Clare Dickens

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Clare's Story

He faced many barriers, had many a near miss and no doubt met some colourful characters along the way. Yet he always returned having provided the next meal. His destination and purpose was to provide, like the generations before him – but I gleaned that he had always longed for more.

I spent much of my childhood with my grandmother, Ruth. Dennis had passed away suddenly at the age of 59, when I was four years old; and I suspect I gave her something to focus on. My parents' work commitments meant she featured very much in my routine, and my formative years - she became the centre of my world. There are a few reasons why mental health was the direction in which my nursing journey travelled, but she remains the most vivid. She too didn’t have the best start in life, she was born in Manchester and her family settled in the Midlands when she was a baby. Her father died suddenly when she was very young, and the relationship with her own mother wasn’t one any of us would aspire to have.

By the age of 17, she was pregnant with her first child and she was supported by a GP who broke the news to her mother. His fears were realised when she was then sent to London to have the baby alone. She spoke of that GP “Paul”, with great fondness and respect at the level of conviction, kindness and advocacy he afforded her. Despite his pleas, she was sent to a convent for the infirm and illegitimate expectant mothers – she must have been so scared.

I was and remain in awe of the woman. How can someone who has endured so much, received such unkindness and trauma, and who has been let down by the very people who should have loved her and looked out for her, be so warm, resilient, so loving and fun when she has every reason not be? I also recall a growing dissatisfaction at the social injustices that surrounded her (though I didn’t frame them in this way as a child) – that someone could be considered “ill” and “wrong”, for simply having a baby, and hadn’t managed to get around to being married yet!

He demonstrated by the eloquence of his example, and never having to say it, that despite your beginnings, you can endure and that people matter; we are nothing without them. He taught me how to fish, shoot, the benefit of being outdoors and observing the simplicity of how the world is evolving as it should, of music and most importantly how to speak my truth whilst listening to others, and how to forgive. His death was a pivotal moment for me both personally and professionally, I miss him terribly.

I became a mother in 2006, I recall feeling overwhelmed and completely unprepared for the role, in the midst of excitement and anticipation for another chapter of my life to begin. I was advised due to complications in childbirth, that I wouldn’t be able to have any more children. This brush with death and the totality of it all, spurred me to take a longer period of maternity leave given I wouldn’t get the chance again, I cherish that time to this day. But I also took the chance to return to another comforting mainstay in my life – education. I commenced my master’s degree six weeks after giving birth to my son “ Zak-David”, as the prospect of nappies, CBeebies and the halt in my career alone filled me with dread.

During this time, my grandmother Ruth, unable and possibly not wanting to recover from the grief of losing her first born child, was becoming unwell. In the midst of such upheaval, pain, change and eventually loss – reading, thinking and daydreaming again became my liberating escape – enabled by the structure and love of motherhood, and of my master's studies. By the time I had finished this degree, I became a wife and a step-mother! I do believe at some unconscious level, the unconventional order of my life to that point, had been a deliberate “up yours” to the world which my grandmother knew.

I returned home to the university, but on a more permanent basis in 2014 as one of its employees. At this point I had spent much of my career supporting some of the most vulnerable, and beautifully complex our society has created. Street sex workers, those who use substances as solace, and those in the forty-foot waves of their distress and hopelessness. Though I confess never feeling completely settled within the structure that the formal psychiatry, medicalised model offered – people just don’t fit into categories or boxes in my world, they never will. Though the rescuer in me longs for those days again at times, I know I made the right choice to move to a space where some of what I have learnt, and continue to make sense of, can go on to help, shape or influence more people, possibly much further upstream in their journey – who can then go on and help people through the eloquence of theirs. Education, simply put, is one huge ripple effect.

I often get asked if I could design a recipe to cook up the perfect, happy and wholesome life or human being, what those ingredients would be. If I am forced to give a response, I would say – a reassurance that we are loved, that we matter, and opportunity. Through my life and career so far, in the midst of loss and some of the cruelty the world can dole out, I have had the privilege of the above. Of meeting, and in Ruth’s case being raised by, so many people for whom the odds seemed so stacked against them. But they have endured, not only surviving, but thriving. I have little bits of their stories and lessons imprinted on me to this day, and it is my quest to continue to add to them and continue to shape the person I am. View them through a strength based lens, they are truly remarkable, and are far from victims the world has chewed up and spat out, and by no means do they need to be fixed.