle of civilisation. As you travel through it you can go from mountains that sit 4,300 metres above sea level where you lose your breath not only from the thinning altitude but from the miles of magnificent beauty surrounding you. To the noise and bustle of 6 million people making their way around Addis Ababa, weaving in and out of outdoor markets and shops. It is formidable and somewhat unique in culture and history. But as with all countries it is not without its problems. Over 70% of the population live on less than $2 a day, it has recently suffered drought and famine as a result of the weather phenomenon El Nino, leaving 10 million people in desperate need of food security.

However in the midst of this and much like its beauty there are stories of transformation and change springing up all around. They are hard to ignore and in some cases even harder to believe. Families and communities are being lifted out of poverty, children who once went hungry are having three meals per day and attending school, relationships between husbands and wives are being restored. Communities and government representatives are coming together to work together for the good of the community.

Tearfund Ireland has been a part of these stories through supporting Self Help Groups and as we travelled through Ethiopia in October last year visiting with these self help groups we experienced all of this and more. The material and economic difference in the lives of the women and men involved in self help groups is nothing short of a miracle. But what stands out the most, what cannot be captured so easily is the restoration that is taking place. The change in relationships and marriages. The love and transformation that is so evident you can feel it deep within your soul.

 
On our last day in Ethiopia we met Woynishet. Woynishet has a remarkable story, a story of restoration and redemption, of a journey from isolation to partnership. Woynishet did not work, she raised her children and used the small amount of money her husband gave her to feed their family. Her children had never had breakfast before she joined her self help group. But joining the group required more than just turning up to meetings. Her husband was completely against it and Woynishet had no confidence or self-esteem. She felt powerless and useless but she knew she needed to do something to provide for her family. Ethiopia is a patriarchal society, gender inequality is widespread and domestic abuse can be common. So she and two other members began to meet in secret. All three of them had to hide what they were doing, one of them also experienced ongoing domestic violence and so they had to be particularly careful.

However as time passed and their income grew as a result of saving with their self help group so too did their confidence. They became stronger and more assertive, they realised their own potential and strengths. But they did not want to continue in this journey alone and separate to their husbands so they told them about the self help group and what they had been doing. All three of their husbands were furious and barred them from going to their group. However, the women courageously carried on. And as time went by their husbands began to notice that their economic situation was improving, they noticed that there was now more food for the family, that the children were able to attend school. That there was a difference in their wives. They each individually asked how this had happened and so the women explained that it was as a result of their self-help group.

Woynishet said that from that moment, their lives and relationships changed. Her husband began to look at her in a whole new light, he saw, for the first time her value and worth. That she could be an equal partner in their relationship and home. Each husband then insisted on the women always attending their self-help group and often took care of the children so the women could attend their meetings. They completely transformed, Woynishet went from being a woman, completely alone in her marriage, undervalued and powerless to being an equal, with a partner who respects her and consults her about everything in their life together. This is not a conventional love story but it is a story of how transformation can happen, of how love can grow from the most unusual and difficult of beginnings.

Woynishet and her self help group went on to hold a big ceremony in their community where they advertised the benefits of joining a self help group, using their own personal testimonies to encourage others to join. But she said that the most powerful testimony of all was when their three husbands stood up and with tears streaming down their faces, they told their community, their friends, their government representatives how they used to disrespect their wives, how they used to beat them and hurt them but how now they love and respect them. They spoke of how now they honour and support their wives, how their wives lifted their family out of poverty. How they love them, how they are partners in life and for life.

Theirs is a story of true transformation, of the power of healing and forgiveness. And it is a story of hope, hope that change is possible, that all circumstances can be turned around for good. That love can in fact, win.

‘And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.’ 1 Corinthians 13:13

First published for Tearfund Ireland

Photos: Gavin Leane