Communication is everything…

My mum had a life threatening Stroke a week ago on Friday. When I recieved the call, I truly never thought it would be about my Mum.

She is an active outgoing, busy lady and young for her age. A wicked sense of humour, with a love of dogs, dancing and a large family (she is the 7th sister). After experiencing aura headaches for months out while walking the dogs, it was at the kitchen table chatting to her husband it happened.

She was blue lighted to hospital in 10 mins flat, then moved through procedures and scans at lightning speed. After which she was blue lighted to a specialist hospital for the life saving surgery she required.

Through all of this she remained in constant contact, talking to the crew, the doctors, her husband and her daughters.

I truly believe it was her constant chatter about kids sleep overs, dog walking and hair appointments that we needed to change that got her (and us) through to where we are now. The stream of to-do’s where an avalanche we where all to happy to help with — anything to give her brain some peace from the mental load she was in the middle of carrying when it happened.

So much has happened over this past week, and communication has been a critical factor in all of this.

While she lies there in her hospital bed, unable to move her left side and moving in and out of sleep, I finally understand why communication is so important.

You would think I might have already got the memo, I have after all worked in communications for the past 25 years.

But this situation brought me screaming into the real world.

Not the imaginary one of newspapers, television and social media fakery. Where everyone is telling you the edit of the stories they want you to know, enticing you with a flash of ankle, or tempting you with a click bait headline. Where we are all floating about recieving coaching advice and uplifting memes.

Topics that where once meaningful, now come across as vacous and empty, nothing more than opportunism.

Words that had meaning, have now become trends and have lost the magnetism of a heart felt share.

Maybe I have shifted into judgement again, back on the merry-go-round of martyrdom. Or perhaps I am quite possibly seeing things clearly for the first time ever.

Stories are indeed what connect us, but it is in communicating with those we love, those stories can be dispersed, transmuted and new chapters begin.

When you have to hear the worst case scenario, and then communicate that to others… there is a levelling of the playing field, a place where you can all build and grow from together. Petty squabbles, gripes and broken relationships are put to one side, through communication and in the midst of this awful thing happening to my Mum, I saw new stories and new connections being created.

We all need to do better. Be better.

And to do that starts and ends with us communicating better.