Month: August 2019
50 Random Acts of Claireness
50 Random Acts of Claireness
This September would have been Claire’s 50th birthday, and I’d like you to celebrate with me…
So, I’d like to share with you an idea. But first, a little history…
Claire was all about giving and helping others, we met whilst volunteering for St John Ambulance when she was 15, by that time she was already a Queens guide.
Over the years she volunteered for the National Childbirth Trust and trained as a breastfeeding counsellor for them. She also volunteered befriending and contacting lonely elderly people on a regular basis, just so they had someone to talk to.
She had also decided in later life that she would train as a therapeutic councillor, she did an undergraduate degree in psychology and was enrolled to begin a Masters in Therapeutic Counselling, in fact one of the reasons she wanted to move to West Dorset was that Exeter University offered doctorates in Psychotherapy which she wanted to do after her Masters.
She was always busy helping other people and in many ways, I feel this still continues through this blog and the various support groups that have been set up since she died (our support forum on Facebook has 138 members at the moment). I continue to receive messages almost every week saying how helpful this website has been for people in similar situations, one of the primary reasons I keep it going is to enable Claire’s life to continue vicariously through all of this outreach.
And so, back to her birthday.
We’ve decided as a family that we will do at least 50 random acts of Claireness/Kindness to celebrate Claire’s 50th birthday.
We’re also asking anyone else that would like to dedicate a random act of kindness to Claire to also take part, thereby not only celebrating Claire’s life but also helping to share the love and kindness she had for the world around.
To keep things simple and all in one place I’ve created a separate page on this website to track them all, please visit this page to submit your Random Act of Claireness.
Thank you…
#AfterLife by @rickygervais – One word. PAIN.
#AfterLife by @rickygervais – One word. PAIN.
last night I watched the entire first series of AfterLife on Netflix.
3 hours of back-to-back episodes.
Tears were streaming within 10 minutes of episode 1… And still haven’t stopped this morning.
I don’t know where Ricky got his inspiration from for Tony, the lead character, nor his seemingly deep sense of understanding for the subject matter… Whatever, wherever or from whomever it was, he used that inspiration to create something quite special.
What is so special about AfterLife?
The thing that struck me was that Tony’s total, complete and utter existence was surrounded by pain… Every second, every minute… Just pain followed by more pain.
That’s what the loss of a partner is. Pain. Every waking moment. Relentlessly.
His pain resonated with my pain…
And just like when you hit the resonant frequency of a glass of water when you run your fingers around the rim, everything vibrates and the resonation gets louder and louder…
… Ricky hit my resonant frequency hard… He kept his fingers running around the rim of the glass, resonating stronger and stronger, bringing back more and more feelings of my own pain and loss.
Even through all of that emotion and 3 hours of crying I still deeply enjoyed watching.
I just couldn’t stop, I needed to know what happened in the end.
And just like Tony, with his superpower of doing exactly what he wants, I feel liberated in the same way.
My eyes are open, I see the world in all of its technicolored glory, which includes a lot of black I might add!
So out of all of that pain has come great goodness, light and love…
Life’s a bitch… And then you die…
So die happy, die after making this world we live in a better place, just like Claire did and like Ricky has for broaching such a tough subject in such a great way…