Sometimes I wonder... (A Plea). -Facebook Status Update.

Sometimes I wonder how other people would feel if what is happening to disabled and ill people of this country was happening to them?!

How would they feel if they were going to lose the independence they had always fought for, and vital money they relied on?

How would they feel if their friends and comrades were dying every week and everyone was ignoring them when they tried to ask for help?

How would others feel if they were disabled, and the government had taken their lifeline (money) and car away from them?! This is happening to people!

How would they feel if it was them that couldn't walk without help, felt permanently ill, had pain that felt like it might rip them apart, and were still told by the media and government that they were 'faking' and 'scrounging off the state?'

How would they feel if the people who decided if they kept vital disability benefits, were not specialists in your condition and yet still had the right to decide if you were sick/disabled enough to keep benefits?

People are dying - vulnerable people who have been through more suffering and hardship already, than probably most can ever imagine.

I wonder how people would feel if the whole of society made them worthless every single day?

What would it be like to have justify your existence like we do?

I am a person. We all are! I did not ask for my Cerebral Palsy -None of us asked for any of this!

All I want to do is be able to carry a plate across the room without help, go for a walk across the fields with my husband - or simply be able to stand in the middle of room, without having to hold on to something - but I can't, and I never will be able to.

I'll never be able to hold my baby in my arms either. I don't have the option of becoming a mother and watching my kids grow up. I imagine it's the loveliest thing ever, but I can't have it.

We can't have a lot of things. Disabled and ill people have not chosen to be victimised, vilified, made to feel like we are something somebody stepped in, and then stripped of our rights!

All we want is to live as normal a life as we can. We don't ask for much. We just want to be able to make the best of our bad situations, and keep our self respect. Self respect that is being eroded by this government!

Don't swallow the lies and 'scrounger rhetoric'. Please, please, please, don't let them swallow us!

You can your support by at least reading and sharing some of the articles and various bits I put up.

I'm not asking you read all of it. I know it's a lot! But the only weapon we have against this government is sharing information and making people aware of the suffering that is happening around them.

It won't take you more than a few seconds to click 'share' or more than a minute to sign a petition. Please don't ignore us! Our lives depend on it.

Thank you.
Helen 

Spirits and Sleuths - A Short Story for Halloween.

Hi, I’m Mia. Let me begin by telling you that I am not your average fifteen year old girl in more ways than one. I listen to the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and I don’t do ‘N Dubz’ or Lady Gaga. It’s my mother that waves that waves ‘Heat’ magazine under my nose! I have no interest in Katie and Peter’s latest stunt! Mum and the kids at school think I’m weird. "Really Mia, You should make some attempts to fit in!" Mum will say. "Why?" I reply simply and head back to my room.
Anyway, I digress (yes, I know words like ‘digress’. I learnt them from reading books) and I don’t wish to be mean, but it seems that half the kids in my class probably wouldn’t be able to even spell it!

This story isn’t about me, it’s about my best friend Emma or rather, her house. I guess you could say it’s your average new build family home with three bedrooms and a fully fitted kitchen, blah, blah, blah! The Estate Agent’s details said that there was ‘room for the kids to play’ and almost made a feature of the slide belonging to Emma’s toddler twin sisters. Emma hated that! Actually, Emma hates them! They were an expected present, very unexpected according to Emma, who is silently seething about having to leave her room behind when the family move somewhere bigger.

Anyway sorry, where was I? Oh yes, the house. I have stayed there lots of times but I always feel uneasy. The first time I went in there four years ago I felt so nauseous. Emma laughed and put it down to me eating too many of her Dad’s dodgy pancakes! I didn’t find it funny.
Then she grabbed my hand and hauled me excitedly upstairs to see her new room. I remember suddenly not being able to breathe properly as we reached the doorway, and then being almost overwhelmed by the strong smell of smoke and I stopped dead. Emma turned to me, "You alright? You don’t look too good..."she asked, concerned "Has your Mum burnt something?" I replied quietly, my voice cracking slightly. "No, not in the last twenty four hours!"Emma laughed opening the door to show me her en suite. I think she expected me to be jealous, but I wasn’t. "Oh well, maybe the neighbours are having a bonfire or something then" I replied, and did my best to forget about it.

The day of Emma’s fourteenth birthday, she asked me over for a barbeque. It was a Saturday so Mum said yes when I asked to sleepover.
The house was icy cold when I stepped through the front door into the hall. It was the middle of August and sunlight was streaming through the windows. I had been comfortable in my short red summer dress but suddenly I wished I had brought a jumper. "Hello Mia!" Emma’s mum said brightly as she carried a basket of washing downstairs "...Oh Emma, for goodness sake, get Mia a drink! Don’t just leave her standing there. She’s walked all the way over here!" Emma grumbled and pulled me into the kitchen.

Leaning against the kitchen worktop, I waited for my best friend to fill up our glasses with Coke when I clearly saw a little boy run towards the back door, from the direction of the hall. He looked about our age and had ash blonde hair, appearing not just once, but twice, as the scene repeated itself again. 

My heart stopped beating for a second, and my blood ran cold in my veins. "Em!" I whispered almost too scared to speak, "Did you see that?" "See what?" she replied, handing me the glass. I struggled to take it from her because my hands were clammy and trembling, "Um... you won’t believe this but I think I just saw a ghost! It was a little boy in dark brown trousers, and a white shirt... He just ran across there!" I said gesturing towards the back door. Emma put her arm round me and giggled "Oh yeah, right, you see dead people! You need help Mee!" she commented, and giggled again.

Up until then I had doubted myself, believing that everything I felt and even smelt in that house was a product of the overactive imagination that my Mum says I get from Gran. Still shaking, I took hold of Emma’s arm, "Come on, we’re going outside!" I said rather more urgently than I had intended. Once out on the lawn I felt safe again and the goose pimples began to disappear.

I remember being reluctant to stay that night, and I didn’t sleep a wink! I was ‘top to toe’ with Emma who snuffled and shuffled most of the night, frequently pulling the Justin Bieber covered duvet completely off me.
About two in the morning I needed the loo. Closing my eyes and counting to a hundred, I tried not to think about it. Eventually, I had to give in make my way across the landing to the bathroom. With every click of the pipe work or creaking of floorboard, the latter of which was of my own making, I jumped out of my skin and looked nervously around me.

I was tiptoeing back past the twin’s room a few minutes later, when I noticed a hazy red mist floating steadily up the staircase. Suddenly I no longer cared about waking anyone up and bolted back to bed as fast as my legs would carry me! Emma stirred momentarily as I pulled the duvet roughly over my head. There I stayed huddled tightly and listening to my own breathing, until the birds finally started to sing.

I was picked up just after breakfast, and when I’d hugged Emma goodbye, I asked Mum to drop me at the library. She sighed and rolled her eyes, "What do you want to go there for? We’ve got the internet at home!" When I persisted, she did as I asked telling me to ring when I was ready to come home.
I enjoy the peace of the library.

I love the quiet industriousness of it, and the hissed "Sshhh!" every time someone’s mobile accidentally rings! I turned mine off, and began to search the ‘Local History’ section. I found lots on industry and the Civil War but that wasn’t what was needed. Sipping some squash that I quickly smuggled out of my bag, I looked around. Just about to give up, I noticed the librarian, and wandered nervously over to her. She was busy on the computer but she looked up and smiled warmly, "Excuse me" I muttered quietly "I don’t suppose you would know anything about the housing estate on Wilmhurst Lane, would you? It’s just I can’t seem to find anything."

The woman had red hair and when she smiled at me her green eyes twinkled. Not at all the way you’d expect a librarian to look. "This way" she replied... "The estate used to be fields with a few smallholdings. My Grandfather was born there."
She showed me to a big pile of newspapers tucked away on a bottom shelf. "No one asks to look at these much" she said almost apologetically. "There are some old maps over in the corner. You should find what you are looking for and if you need any help I’m just over here."

I thanked her and, feeling like Sherlock Holmes with a wonderful buzz I can’t explain, I began trawling through facsimiles, papers and maps. Time flew by. I was propelled by thoughts of Emma’s house and the field it was built on. I grinned to myself. ‘Heat’ magazine couldn’t give you this type of buzz!

Sometime after lunch, I struck gold! With a map that showed the location of ‘Little Croft smallholding’ at my side, I found a front page story dated March 1910. "Hamsworth Family Die in Fire Tragedy". I felt sad. That would explain the red mist and the little boy running toward the door. Despite myself I let out a tiny squeal of delight and everyone turned to look at me. I shrank down in my seat, embarrassed. From her place behind the desk the librarian looked in my direction and smiled.


On the way out of the library a while later, I filled out a membership form. When the librarian took it from me, she looked at my name in its black block capitals. "Well, hello Miss Woodward" she said, "glad to see you have such an interest in books!" Her eyes made their way slowly down the form, checking for errors as she spoke "Don’t forget if there’s ever a book you can’t find, just come up to the desk, and ask. I've been here long enough to know where most things are". 

I smiled, and thanking her, I turned to make my way towards the exit. However, as I walked through the heavy doors and out into the street, the woman's voice seemed to follow behind me, "Just ask for Lucy, Lucy Hamsworth. They will know who you mean"...

(Image - Courtesy of 'Google')

Dear Mr Cameron - A Letter to the Prime Minister (Sent 14.10.12)

Dear Mr Cameron

Following your closing speech at the party conference, I felt compelled to write to you in the hope that I may go some way to changing your mind about your policies regarding disabled people.

No disabled, ill or vulnerable person in the country deserves to be targeted, victimised, stripped of their independence and be made to suffer. No one deserves the anxiety and fear that you have inflicted on us.

No one in the world should be made to feel like they don't matter and they don't have a right to support.

The most vulnerable people in this country should not be labelled as 'scroungers' and should definitely not be forced into destitution. They should not be feeling so desperate that they feel their only option is to take their own lives.

To do that to a whole section of society is despicable, callous and cruel, and I find it hard to believe that any decent leader or any so called 'compassionate' party would allow 73 deaths per week to happen! 73 deaths per week of people who are so ill that they are dying – and yet the deeply flawed Work Compatibility Assessment has found them fit for work! It is not compassionate, it is morally wrong!

Where is the compassion in making people like me suffer even more when we already suffer enough? Where is the compassion in creating so much anxiety and outright fear amongst disabled and ill people?

There is none!

I did not ask to be born with Cerebral Palsy. I did not ask never to be able to walk or stand unaided and I did not ask for my constant pain and mind numbing exhaustion. In fact, I did not ask for any of the heartbreaking limitations that have been placed on my life!

I'm terrified of losing what independence I have worked hard to keep. You aren't just taking independence when you strip people of vital disability benefits (although that's bad enough) but you are also taking away our pride and dignity. That is not compassionate. It's not even remotely fair!

Taking away money from the poorest, most ill and disabled sections of society before you tax the rich is something I will never be able to understand. It is not justifiable - ever!

We did not cause the economic mess and yet we are being asked to pay for it! How can you justify hurting so many people and destroying so many lives?

You and I both know that the figures for Disability Benefit Fraud are very low indeed. In reality only 0.5% for Disability Living Allowance and 1.5% for Employment Support Allowance, yet, you and your government feel the need to lie to the public through the media. Why? We simply do not deserve it. 

As a result of this negative media coverage, disability hate crime has risen by 20% nationally.

It hurts us. It really, really hurts us! We are not useless, we are not work shy or feckless or fraudsters! We are people who just want to live as normal a life as we can. We are not bugs to be crushed!

I'm asking you, in fact I will beg you if that's what it takes, to please, please, please, stop destroying our lives! 

Yours sincerely

Helen...












#helenswriting

An 'Off Day' - A 'Guest Blog' Post (Written for the 'Spartacus' Campaign).

I think I’m allowed an ‘off day’ occasionally. With everything I’ve been through already, and will continue to go through until the day I die. I should allow myself an ‘it’s not fair’ day sometimes, because it isn’t.

It isn’t fair that I can’t walk or stand without help, it isn’t fair that I can’t have a job or a baby, and it isn’t fair that I am usually tired and in pain. My Cerebral Palsy is not my fault. It is a result of a hospital mistake, for which we have never received an apology.

They could probably argue that I was a ‘Prem’ baby and it could’ve happened anyway. Busy, overworked staff who didn’t notice my faulty heart monitor until it was almost too late. I know I’m lucky to be here at all, but the damage was done.

Anyway, all I’m trying to say, on behalf of all of us, is never underestimate the amount of strength it takes to cope with our daily lives and accept ourselves.

Now we are being told that our lives and our struggles are worthless.

We are ‘scroungers’ and when we get to assessment, our disabilities or illnesses suddenly don’t exist! Well excuse us for being hurt, frustrated and angry!

This situation just compounds everything we cope with already. I feel ok today, but some days I want to collapse in a quivering heap because I am so sick of struggling and having to fight for things that others take for granted.

The government claims that up to 75% of disability benefit claimants are fraudsters, and they are using doctored figures to justify harsh, callous and cruel benefit cuts which are damaging the lives of people like me. The real figures are very much lower. Only One  in every  Two Hundred  claimants are ‘faking!’

The fact that up to 32 people per week are taking their own lives out of fear, desperation and feeling that there is nowhere to turn is being hidden and ignored.

Put yourselves in our shoes, just for a minute or so. How would you feel?! All we ask is a little bit of support from society and the government.

I will fight against this with every fibre of my being. They will NOT win!

Simply share if you’re with us.

Thank you.

People must wake up to what is happening in the welfare state.

This is real and this IS happening. We must raise awareness of the realities of what is happening to disabled, sick and vulnerable people in the UK. We are wrongly losing our benefits. It is getting worse by the day.  Lives are being all but destroyed. For a disabled person like me or anyone that is too ill to work, benefits are a lifeline.

They enable us to put food on the table and keep ourselves afloat.We do not live in luxury. All we want is independence and the same chances as able bodied take for granted every day. None of us want to live on benefits. I want to earn my own my own money, have a job and be a Mum. Those options aren't open to me.

My Cerebral Palsy means I am frequently in pain and exhausted. The smallest of things that people take for granted and manage in a heartbeat are impossible or very difficult for me. Can you imagine not being able to stand and cook a meal, carry a cup of tea across a room, or not be able to get yourself in and out of the bath? Can you imagine what your life would be like if you knew you couldn't have children? Can you imagine having to think about every step in case you fall? That's what my reality is like. It's draining, it's hard...and it's heartbreaking.

  

While people have been left without vital money and the assistance that they need due to a deeply flawed system and a government that seems hell-bent on punishing and misrepresenting those who already suffer enough on a daily basis, I have to do this! We have very few people willing to speak up for us, so we have to do it ourselves.

Quite frankly a lot of us don't have the energy or strength to do this, but we are doing anyway, because no one else will. I cannot allow desperate and isolated people to commit suicide and live with myself. We have to at least try and speak out. If I sat back and nothing, I know I would feel awful. As of May 2012 an average of thirty two people are committing suicide each week as a direct or indirect result of benefit cuts.
   

 The company paid by the government to assess disabled and ill people essentially relies on a computer programme, a sort of 'tick box' system to decide if a person is fit for work or entitled to social security. Many illnesses and variations in a person’s condition are not being taken into account, and they do not accurately reflect the realities of our situation. 

What's more, the people carrying out these assessments are often not medical professionals. They are not required to be. I hear you say, 'well at least they have a person's medical records at hand'...but no, often, THEY DON'T. Can you imagine if someone with no knowledge of what you did everyday walked in and, after meeting you only once, had the right to decide if you got paid or not?! Is that fair? No. 

  

Many people with lifelong conditions and terminal illnesses are being put through this process, which only adds to the stress and anxiety they already live with.

  

It's not just the assessment it's the waiting for that letter to drop on the doormat. For me, and many others, it is almost psychological torture. I’m often anxious and unable to sleep Every time the letterbox goes, I find myself thinking 'is this it?' 'Have I saved enough money?  

If my benefit is cut I lose my independence that I have spent my whole life fighting for. I won't be able to visit friends independently if I can no longer afford a taxi. My husband will have to come everywhere with me. I won't be able to help pay some of the household bills and there will be no mobile phone to keep me safe.  

These things are essential. Helping to pay a bill and maintain a household makes me feel 'normal'. There are so many 'normal' things that are painfully out of my reach through no fault of my own!

There are others in far worse situations than myself - People with chronic illness who have been left without enough money for food or to heat their homes because their benefits have been wrongly stopped. The ‘system’ is failing us. We do not need to be punished and made to pay for the mistakes of the bankers and the government. It is not fair and it is not right.

I am asking you as a human being who thinks and feels the same way do, and wants so desperately to have a normal life, not to believe the government's 'Scrounger' rhetoric. I'm not denying that there are people who 'swing the lead', but being portrayed this way by the media at seemingly every turn is destroying my self esteem.

I've worked hard to accept who I am, and accept my limitations. Now, I'm told on an almost daily basis, that I'm a burden on society because I am unable to contribute to our broken economy.

Don't they realise that I am broken too? Being me breaks my heart some days. I say I've accepted things, I try and be strong. In reality, even though I try, I'm not sure I ever really will. I already feel worthless to an extent because I can't work, because I can't have a baby,  because I can't do so many things  I wonder what my purpose is? Lately those feelings have been compounded by a heartless government and a heavily biased, ill informed media smear campaign against all those who claim benefits - justified or not.

The government has claimed that up to seventy five percent of disability benefit claimants are ‘faking’. In reality, the figure is much less – only one in every two hundred claimants are fraudsters.

Please open your eyes and think for yourself. Question what you are being told by this government, before more vulnerable and desperate people are frightened enough to take their own lives. This must not be allowed to continue.   

#helenswriting

NB: (2014-Edit) - Weekly deaths have risen an average of 73 - according to later stats). 

ATOS KILLS - A Facebook Status Update Shared

Apparently, if we say ATOS KILLS on Facebook - we get barred.

They are an IT company after all and shouldn't have anything to do with CARE!

Come on then, bar me, because ATOS DOES KILL an average of 72 people PER WEEK!

If you don't see me on Facebook, you know what's happened.

I hope you also know that I am telling the truth, and if they ban my account, so be it! 

Either way, I'm doing and saying what I believe in and I won't stop!  

You might be able to bar us, but you won't CHANGE THE TRUTH!

ATOS KILLS

Please share/RT and show them that we don't care and the truth must come out!

Helen Sims

#helensblog

Sunshine and Drizzle Cake...

I was in pain when I woke up. My hips were throbbing and the Endometriosis sharpness was surging through my sides. Shifting on my back, I wondered if it was too late to cancel our plans? I couldn't guarantee I wasn't going to be sick again.

My husband peered around the bedroom door, "How are you feeling? If you want to cancel we'd better do it soon..."

Bright, beautiful sunshine was streaming through the window, and knowing how rare it has been this summer, I responded with, 'No, I'm OK'.

I wanted to be up, out and taking photos of a church we hadn't been to yet. It might seem a strange hobby (especially for an Atheist) but I love taking photos of churches almost as much as I love taking photos of derelict buildings!

Churches and the graveyards that surround them are special to me. It's the architecture, the history, but most importantly it's the peace and the stillness. There is a calming effect whether you believe in 'anything else' or not. Churches rarely change so the feeling of timelessness is another thing that attracts me.

Imagine all those people for all those generations, that have pushed open that heavy door...

I didn't bother with breakfast - I rarely do. The 'Endo' makes me feel to sick in the mornings. Instead I swallowed a painkiller and sipped a cup of tea. Tea is my 'starter fuel' and feeling sick or not, I find I don't function well without it!

Marian, (my husband's sister) arrived and gave me a hug. We watched our husbands load my wheelchair into the back of their new car. "I hope it fits" she said, smiling at me, "Me too" I replied as another pain shot through my hip and down to my toes.

It did.

Mells church, (the church of St Andrew) is especially pretty. I'll include its Wikipedia link so you can see it for yourself, but I loved the porch with its window, that you can see above the outer door, and the interior is especially ornate, so much detail and unique memorials - one if which was designed by Edwin Lutyens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrew%27s_Church,_Mells

I hope the link works!

The graveyard has several notable burials, perhaps the most notable is Siegfried Sassoon (1886 - 1967) -the  war poet and soldier. I'll put his wiki page below too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon

With my wheelchair parked beside his grave (the church yard is too bumpy to push the wheelchair over and I definitely was not in a fit state to walk even a little way on my crutches), I wondered about all the things he must have seen. That has to change a person.

The writer in me wondered about his writing process, and if he had a desk! I don't have one - usually it's the dining room table or my notebook comes to bed with me...

I shivered a bit as the pain ran through me again...but nothing compared to what people involved in war must experience. I felt lucky.


Mells is quite close to us. It's a beautiful village with old cottages, a post office, pub and a few tea rooms.

The place is riddled with history, and I believe the nursery rhyme 'Little Jack Horner' has its origins there. The Horner's being local wealthy landowners, and responsible for bringing many 'arty types' to the village.

The sunshine made my pain seem less important, and as I sat on the wooden outdoor chairs of 'The Walled Garden' with the warmth on my back, I knew I'd done the right thing in forcing myself to go out. It is a case of forcing myself sometimes - what with the pain, nausea and depression, it can be easy to just stay at home with my husband and let the days slip by.

The lemon drizzle cake sweet on my tongue, the sunshine, and my husband's hand in mine made me so glad this one hadn't.