REV JENNY ADAMS: Important dates remind us all of our vulnerability
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
THIS column comes out on a Friday between two important days.
February 2 is Time to Talk Day and February 4 is World Cancer Day.
These remind us of the vulnerability and interdependence we all share as human beings.
Cancers are amongst the many illnesses that impact our physical health.
Our bodies are amazingly complex, with a lot of scope for things to go wrong.
All of us have been affected by cancer, whether directly or in people we know and love.
Physical illnesses also impact our mental health, spiritual identity and social context.
World Cancer Day reminds us that these are impacts felt by people across the globe – human vulnerability is universal.
However, the Union for International Cancer Control also wants us to recognise barriers to people receiving the best care, including income, education, geographical location, and discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability and lifestyle.
Those barriers are not unique to cancer.
While this year’s World Cancer Day’s theme Close the Care Gap celebrates progress in access to cancer care, it is also providing momentum to fuel fights for fairness.
Days and themes like these raise awareness, which helps us learn more, which hopefully leads us to take action to improve things. One action that can raise awareness and help us learn is to talk and listen.
We can listen to people’s experience of care and barriers to care.
We can speak up for ourselves or those we know, challenging unfairness.
We can hear the cries of those doing all they can within overstretched health and social care systems.
We can share good news and weep with each other when the news is bad.
We need time to talk and listen. Which leads us to Time to Talk Day, the nation’s biggest mental health conversation.
Happening every year, it’s a day for friends, families, communities, and workplaces to come together to talk, listen and change lives.
Just as our bodies are amazing, complex and vulnerable, so are our minds.
There is the same scope for things to go well and not so well – we all have mental health. I think we are getting more comfortable with talking about mental health. We’ve been led by younger generations and are all getting better at recognising the damage done by difficult times.
As we talk about mental health, we reduce the stigma associated with struggles and illnesses.
These conversations provide mutual support and care amongst those talking, and also encourage us to access other help when we need it.
Human beings are vulnerable and amazing.
Our bodies, minds and souls are a complex interweaving, forming our unique selves, loved by God. And we are also interwoven and interdependent with each other, locally and globally, all loved by God.
Together we can offer each other support and care – or put up barriers.
Together we can talk and listen – or block honest conversations.
Why not make every day a day to listen, to talk and to care for each other, in the big stuff and little things, loving and being loved?
Rev Jenny Adams is minister of Duffus, Spynie and Hopeman Church.
