Nobody, including myself, expects a lot from me. I never thought that I would do anything but hide in my flat and take tablets to block out the pain I feel. Then we started singing. One of the girls suggested it and Ray learned it on the guitar. It was really moving and we were very proud of ourselves singing it.
We sang that at a conference — we did a flash mob which was great fun and everyone cheered. Then Covid came along and SAOL kept in touch with us and brought us food and things but the singing stopped for a while.
I found it very hard. I was back in my flat, lonely and taking tablets to hide the pain again. One of our classmates died and we were asked to sing at her funeral. I changed some of the lyrics and Ray said they were brilliant and my lyrics are the ones we always sing now when we sing that song. We sing it when we want to remember those who have passed, those who we still miss. The family were delighted with us and it felt great.
Three times a week and loads of women showed up. The buses and the cars were always honking their horns and people from the clinic across the road used to come out to listen and people would be recording us on their mobile homes. When the restrictions eased back we still sang on the street. Recovery month is in September and that was a brilliant experience.
We went all over the north inner city, singing out and promoting recovery. We even sang outside the Mansion House. We had been putting videos of our singing up on Facebook and we were reaching thousands of people with some of our posts. I was shocked that people would be listening to us.
