Inviting You to Share Good News

We have a global catastrophe here and now – how to be positive in difficult times

There is so much noise.  It is deafening.  Communication is in overload.  We have a global catastrophe here and now.

I invite you to stop, pause for a moment and consider your life, your presence in humanity and your capabilities just now and as we go forward. You may not be unwell, you may not know somebody in hospital, you may not know someone who is ill.  You may feel this will not impact on you or you will get through it because you are young or you have a healthy lifestyle or you are not taking this seriously for a variety of other reasons.  You may be infected, you may fall ill, and you could die.  At the same time conversely, those in higher risk categories due to cancer treatments/therapeutic drugs or older age may come through it.  We do not know who will survive and who will not, and this is the reality which we each must face.

Come together, respect each other

I am invested in the outcome for me, my family, my relatives, my friends, my neighbours, for you, for your family, your relatives, your friends and the future of our human race.  This is so much bigger than just you and me.  This is about us coming together now, respecting each other and offering our strengths whatever they are for the greater good.  I believe that you  have  something to offer from a smile to a kind word shared,  to your time, skills, knowledge and personal resources with a willingness to learn,  giving freely for no other reason than the wish to contribute of yourself and help make a difference to the outcome today tomorrow and when it finally ends whatever that will look like.   I believe in your capacity to put aside your own fears and issues and focus on the strengths you have in going forward to enable healing and compassion, sharing and supporting each other.   Already, this is happening, it is alive and growing.   We are connecting, recognizing it is down to each of us and that each of us can make a difference.

Be kind to yourself

For those of you who are struggling for personal reasons or reasons out with your control, be kind to yourself and reach out for help enabling a friend or a professional to share your pain and help you accept yourself for who you are just now.   Today, may not be your time to shine, but your time will come and then it will be your turn to share your strength and acceptance for another.  I cannot within these words, reach out to everyone and I know there are those who feel the situation is out of their control and this may be.   Take what control you can back into your being and space no matter how small that is.   Do what you need to do without causing harm.  Consider your strengths and put them to good use.  Identify the tasks that you need to address and deal with them one by one.  Call out your unmet needs and share and they will be met.  Trust in humankind.

Reflect, reassess

From operating as an individual to operating as a community, and we can stop and reassess what we are doing.  What has got us to a place with too few ventilators, not enough PPE, too few drugs, people not self-isolating/social distancing, funerals with no one to attend them, frontline staff at risk of dying.  This is for analysis and but not just now.  In seeing the problems, we can identify solutions which are realistic and achievable.  We need big thinking and a joined-up approach locally, nationally and globally.  We need to sustain an effort for this acute phase and going forward into a more chronic ongoing stage.  

I ask you to Identify your strengths and play to them. 

• Those who can coordinate, coordinate
• Those who can innovate, innovate
• Those who can dream, dream
• Those who can labour, labour but do it now.

Start today, this is not an unscheduled holiday for some and a crisis for the few who are fearfully fulfilling their professional role whilst inwardly fearing for their lives and the lives of their families.  What can you do for you, your loved ones, your neighbours, for your country men and women, for humanity?  This is not a dress rehearsal. 

What you can do

Consider your mortality.  Look at death in the eye and hold onto life.  Let us thrive in a new way, living together compassionately and kindly.  

Our shared vision and positive coordinated action can make a positive difference for humankind. It is not too late.

Now is the time.   Look after your neighbour and friends as you would like your own family members to be looked after.  Who are our neighbours and friends?  They are all of humankind.

I am a mother of 5 young people, a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a friend, a neighbour, a citizen of the world.  I am also a nurse and a trainee counsellor.

By Siobhan Campbell – year 1 diploma student