Pain and care

I think, correctly, people will find expressions of pain uncomfortable for the person whose hearing it, so that they don’t… maybe their protecting the audience. It’s a lack of faith, that people can deal with other people’s pain.

(some people will talk about nothing else but their pain/condition..)

That’s what I mean about support groups, letting something absolutely and totally dominate your life. Which allows that thing to define you.

A sense of humour is terribly important. It’s true that people mitigate difficult conversations with humour, and it may not be appropriate if their not in that place. I would say I have a pretty strong sense of humour and that helps.

I do believe in being upfront about whatever’s going on, and you’ve found that then promotes others to talk themselves. Maybe its having been in the caring profession, it’s no good hiding things. By bringing something out it makes things easier to cope with- that’s the function of art isn’t it?

(some peoples personality, you warm to and want to care.. I was thinking about Mary Hartin, she could hardly communicate with words, and yet you just wanted to be with her)

She was a very open person a very giving person.

(I imagine as a carer it would be very easy to care for her)

definitely

(in our sessions, she was life and soul, even though she had so few words, her body, her eyes her face communicated so much.)

Primo Levi had this concept, of hope, that he believed people survived the concentration camps because they maintained a sense of hope.

People have felt about the American positive thinking, about how you deal with cancer- leads you to either feeling if your not surviving as it where, then you are somehow guilty because you haven’t led a decent life, or you’re not thinking in the right way.

(putting the blame on the person, rather than the condition)

That somehow you can find this magic formula in life, and going to live forever…It puts a blind fold across you, shutters up. Being tested is interesting, living is interesting- so will dying be I imagine.

Alison Creed in conversation