Rosie, our talented blogger and member of the Action Hampshire team has written a blog inspired by the comedian Miranda Hart’s new book. In her blog she draws our attention to Miranda’s universal truths and adds some of her own thoughts.
Let’s be entirely honest…
When I wrote my blog for World Parkinson’s Day in April, I mentioned that I had recently read Miranda Hart’s book, “I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You” in which she talks about living with chronic illness for many years and how she has learnt to live life differently and more meaningfully as a result of this.
Yesterday, on our informal work WhatsApp group (pictures of staff’s pets feature quite heavily on this!), the book came up again and we thought it warranted its own blog for this week’s Member News, focussing on how writing and blogging helps us share our differences as individuals.
If you haven’t read her book or heard her talk about it, you may remember seeing Miranda Hart in her eponymous sitcom ‘Miranda’ or as the character Chummy in ‘Call the Midwife’ and think she seemed perfectly healthy. However, since contracting Lyme’s Disease as a teenager, which went undiagnosed for decades, Miranda has been living with a form of chronic fatigue syndrome which became significantly worse in her forties, leaving her confined to her home, and often her bed.
Miranda (and Rosie’s) universal truths
In a bid to help herself recover, and in the face of a largely sceptical and not always helpful medical establishment, Miranda spent the next few years devouring all the research and literature she could from scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists and various other ‘ists’ as she calls them in a bid to find out if there were some universal truths which they all agreed on and which could help her find a way out of the ‘cave’. And, spoiler alert, she found them! Miranda calls them her ten ‘treasures’ and, whilst devoting a chapter to each of them, helpfully summarises them at the end of the book and which I shall paraphrase here, with a few of my own thoughts thrown in:
- Don’t isolate yourself for fear of being a burden
- The importance of acceptance and surrender (a tricky one for me sometimes)
- Allow yourself to be vulnerable
- Don’t believe every thought that comes your way; fill yourself up with good and peaceful things (I love this one!)
- Practise being kind and compassionate to yourself and, by extension, to others (another good one)
- Avoid the trap of constantly trying to achieve and focus on your own unique abilities and passions
- Make room in your life to play, have fun and be joyful (yes!)
- Focus on the present moment
- Practice the art of patience (another tricky one)
- Love and be loved (a bit cheesy?)
Break free and live as your true self
Through taking hold of these treasures and metaphorically running with them, Miranda learns to ‘come home’ to herself, to not keep trying to fit into how the world expects her to be and instead to break free and live as her ‘true, wild self’. Whilst she still lives with a largely ‘hidden disability’, Miranda is now back out in the world, but living life on her own terms. There is a further twist to the story, but I’m loathed to include yet another spoiler alert here!
Although our health conditions are quite different, this book really resonated with me. For years I worried about fitting in, doing the right thing and not upsetting people, which resulted in a lot of anxiety. Through a combination of my own ‘self discovery’, therapy and good people around me, I was well on my way to living life differently when I read Miranda’s book, but I found it encouraging and incredibly moving to find someone who’s journey had so many echoes of my own.
Clearly, none of these treasures are going to cure my Parkinson’s, but they can help me live a “wild and precious life”[1] in which, instead of trying to hide my differences, I’m happy (most of the time!) for them to be visible to the world.
Follow this link to read more about Miranda’s book “I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You”
[1] I used this quote from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” in my previous blog. It’s a favourite poem of mine.
