Mark's Blog

It feels like the whole country is going through a period of collective anxiety, and I am sure millions of sleepless nights, at the moment. No wonder we’re all so knackered and irritable.

Grief, loss, fear, anger and shame are powerful and exhausting emotions. I bet you thought you were the only one thinking you’re mad/sad/crackers/losing it/angry all the time/worried all the time… But you’re not unique in feeling like things are out of control.

Sadly, millions of people are facing this. It’s not just about the sadness of mourning someone who has died, because of Covid or by illness, people die all the time. But right now, it feels like everything loss-related is Covid-related.

At times this can feel overwhelming. I know that there are millions of grieving families and some of those families are our colleagues. We need to mourn every one of those people who have died, properly, not via Zoom or Teams or standing silently in the street watching a funeral procession go by. It simply doesn’t feel right. We need to gather, we need to cry together, we need to hug and be hugged.

There are also other losses that are very much in the front of all of minds. I see loss of opportunity, of plans, of dreams, of jobs, of home, of a future.

I see children who are missing their friends, their education, young people feeling trapped in their bedrooms, ‘Tik-Tokking’ their lives away at a time when they should be out and about experiencing ‘everything’. The unbearable loneliness of people missing people, worries about older, ill or frail people who you’ve been separated from for so long and wondering if they’re going to make it before you see them again.

I see anger and shame. Anger that this has happened, that we haven’t been protected by those whose job it is to keep us safe. The shame that in a country as rich and powerful as ours, we failed to protect people in this most terrible time.

Contagion or vaccination will deal with our immunity to C19 but believe it or not the stuff we value and love will need more focus and effort than creating a vaccination; science cannot help this time.

Our lessons from history, from the Second World War to Grenfell, have taught us that to recover from disaster requires more than just ‘getting on with it’, so coming out of this terrible period will need something different. We can’t just expect people to ‘pull themselves together’, it’s much more complicated than that. Everyone’s journey has been different, each person, each community has lived differently through C19. Recovery from this is inevitable; what kind of recovery we get, though, can be decided by us all.

We need to understand and deal with what we each of us has been through, acknowledge it, and be safe in the knowledge that it is not long-term. In the words of Abraham Lincoln “this too will pass”.

We need to make sure that people are not blamed, that division and spite are exposed for what they are, and that our differences are not exploited but celebrated and used as the cornerstone to ‘Build Back Better’. We also need to acknowledge and understand that the impact of the pandemic has exposed institutional unfairness and prejudice and that when we ‘build back better’ it really must be ‘better’ for everyone.

It will not be business as usual. We can’t simply try to resurrect what was there was before, because there’s an opportunity to be better than that.

All over the country there are charities, communities, faith groups, the NHS and many other people who have held us together through these very dark days. They have shown their mettle, succeeded where others have failed, found ways to bring kindness, comfort and care when we were told no way could be found.

I know you won’t like me saying this, you’ll be embarrassed and feel a ‘bit daft’ but you are those people – you are the people who can help us to ‘build back better’: supporting our communities, working through the challenges ahead, moving old problems out of the way and thinking differently about new problems.

More than most, you know about the power and strengths of communities. You know how to unlock and amplify that power. You can help to create great places where people can share and support each other. You can find new ways so that people can express their feelings, sort out their worries, face and deal with their issues.

How do I know this? Because since February last year, you have been doing all that you can to make sure that those you support will come through this stronger, to face this increasingly uncertain future head on.

Back then, we didn’t know what we were facing and we didn’t know how long it will go on for. Now we know what we’re facing, now we know the end is in sight.

Other countries and their people from over the world manage to recover better after massive natural disasters or civil war with much less resource, much less government but with great resolve. We can do it too, we have done it before: the UK recovered from two world wars because of the extraordinary power of ALL of its extraordinary people. We will do it again.

You are a big part of the solution. How do I know this? I see how remarkable you are every day.

#Save the date

Since we're looking to the future, we're also pleased to tell you that the P3 conference will return, on Friday 3 December 2021! Watch this space for more details…