We need to have a serious public conversation about health here. Public health. How we get well and stay well. We have high levels of trauma here, high levels of poverty- this impacts on our physical & mental health- that is much bigger than fixing Health & Social Care 1/ Health & Social Care can only be fixed through a prism of cross-departmental working. Many ppl here self medicate, in ways that are harmful to them. Others let potential health problems go as they know they can't afford to take action to change it. How wrong is that 😪 2/

My granny didn't let knickers or bras dry on the line. In case anyone saw. (She lived in the country). Looking at yourself in a mirror was a sin. Talking to a priest was forbidden. You weren't allowed back in church in those days after having a child until you were "churched". I was told not to fold my arms in case I committed the sin of drawing attention to my chest. I was not to talk to boys on the bus on the way home. Everything was your fault. Women were at fault. If anything happened, the implications from the system were that it was your fault

Bear with me, but I feel like what the Brexit debacle has done is highlight how unacquainted people within UK & indeed, the South, are with Northern Ireland. Maybe I'm just being precious, but I feel that we aren't a normal society. We have paramilitaries, segregated schools 1/ We had a conflict here for 40 years (and more) and people don't talk about it. We've people who don't ever mention what happened to them. People who get nervous when alarms go off in shops. People who still close the curtains & then turn the lights on 2/