blogging – Page 2 – Write Up My Street

While I am no scientist, although I did used to read Gray’s Anatomy in the bath, as there was invariably a copy lying about the house, and once I dressed up my brother’s skeleton on the dining room table. That aside, my skills are more on the right side of the brain, I’m the arty creative one in the family. But that doesn’t stop me from having a huge heart and wanting to use my skills to improve patient to physician communications, to encourage better understanding of treatments, drugs and ultimately to improve the health and lives of others.

Years ago, I spent a year studying anatomy and physiology, then another two years training as an aromatherapist and complementary healthcare practitioner. Consumer health for me is a page that should not be left unturned. I spent many hours while living in New York as a First Responder and was part of my towns Emergency Rescue Squad. Weekends saw me driving the ambulance and supporting the crew on everything from bar brawls to transporting critical care patients to high level facilities.

While working for a herbal tea company for about 18 years, I promoted it’s health giving properties – notably for digestive issues and benign skin conditions. I collaborated with dieticians, herbal practitioners, writing and even speaking to nursing staff on continence care. I raised thousands for causes in South Africa, where the tea originated, aligning with key UN Millennium Development Goals around healthcare – in particular, HIV, Malaria and TB. I also volunteered for a year helping a London women’s charity, with their social media on FGM. It was harrowing interviewing and meeting women who had been cut, but each time it just reaffirmed to me that I was using my writing and marketing skills in the right way.

Eventually the pull was so strong that I made a huge decision to step away from the brand world and retail marketing and step into working for health agencies as an Account Director. It’s been tough during Covid (timing wasn’t my strong suit!) but the ingenuity of the teams that work across medical education, digital platforms, media, new drug launches, patient and practitioner campaigns, is endless and never ceases to amaze me and to feel incredibly proud to be part of changing patient outcomes. It has without question given me a fundamental sense of purpose, a long day becomes something incredibly worthwhile, an early meeting has focus, all the while working with a team of like-minded people.

My advice to you is that you should always follow those dreams and passions. Because those goals are what you aspire to be or do, they give you a sense of meaning and purpose.

Your dreams are something that drives you on those long days. By following your dreams, you’ll become a better and happier person all in that one process.

‘Let your heart guide you…it whispers so listen closely. ‘

WALT DISNEY

Sometimes it may feel that your situation doesn’t allow you to fully pursue your dreams, but often there are some tiny steps that you can make – and many tiny steps are as good as one big step. My tiny steps were training in anatomy and physiology, finding ways to use my love of the written word combined with marketing skills to support those in need of better healthcare. Remember when it feels hard that this is your dream and inspiration.

Find what not only makes your heartbeat but what knits your heart and mind together.

And do it.

Knitted heart by Laura Cameron

Contact me at: writeupmystreet@btinternet.com

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“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” – Plato

I’ve recently had a new start, of sorts that is. My mother’s side of the family are by and large Maltese, with a bit of Italian, Portuguese and we think North African thrown in somewhere back in the ancestral brew.

My mother died several years ago now, and although she was born in Gibraltar she had a strong connection to her parental line and family in a little village called Zejtun. Her father had smuggled himself on board a ship as a young man to Gibraltar, in search of a better or new life. He was sort of adopted by a Maltese family, they took him under their wing as it were, as a fellow Maltese. He fell in love with one of their daughters, my grandmother and the lady who gave me part of my name.

**My mothers’ side of the family.**
**My grandmother, is back row on the right in front of the tree**

Family is also important to me, I have three brothers and a long list of nieces, nephews and a godson. But making that link back to Malta is a thread I began a couple of years ago. I’ve spent hours on-line and scouring microfiched documents of time-faded, priests writing in scribbled ledgers, dating back over 100 years. I needed to find and secure three generations of family certificates to begin my part of this story. Over the course of several months I managed to get all the information and documents I needed. There were some sad stories in there; my great, great grandfather Salvatore, died at Gallipoli, before his daughter my great grandmother was born. The ravages of war never getting any easier. But by way of balance, a funnier tale was that my grandfather was a coal heaver, he carried hefty sacks of coal daily onto the steam ships in Gibraltar dockyard. Years later he was permanently bow-legged from the weight and duration of his job. But back to the here and now, when his marriage certificate came back, a hasty admin clerk had clearly misread his employment and he was down as a goal keeper. Which given the state of his legs, never mind the lack of a football ground in Gibraltar in the early 1900’s made this ironically, very funny. He was a particularly colourful character throughout his life and he would have laughed his head off at this typo.

**Coal Heavers in the Gibraltar Dockyard**
(*Gibraltar History Archives*)

But onwards to why I am telling you this story, I wanted to make that connection to my roots, our past weaves it’s way through into who we are today. From the stellar Maltese family eyebrows to an arm full of aunts who hugged you and pinched your cheeks and an uncle who had the most amazing handlebar moustache and would drive me around southern Spain in his taxi, singing while we played his Maria Callas cassettes over and over.

Last year I finally gained my Maltese Citizenship, the next step towards my passport was to go and register my birth in Malta. I made a quick trip over last week, to do just that. Sat in the waiting room with my ticker-tape number in the queue and in scenes not un-reminiscent of the Netherworld waiting room in Beetle Juice, I sat and waited with a folder with my apostille certificates.

**Beetlejuice Netherworld Waiting Room**

I’ve only ever met one other person with the same name as me, and technically he was a Mario Angel, but the lady who saw me at the registration desk was also a Marie Angela. Then she told me, my birth date was the same as her brothers, and we began chatting like old friends. That’s the Maltese for you, we all make each other feel like family.

***Haberdashery in Valetta,***
***my aunts used to spend hours making lace.***

So my point is, there is always a day and a time to start over again, in some way or another. Not just to know who you are and where you are from, which is one thing, but to have that certainty that as Plato once said, ‘the beginning is the most important part of the work‘, and I’ve just had a new one.

As they say in Malta, ‘għandi pjaċir’

(nice to meet you)

Contact me at: writeupmystreet@btinternet.com

Tag: blogging

Where do we start?