By Jules Hillier, Chief Executive of Pause
In our latest podcast episode, A letter to my social worker, Jules Hillier, our Chief Executive, speaks to Vanessa, a woman who has completed the Pause Programme with Pause North East, about the decision Vanessa made to write a letter to the social worker who removed her children from her care. Jules reflects on that conversation in this blog post.
When you first meet Vanessa, you can’t help being bowled over by her energy. Every project, campaign and consultation she’s got involved in with Pause, she has thrown herself into it with her whole heart and a great deal of teasing and laughter. She calls me ‘Boss Lady’, knowing it makes me blush and feel embarrassed, and she is always on hand with a joke, an idea, and enthusiasm for the next project. It would be easy to mistake her for someone without a care in the world and that would be to seriously underestimate her.
Vanessa has the most extraordinary capacity to reflect on the challenges she’s been through and think about them with the benefit of distance, hindsight, honesty and compassion for herself, her children and other people. Pause helped her to develop some of that capacity (which was already within her) and I think it’s one of the most amazing ways that the programme can have an impact.
When she reaches a block in her progress, or she stumbles, Vanessa applies her energy to thinking about what she needs to do to move forward. This way of thinking is what prompted her to write a letter to her children’s social worker – the one who removed them from Vanessa’s care. In the letter, Vanessa tells her social worker that she has come to understand why it was in her children’s best interest to be removed, and to thank the social worker for her care of them. She acknowledges that she made things difficult. She also shares some insight into the anger and fear and trauma that caused her to behave that way.
They met up – Vanessa and the social worker – and they talked about the things that they have taught each other. What extraordinary openness and compassion from them both. Vanessa was then good enough to let me interview her for the Pause podcast series, so that we could hear from her exactly why and how she made the decision to write and what she got from it.
Although she’s definitely one of a kind, Pause has worked with hundreds of ‘Vanessas’. Women who are gradually finding their way to a better understanding of what has happened to them and their families, and why. Women who are beginning to think about what they can do to support others who have been through the same experience and women who are now thinking about the impact this may have on their children in the future and asking what they can do to give them a better chance than they had themselves. It’s one of the most inspiring but also painful parts of creating the space for change that Pause does and I’m grateful to Vanessa for showing me what it’s all about.
