Why?

I was asked the other day why I do what I do?

i.e

• Why if I experience a tragedy or difficult issue in my own life do I then use my own experience to campaign to try to change things for others .
• Why do I go public with things that others might want to keep to themselves and perhaps be shamed by? i.e Abuse, Mental Illness, Post Natal Illness, now HIV.
• Why am I angry and proactive about theses issues rather than accepting and just quietly getting on with living and coping with them as most do.

Well this very old and well known poem by Dylan Thomas sums it up for me so well as I guess it has for so many people like me who can not just go quietly are determined to make some sort of difference

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


For some reason my life has never been easy i.e -

Early sexual abuse, then when this abuse, and home circumstances, contributed to my becoming severely phobic to the extent I did not leave my room for nearly a year I was then further abused by the National Health System I trusted to help me, when they gave me Deep Sleep Treatment in a old style mental health asylum when I was only 17 - 18 years old.

Beleve me the mental health hospitals, and the mental health service, around then in the Uk was VERY different form now - The mental Health service was vastly reformed in the 1980s but I was treated with deep Sleep treatment in an old style asylum in the 1960s/70 ....it was barbaric!!

Indeed deep sleep treatment that was later described as 'barbaric' and has been banned in most health services in the world.

My struggle to rehabilitate myself from both my phobic anxiety and the effects of having had this abusive Deep Sleep Treatment without any help as I was too scared to EVER trust the NHS again ( and my success at this ) And then at a time when I thought things were going so well and I had had my one and only child -Post Natal Illness - which I also got through with no help or support or indeed understanding really from anyone.

And now when I should be looking forward to a peaceful retirement with my husband - I find I have HIV!!

All theses events prompted me to act. And to do something constructive with what I had experienced and not to just accept! Acceptance is just not in my vocabulary! Acceptance was abused out of me when I had the sleep treatment!!

I became a teacher/youth worker because of the sexual abuse and the NHS abuse when they gave me that horrendous so called Sleep 'treatment' - and spent many years of my life trying to make a difference for troubled young people. In the hope that I could prevent at least one suffering as I had and to empower young people so they were NEVER as powerless as I had been

I started PNI ORG UK charity because I had had Post Natal Illness: http://www.pni.org.uk in the hope that I could make a difference to at least one woman and help someone not to suffer and feel so alone as I had

So I now have HIV - not sure exactly where I am going with this yet? - but I WILL be an activist - I will be public and I will at least try to make a difference

So I will never go quietly
I am raging against it and will always rage