Tag Archives: compassion

Dear Doctor, From Your Naked Patient

November 8, 2019 Becky Hill 10 Comments

Dear Doctor,

Perhaps we once met, perhaps we never will.

Regardless of which it is – today I just want us to try and understand one another better. Because if we can TRY to understand one another more, then perhaps we can work together to help your patients find more holistic healing and hopefully make your job a little easier too.

I decided to try and connect with your heart today, because I know that under all those important professional masks, doctor degrees, awards, uniforms, stethoscopes, sometimes fancy clothes and endless medical guidelines….

You are simply human like me.

Today, you might be my doctor and I might be your patient.

But perhaps yesterday, today or tomorrow we will equally face the same or similar challenges in our lives. The kind of personal difficulties and traumas every human faces at times. The types of trials and wrestlings that are simply common to our humanity, and a normal part of our broken world.

Maybe tomorrow you may even face the horrible illness I am facing today. Or perhaps one day you will find that one of your loved ones is in my ‘patient shoes’ – and someone else is in your own ‘doctor shoes’.

So please could we connect as equals – as human to human.

Rather than my inferior condition to your superior position. Or my entitled demanding to your service providing.

Please would you take a moment to humbly listen, as I attempt to open my heart to you today?

First, I need you to know some of my own story for you to understand me better. To know that I have been very unwell for nearly five years now. In January 2015 I fell off a small step ladder and that one moment changed my whole life. And from that moment I was catapulted into a life of constantly being someone’s patient.

… Maybe being your patient.

During that time I have met some wonderful doctors who were able to connect with me, listen, and who tried to help me as much as they could. I appreciate them more than they will ever know.

They were bright lights in immensely dark places.

But most of the time I have met doctors who didn’t really understand. And some who didn’t seem to even want to try. I met many doctors who treated me as another inconvenience in their very busy day. Another form to fill and box to tick. The nameless, faceless puzzle to try and solve that day.

You see dear doctor…

I have a condition that you may not know much about. And even if you think you do know a lot about it, if you spent a couple of hours in my home listening to me and my family you would probably find that you don’t know as much as you think you do about my complex case. Even many ‘top neurology specialists’ don’t truly understand my condition – even though many of them think they do.

And because of that, some of you have unknowingly added to my pain, giving me wound after wound that I am still healing from today.

You see, for the past five years I have been battling a spinal CSF leak. Perhaps you have heard a bit about them. Patients can get them after lumbar punctures, epidural anaesthetic injections or spinal surgery. Recently more doctors are realising that spinal fluid leaks resulting from these procedures are probably more common than previously recognised. The truth about their devastation seems, in the past, to have been hidden – mainly because many doctors only knew of the classic acute PDPH (post dural puncture headache) symptoms; they didn’t know that you can be leaking spinal fluid and not be stuck flat 24/7. It’s possible that you can be upright a lot of the day, but still be very, very ill. Experiencing all sorts of other horrible, debilitating, distressing, rarely recognised and widely misunderstood neurological symptoms.

I acquired my leak from that step ladder fall in January 2015. More of that original story is here if you want to learn. All my scans – until recently – failed to show IH (intracranial hypotension) or evidence of a leak in my spine.

And yet….

Every single day since that ladder fall I have felt exceedingly unwell. I have not had one fully pain free day. I have not experienced a single day when my mind was clear and my brain worked like it used to.

I need you to know – dear doctor – that every day is a struggle for me. I have fluctuated between being bed ridden for months on end, to months of being upright all day.

And everything in between that as well.

But never well. Never normal. Never knowing the health I used to know.

I could never fully explain to you how impossible it has sometimes felt to live like this.

Recently – after more than four years – my UK NHS specialist team think they have located my CSF Leak in my cervical spine, a ventral leak, hidden at the back my dura on new MRIs. We are currently waiting for new scans to be read and reported to confirm and categorise the leak and work out a better way forward.

I was diagnosed with a suspected spinal CSF leak two months after my original fall. For a while they thought it was post-concussion syndrome – until I was finally admitted to hospital after my third trip to A&E. An understanding neurologist finally picked up on the fact my symptoms only went away lying down. Since then I have had 8 separate MRIs, a radionuclide cisternogram and a CT myelogram of my brain and spine. Until recently, they ALL failed to show any evidence of a spinal CSF leak at all.

Can you imagine how hard it is to be so very, very ill, but lack the vital evidence that definitively PROVES to you that I am leaking CSF from my spine?

I know I am as ill, and sometimes even much worse, than some of those who have the scan evidence you want to see. And yet I know that some of you still doubt me, and I know that some of you still don’t think it’s all quite true.

Even though…

Research shows that at least 25% of spinal CSF leak patients don’t show classic signs on their brain MRI. *
Medical papers show that around 50% of patients don’t show the leak on spinal MRIs.*

And yet I still often feel that I have to ‘prove’ to you how ill I really am.

That my lack of evidence is my own curse.

My own fault maybe?

I have been there with you. Lying flat in a hospital bed as you have towered over me, asking question after question, requiring me to prove myself to you. Feeling like I am a criminal standing in your ‘doctors court’.

With you as the ‘appointed judge’ over my medical destiny.

Do you know how deeply you have wounded me?

To be unbelievably and traumatically ill with a ‘apparently rare’ brain condition, and then find I also have to summon up energy (I don’t have) to ‘fight my case’ in your ‘doctors court’.

Challenging me to PROVE how ill I really am.

Do you know what damage that has done to me?

You probably have no idea how much it has affected me these past five years. How much it wears me down. How much it has infected my mental and emotional stability. How much shame I have had to carry.

Simply because in your busy, overwhelming, important – and often under-valued – job, some of you seem to have forgotten that your patients are simply human.

Just like you!

We share a fragile humanity.

I know that to some of you we are simply different diagnoses that come and go. Some more complex than others. Some that don’t quite fit the ‘diagnosis box’ you are trying to force us into. Simply ‘medical cases’ – charts, scans and notes – that walk into your busy world one day…

… never to be seen again.

Do you realise how much it messes with our heads?

The reason I am writing to you today is in the hope that somehow, I can re-connect with your human heart. Maybe – just maybe – we could get better at understanding one another again. So that we don’t have to end up with all of these painful misunderstandings and confrontations, which can sap your energy just as much as mine.

I know as patients we also need to realise that you are only human too.

That you are not ‘miraculous supernatural healers’ that can defy the laws of medicine, physics and nature. You are simply humans, trying your best to help other sick humans heal up and get well. Many of you wish you could do more for us – not less. You are bound up by the ‘system’ that controls you, by ‘modern medicine’ with all its exhausting bureaucracy, targets and restrictions. We know that there are those of you with equally broken hearts who wish you could offer us more than you do.

I am sorry that we sometimes forget that you are human as well. When we get lost in our own vulnerability, shame, pain and confusion and lash out at, and blame, you unfairly. I am sorry when we also fail to treat you with the kindness, compassion and gratitude that you deserve, as you work with systems that often overwhelm you and bring you crashing to your own exhausted knees.

But today, I can only speak from what I know. I can only try and share from the heart of a very broken patient, who knows that things really do need to change.

You are all overworked and overwhelmed in many ways. And yet some of you seem to be more connected to your own humanity than others. Some of you seem to know how to connect with your patients heart to heart. Some of you achieve this despite all the many challenges of your role.

So I want to say thank you. I know that you are the ones listening to me more openly today.

Recently I have been thinking more deeply about what ‘being a patient’ can feel like for us and how to try and help you understand more – dear doctor. Especially for those of us stuck lying completely flat in a hospital bed due to a spinal CSF leak.

But also as A VOICE for your many other patients as I try to explain what it feels like for us to enter your normal vocational world.

You see, for you, the hospital is your workplace. For us, it’s often an immensely distressing place.

We are not normally there by choice, but because we know that there is no other way to get well than to come to you. So when we enter your ‘hospital work place’, we often feel so vulnerable, so confused, so distressed, so exposed, and often in so much pain.

One way to describe it to you is that we feel like we are metaphorically simply naked and exposed for you all to see.

You may not have ever been a deeply vulnerable and distressed patient yourself – so we know it’s hard for you to fully empathise and understand – but if you want to try and understand us better when you come to see us…

Can you take a moment to imagine and picture what it would feel like if it were you lying on that hospital bed, fully naked – so exposed, vulnerable and ashamed – with absolutely nothing to cover you up?

Our own masks, worldly titles, fancy clothes, make up, hairstyles and badges of honour have ALL been snatched or stolen away. So we are subsequently feeling so cold, so messy, so vulnerable, so distressed, so confused and so naked – whilst you are simply getting on with your daily grind in your normal place of work.

Please be kind to us. Please be patient with us. Please listen carefully to us. Please TRY to understand us.

Don’t stand at the foot of the bed and tower over your patient – she feels small already – take a minute, sit down, listen…Try to understand. Realise you will never understand. Try anyway.”
– C. Sebastian*

Dear doctor, we feel small already… please don’t make us feel even smaller.

In our smallness you can often appear so big, so important and so intimidating. You are covered in all your doctor masks, doctor clothes, doctors badges and medals of honour, and talk with your important-sounding ‘doctor speak’.

Sometimes we don’t even understand what you are saying.

Because you are not talking to other doctors; you are talking to your naked patient who already feels so very small and so very stupid lying down in that hospital bed.

Please listen carefully to us before you attack and accuse us of not feeling as ill as we say. Please open your minds to the fact that just because we don’t fit your boxes, it doesn’t mean we are not truly very, very sick.

You are meant to be our healers – not our accusers.

Dear doctor, you should know that after leaving your hospital or doctors office and perhaps never seeing you again, over the past five years I have experienced two intensely excruciating complete mental health collapses. I have also found myself close to those places again and again.

And in those places – normally when I completely relapse physically, I stop sleeping and have no energy to fight anymore – in those places, all of my traumatic memories of encounters with intimidating and insensitive doctors return to me. I picture you as scary ‘doctor-judges in the medical court’, and I don’t have the energy to try and ‘prove myself’ to you again, and face getting my case thrown out with the lack of suitable evidence.

So I want to just give up.

Dear doctor, did you know that in those dark and distressing places my broken and exhausted mind decides that death might be my only way out. The only escape from the constant battles. The only way to end the never-ending fight. The only way to stop having to defend and prove myself again and again to another intimidating ‘doctor-judge.’

Did you know that your insensitive words and actions one day could indirectly contribute to my death?

Do you realise how serious that is?

You see, when my impossible medical journey pushes me to places beyond what I can endure, when my mind packs in and my body breaks down due to the immense stress and strain of daily battling a debilitating and distressing misunderstood neurological illness year after year…

I end up feeling more broken, more vulnerable, more distressed, more naked and smaller and smaller than ever before.

I feel like a worthless and insignificant judged ‘chronically-ill’ nobody. Who just cannot get well. However hard I try.

Dear doctor, I then need you to know that I need you to see me as…
Just another naked and vulnerable human patient…

…. looking for someone to help cover me up. Someone who can put a blanket of compassion, kindness and hope over me so that I won’t feel so very very cold, ashamed and completely overwhelmed from the fight.

You see…

I am your naked patient.

So please understand that in my nakedness, all I can see is all your importance, all your knowledge, all your intimidation, all your doubts about me and my case, all your intelligence and words I don’t always understand.

So you scare me!!!

I can no longer see your equal humanity; I can only see my naked inferiority beside your beautifully adorned superiority.

So dear doctor, please be gentle with me. I am not as strong as you think. My heart has been broken and wounded again and again. Some days I just think I will sink.

All I see is my broken humanity. All I see is my naked vulnerability.

So dear doctor, today I wanted to connect with your heart. I wanted to try and reach you, human to human.

As your equal.

To please ask you…

When I feel that naked, the best way to help me is to remember that underneath all of your adorned and celebrated doctor-robes, you are just a naked human too. You may not feel it so much today… or even tomorrow. You may not really ever understand what I am actually trying to say.

But please try and imagine yourself as that naked patient, lying in that hospital bed. And think about how you can move a little closer to our inflicted lowered level and status; to sit down, to listen, to try and understand…

Whilst realising you can never fully understand.

But please do TRY anyway.

Because one day…

That naked patient…

Might be you!

And then you will want to meet a kind and gentle doctor, who can also relate and connect to your vulnerable and exposed naked humanity.

And I hope that they will try to bring you more holistic healing….
Rather than inflicting wound after wound after wound... that can sometimes be even harder to heal from than the original condition over which you met.

Sent, with heartfelt tears, gratitude and deep respect for your willingness to listen and learn,

From,

Your naked patient

“Don’t stand at the foot of the bed and tower over your patient – she feels small already – take a minute, sit down, listen…Try to understand. Realise you will never understand. Try anyway.” – C. Sebastian
*Quote from this beautifully insightful TED talk on encouraging ‘Narrative Humility’ in the medical profession.
Narrative Humility: Sayantani DasGupta at TEDxSLC youtu.be/gZ3ucjmcZwY

UPDATE: Please note that in August 2020 I was also diagnosed with arachnoiditis as well as a spinal CSF Leak – I now have radiological evidence to support both those diagnosis. To read more about the new diagnosis please see this link.

Here is my new summary video of my whole medical journey as well as footage of my January/ February 2021 adhesive arachnoiditis relapse/ flare and treatment with IV Steroids. To see my daily video diaries from this time please see my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ZkCy9B_IpeaGrXd0CEgow

For more posts about my story of living with a spinal CSF Leak please look at the subject heading on the menu bar above.

Here is a brilliant 2 min animation about Spinal CSF leaks.

For more information about spinal CSF leaks please see the UK charity website at www.csfleak.info or the US charity website at www.spinalcsfleak.org.

*Please see this new May 2018 medical paper about the 10 most common myths and misperceptions about spinal CSF leaks. It is by some of the top world experts in treating this condition. I was told so many of these myths by various neurologists, anaesthetists, radiologists and many other doctors during my lengthy and traumatic nearly 5 year battle with a spinal CSF leak. This kind of misinformation caused many delays, misunderstanding and great distress on my already immensely long winded and difficult medical journey.

*Please also see this other in depth 2018 medical paper about both low and high intracranial pressure syndromes and their similar and different symptoms. It also mentions cross overs with other headache types. When a patient suffers with a spinal CSF leak long term it can cause massive fluctuations in their whole pressure system both whilst suffering from a spinal CSF leak and following treatment. This is why lumbar puncture pressure readings and ICP pressure monitoring can prove an inaccurate disgnostic tool for SIH as this paper refers to as does the 10 myths paper. My initial LP reading was a 7 which was considered ‘evidence’ of low pressure by some doctors and normal by others.

Perspective, Suffering & Grief

Compassion Starts with Embracing our own Pain

August 11, 2018 Becky Hill Leave a comment

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” – Henri Nouwen

The meaning of the word compassion is literally ‘co-suffering’ or ‘to suffer together’. Compassion is not simply a feeling that comes and then passes like sympathy or pity. Having compassion is being so deeply moved in your heart with the pain of another that you are compelled to act to somehow alleviate that suffering.

We are literally ‘joining together’ with the one suffering to help and support them.

It’s actually a deeply painful emotion. But the intense feeling is not focused on ourselves – it focuses on ‘the other’ who is suffering in some way. This means, although painful, it is a deeply beautiful and even freeing emotion. Because it takes the focus off our own challenges, trials and pain and focuses our attention on supporting and helping someone else.

However, the irony of compassion is that we only truly feel it, and are moved by it, once we have first embraced our own life struggles and pain. Until we recognise the pain that suffering brings to us, we cannot truly begin to understand the pain it brings to others.

This is why some of the most compassionate people you will come across are those who have felt a similar pain to yours. It may not have been exactly the same, but they at least experienced it enough to see it and feel it in you.

Compassion is linked to empathy. Empathy enables us to understand and relate to what someone else is feeling. Compassion then takes empathy a step further, in that those empathetic feelings are intensified into a passion that leads to action. We are deeply moved to act! To do something to alleviate the person’s suffering. That act might be seemingly big or small, but it will be something that we actually do practically to help them. Motivated by the hope that it will help alleviate that persons suffering – even if only a little.

I really do love the quote at the top by Henri Nouwen. I believe the last sentence is particularly poignant:

“Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”

What does he mean by this, what is the ‘condition of being human’?

To me one of the most striking characteristics of our humanity is our brokenness. It’s the fact that we are all born as vulnerable, weak and dependant babies. And we will also all die vulnerable and weak from sickness, an accident or old age. Our human body has a fragility and mortality about it which means that we are plagued by weakness in different ways. We have many vulnerabilities; physically, mentally and emotionally. We are all prone to seasons of suffering and struggle. We are also all imperfect, we all make mistakes.

There are no humans who truly make it through their whole lives feeling perpetually strong, having it ‘all together’ the whole time, without any obvious weakness, vulnerability or struggle. Some people might like to project that mirage to others but the reality is we are all imperfect and fragile in similar and different ways. The fact is, our common humanity dictates that – if we do live to old age – all this will become more than evident, as eventually our body and mind fade and stop working altogether. If we do not live that long then death perhaps will ‘take us out’ early, again brutally revealing our weakness and mortality.

It’s this understanding of our ‘common humanity’ that helps us to become more loving, empathetic and compassionate people. This is why it is actually in times of trial and suffering that our deepest bonds with other humans can be formed – through mutual understanding, love and compassion. This is because it’s often only as we come brutally face to face with our own personal weakness and vulnerability that we can potentially connect more wholeheartedly with others because of it.

“The strongest relationships are formed in the heat of difficulty and the confession of weakness… honesty breads more honesty… it’s about sharing our common humanity.”– Patrick Regan

Those we can share our whole lives with – our struggles, pain, vulnerabilities, weaknesses, shame and guilt – are those who we generally form the strongest bonds with. Relational safety comes in someone knowing our weakness and failings – but loving and staying loyal to us anyway. This is always when our connection with others becomes more deeply profound.

This is when love is most beautiful and its bonds become most powerful.

It is only when someone sees the depths of your own ‘darkness’ – but chooses to love you regardless – that the true beauty of deep relational connection blossoms. There is perhaps nothing more deeply moving in life than this. This is where true unconditional love abounds.

This is also the place that our sense of compassion is potentially deepened, because we have arrived at a place where we know what it is to be faced with our own darkness, vulnerability, suffering and shame. Our hearts can potentially become softer and more malleable towards others. We have been humbled by the distressing awareness of our weakness, which can make us kinder and more understanding to other’s weaknesses.

However, you will see that I used the word ‘potentially’ in that last paragraph twice! The truth is, not everyone who suffers will show increasing compassion to others. This is because suffering can go two ways: it can cause us to become more self consumed, hardhearted, angry and bitter OR it can help us become more tender, understanding, compassionate and loving.

Ironically, embracing our own weakness and pain in seasons of suffering – but then turning those feelings outward to focus it on having compassion for others – can actually help alleviate the suffering of both of us. Suffering always grows darker the more it pulls us back into ourselves. Compassion, instead, provides a light for the both the giver and receiver – as the giver directs their own pain into helping alleviate the pain of someone else.

Acting to alleviate another’s suffering helps bring more meaning and purpose to our own.

In reality though: in what ways can we practically act compassionately? Especially when in so many situations what we can actually do is so restricted?

The thing is, compassion doesn’t demand that we fully fix another’s difficult situation. For instance, when I was immensely suffering from an acute spinal fluid leak in recent years – I couldn’t reach out to another, who was also leaking, and fix their main physical problem. As much as I would have liked to have done so, we were both somewhat at the mercy of a debilitating and misunderstood condition. We couldn’t actually ‘fix’ it ourselves – we needed compassionate doctors to help. However, there are so many ways I could respond to and share another’s pain and act with compassion to their suffering.

Just telling another that we ‘get it’ and understand their pain can be an act of compassion. Which is one of the reasons I decided to write so honestly in this blog. If we can humbly ‘get over’ our own fears and insecurities of ‘getting real’ about our struggles, we can then choose to act compassionately by connecting and reaching out to another honestly – amidst our own, and their, pain. We can’t just think about it – that is sympathy or empathy. Compassion calls us to act on those feelings and practically connect to encourage, support and hopefully help alleviate some of the potential loneliness of suffering. Simply hearing ‘I get it’ means a lot to someone really struggling. This is often the first step in acting compassionately.

Giving your time to support someone struggling through spending time with them in person, over the phone or digitally can be an important act of compassion. Often patiently listening to them process their struggle and trying to understand their pain can help them immensely. Or simply looking for ways to encourage or uplift them in an empathetic way by sending some kind words, a card or gift. Practically, if we do live near by we might show compassion by cooking a meal, taking their kids to school or on a day out, or offering to drive them to a hospital appointment.

Little acts of compassion can speak the loudest when someone is struggling to make it through the next hour, let alone the next day. It was often the things above that spoke the loudest to me at the darkest moments of my own journey with a debilitating long term illness.

“Do small things with great love.” – Mother Teresa

Compassion doesn’t always require us to do something BIG! In fact, normally we can’t do something big – even if we had more time and resources. Many situations cannot be changed overnight with one action. There is a long and arduous process involved in acceptance, change and potential recovery. Compassion is often most profoundly shared in the little acts. The little things that shows someone in pain that you understand (or are trying to) and that you care.

However…

We need to keep in mind that the first step to being ‘moved with compassion’ – in choosing to ‘co-suffer’ with another – is that genuine compassion requires us to SEE and feel that person’s pain and struggle first. Before we do or say anything! That way, our words and actions will pour out from that heartfelt overflow of empathy. They will then be more obviously genuine and tender. You can’t fake compassion – it is easy to see in someone’s eyes, words and body language whether their supposedly compassionate words and actions are truly real or simply forced. In my own experience this can often be a problem for members of the medical profession, especially those who have lost that connection with their and their patients ‘common humanity’.

Genuine compassion will only flow out of our true hearts, when we have first seen, felt and embraced our own pain, vulnerability and weakness. If we have not done that effectively, if we insist on denying and attempting to cover over our own human brokenness, we will simply become increasingly self focused and self absorbed human beings who spend their time pridefully keeping up their mirage of strength and pretension at other’s expense. This will inevitably end up with those people getting increasingly frustrated with others or even despising other’s suffering – rather than being moved with compassion by it.

Is it not time to see more compassion in our world? Whether it’s loving the poverty stricken orphan in Ethiopia through child sponsorship, or simply actively listening to or taking a meal round for a friend or neighbour who is struggling. Can you imagine if our neighbourhoods, schools, hospitals and workplaces were full of truly compassionate people who knew personal pain, but could look past it, to recognise it in another. We could then support one another through the ups and downs of life without judgment, misunderstanding or ignorance.

Perhaps, if we embraced our own pain more, tried to understand it, then turned it outward to connect with another equal human – then we would all suffer a little less throughout our own unique life journeys. Compassion rarely makes all the pain go away. But all of our collective small acts of compassion can become another necessary cog in the bigger wheel of changing our world for the better – person, by person.

“Love your neighbour as yourself.” – The Bible (Mark 12:31)

So let us not forget that we are ALL the same. We all share a common humanity. We must try to love as we would want to be loved. Try to care, as we would like to be cared for. Try to understand, as we would want to be understood. Try to show the compassion that we would like to receive.

In the hope that little by little, kind word by kind word, small act by small act, we might help alleviate some more of the suffering and pain in this world – TOGETHER!

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” – Henri Nouwen

Identity

We Are All Messed Up!

September 16, 2015 Becky Hill 3 Comments

Do you ever wonder:
If other people are like you?
What their ‘real’ lives are like?
Who are they really behind that mask or behind those closed doors?

Do others really struggle like you do?

Over the years I have learnt that people are more similar than we might think. Although our lives and challenges are, in many ways, unique.

We ALL have struggles.

Life brings all of us both joy and pain.

Even those people who might want you to think that they have it all together. The ones who seem like life always goes well for them – the beautiful couple down the road and the perfect family next door.

Yes; they struggle too.

Their challenges will be unique to them and you will often never know they exist.

But I assure you – they are there.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato

Over the years I have had the privilege to connect and build relationships with people from all different backgrounds and cultures, both here (in the UK) and abroad.

I love people. I love discovering who they really are and then helping them to reach out towards fulfilling their potential.

One of the things I have learnt is that although the world is full of diversity, which is wonderful, we are ALL actually more similar than we might think. Things are different outwardly for us all and yet inside we often face the same challenges, temptations and battles.

I recently watched an episode of a series called ‘The Tribe’ on Channel 4 about a native family living in rural Ethiopia.

It was fascinating.

Obviously their lives were completely different from ours. They lived in mud huts, kept animals, were self sufficient, had arranged marriages and yet as you watched it and listened to the translation you realised that families face a lot of the same issues.

Fear,
Worry,
Anger,
Insecurity,
Struggles,
Pain,
Rebellion (yes teenagers in rural Ethiopia like to push the boundaries of tradition and etiquette just like Western kids do).

In the episode I saw, one of the teenage girls used to love going to the market in the town to look at & buy new items of clothing. On this one occasion she ran off with some of her family’s money to go and buy colourful bras (even though the traditional dress was that women usually went topless). The argument that took place upon her return was so similar to arguments in many teen homes in the West!

We are ALL more similar than you might think.

There is a song by Lecrae, featuring Kari Jobe that really spoke to me following its release a while ago. It is all about the fact that we are ALL broken, messed up and in need of grace.

“Broken pieces actin’ like we ain’t cracked,
But we all messed up and can’t no one escape that…
… Ain’t a soul on the planet
That’s better than another
And we all need grace in the face of each other” – Lecrae

I love this concept.

We are ALL messed up in some way and in need of grace (undeserved kindness, understanding and forgiveness).

Grasping this stops us believing there is a hierarchy of ‘goodness’. That some of us are just ‘good people’ and some of us simply ‘bad’.

The revelation that people are more similar to you than you think, is actually empowering because it makes us all more equal. It demands that we treat one another with grace rather than judging one another with faulty or hypocritical principles.

When we can accept that we ALL have weakness, vulnerability and struggles; our selfishness is challenged and we can actually become more compassionate.

It changes our pride into humility.

We stop rating ourselves as better or worse than others but instead recognise that we are all ‘messed up’, in some way, and in need of grace.

It levels the playing field.

As I wrote in Surviving the Storm Six months on, I have been faced with my own frailty and weaknesses this year, possibly far more than any other year.

This year has challenged my identity and chipped away at my confidence. Physical weakness can also challenge us mentally and emotionally.

You have less energy for life.

However,

I am learning that I need to embrace this process rather than fight it.

We must allow our own struggles to build in us authenticity and a deeper compassion and grace for others.

It’s a painful process.
It’s a humbling process.
But it’s also a beautiful process if we let it run its course.

In A Year Ago Today: A Journey Through Grief (about my Mum’s death) I wrote:

“Suffering can, if we let it, unite and draw us together in a way that nothing else can. It strips us of our titles and crafted exteriors and touches the heart.”

Suffering causes different things to happen to different people: Some people can become hard and bitter, consumed by their own pain and need. Others learn to direct their pain into compassion and empathy for others.

It is these people that find new purpose within their suffering. They have other people to think about and focus on which helps to heal their own wounds.

It changes our perspective.

Self pity; destroys us. It makes us miserable and angry.
Compassion; fills us with positive passion. It moves us to see others needs and make a difference in their lives.

Feeling compassion, for others, in the midst of our own struggles, brokenness and pain, builds bridges that helps us to identify with all sorts of other people.

We are ALL messed up in some way.
We ALL have flaws.
We ALL get stuff wrong.
We ALL make mistakes.

Most of the time we will never know what has happened in someone’s life to make them like they are.

We ALL have a story;
Things that shape us.
Things that break us.
Things that heal us.
Things that strengthen us.

We are ALL more similar than we think and; “We all need grace in the face of each other.”

“It’s incredibly powerful- life changing- to be in a relationship where we can be totally vulnerable without fear, when the person knows the worst about us and still accepts us.” -Samuel Chand

Who could you show grace and compassion to today?

Becky Hill's Blog