The Dressmaker's Gift

For most of my life, I have dwelt in a sort of no man’s land where loneliness has been an easier option than trying to fit in.

So, if we cling on to life so hard and value it so much, how deep do depression and despair have to drag someone before they reach a place where they can’t bear to go on?

It is the loss of those you love that is unbearable.

I see now that it’s one of the paradoxes of life that if we love it so much that we are frightened of losing it, it can make us live a half-life, too scared to get out there and live whole-heartedly because we have too much to lose. In the same way, I think I protect myself in relationships, too scared to love whole-heartedly because then there would be too much to lose there too.

And it dawns on me that perhaps there are very many different ways to keep someone alive in your heart.

Until now, I have allowed the legacy of trauma to imprison my spirit.

You can’t let terror win. It becomes all the more important to resist the urge to give in to fear.

I’m not just searching for who they are. I’m trying to find out who I am, too.

When that photograph was taken, those three young women – full of hopes and dreams – had their lives ahead of them. It seems to me that they epitomise a love for life. They weren’t to know, on that May morning, just how far that love was going to be tested. And then I think of my mother. How deep do depression and despair have to drag a person until, at last, they reach a place where they can’t bear to go on? Claire and Vivi showed how much the human spirit can endure: brutality, cruelty, inhumanity – all of these can be borne. It is the loss of those you love that is unbearable.

Life can seem so very tenuous sometimes. But perhaps that fragility is why we treasure it so. And perhaps it is our profound love of life that makes us so terrified of losing it.

I’ve read that the currents of trauma run deep in families. They can be inherited, passed down the generations from one to the next, ruining lives as they go. Perhaps that’s what happened to my mother. But I won’t let it happen to me. Now that I understand where that trauma came from, I can see it for what it is. And by finding the courage to turn and face it, I have the opportunity to stop it in its tracks.

What is this world where human beings can be the perpetrators of such inhumanity against their own kind?

It’s funny, isn’t it, how the strands of our lives interweave themselves in unexpected ways?

cry for humanity, for a world which can so easily be broken.

was afraid, once. But I have seen what they did to Esther, and to so many others who were on the road that day. More “ordinary people”. And now I am angry. And anger is stronger than fear.

seduced by the illusion that money and glamour would change her life, distracting her from the reality of what was happening in the world around her. As time went by, though, and the mood in the city around her changed, Claire felt a change happening within herself as well. Her heart had begun to mend – as hearts will do if they are given enough exposure to time and the kindness of good friends – and as it mended, it transformed into something new. The hard lesson that she’d learned had forced her to reflect on the person she really was, and on the person she wanted to be, and she discovered a new core of resolve within herself.

How can I escape the same fate? In a world that seems filled with fear and panic, what can I do to stop the cycle repeating itself? Do I carry that same fragility in my own genetic make-up? Am I helpless, or is it possible for me to retake control of my life?

How can I ever see the world as a good and kind place to be when I know what obscene cruelty humanity is capable of?

There’s always something to be done, no matter how small and insignificant our efforts may seem. We have to resist.

As I trace those fine, fragile threads of fate back across the years, I am more and more astounded that I am here at all. Life can seem so very tenuous sometimes. But perhaps that fragility is why we treasure it so. And perhaps it is our profound love of life that makes us so terrified of losing it.

protected myself from it. I haven’t dared to risk loving my father,

tension and distracted preoccupation all around us. As soon as the last sparks fade against the black of the sky, we begin

I know that I am strong enough to turn away from it. I won't let the darkness win. I will turn my face towards the light. And, just maybe, I'll be able to love as open-heartedly as they did.

I will give the interview my all and accept the outcome, whatever it may be, because I'm not scared to live my life any more, whatever it may bring.

Claire and Vivi showed how much the human spirit can endure: brutality, cruelty, inhumanity – all of these can be borne. It is the loss of those you love that is unbearable.

if it's built into my DNA, then how could I ever contemplate inflicting it on the people I love passing it on to children of my own, perpetuating the pain and the loneliness in another generation?

I've ruined it. I've proven to myself what I've always feared, that I am too damaged to be loved. I'm not strong enough for this.