Insight: Today I connect with people, both young and
old, who want to join and belong to alternative communities with values that
are truly mindful of our ecological and human precariousness; my partner and my
daughter are so keen on this, and I support them.
What amazed me out
of this work of caring, cooking, cleaning, and listening to hurt people was
that I actually found deep satisfaction. The wardens of both hostels I worked
in believed in me and showed it by giving me good references.
Then Alec
interviewed me for the toughest job I think I have ever had. This was to help
start and run the first “rehabilitation” hostel for ex-prisoners in Leeds,
Yorkshire.
Turning my ability to “survive
the family” into a skill and life-long work
I nervously took a train north; this was first time I had traveled to what I thought was D.H. Lawrence country. (That was Nottingham). I had read Sons and Lovers at fourteen; and this book spoke to me about my own family. Later I read Lady Chatterley’s Lover—a real blockbuster because it involved explicit sexual descriptions. I remember everybody talking excitedly about this bold and daring book. Lawrence certainly shifted consciousness about what sort of “secret life” went on behind “closed doors.”
I was just sixteen
years of age, tall and gangly, when I was interviewed by three probation
officers in a courtroom. I stood literally in the dock! After asking me my
motives for working with hardened criminals, I replied, “I am good at
communicating with hurt people!” Who put that answer into my head I don’t know!
Possibly the divine.
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