How do you continue when it feels like the world is in trauma? I didn’t have the words to explain to my three-year-old why I was sad yesterday after reading accounts of people caught up in the Parisian atrocities.
How can you explain it in a way that makes sense, when you spend your whole life reassuring them they are safe, and rules and adults are in place to help protect them?
The short answer is you can’t.
Sometimes words aren’t enough to express the fear and sadness.
It feels glib to focus on anything other than praying for those impacted by what’s happening in Europe and events around the globe right now, and my thoughts are with them.
Paris in particular is a special place for me and I’ve made lots of important life decisions there. It’s where I’ve gone to think and dream on numerous occasions in my life, I have friends in the city and my husband lived there for a year. It’s also where I chose to accept my husband’s proposal of marriage.
But I agree with numerous quotes I’ve read about how carrying on as normal defeats the purpose of those who seek to unleash wickedness.
We experienced that here in London in 2005 after the bombings. Getting back on a Tube for the first time was extremely difficult for many people, myself included. But life has to carry on, and you do so with a heavy heart and ache for people caught up first-hand in the difficulties and acts of terrorism.
So in order to seek to carry on, here’s my regular Sunday look at what’s on this week, it covers 15 – 25 November 2015.
I hope you have a good week.
Rachel
What’s on this week
- 16 November: Advanced writing and editing for the corporate communicator, Florida, Ragan
- 17 November: Social media to improve collaboration & communication, IoIC, London – course by Rachel Miller
- 18 November: CIPR East Anglia Conference, Cambridge
- 12 and 19 November: Effective change communication, Melcrum, London
- 20 November: Aspic Breakfast Seminar: Communicating Company Strategy, London
- 20 November: Deadline for CIPR Inside #insidestory awards
24 November: Strategic Internal Comms, PR Week, London. Save £100 using code: ATIC2186.- 24 November: Annual conference from Engage for Success, London
- 24 November: Planning and designing an effective intranet course, Clearbox consulting, London
- 25 November: Managing and enhancing an effective intranet course, Clearbox consulting, London
- 25 November: Mastering Metrics, Melcrum, London
- 25 November: Communicating Change, IoIC, with Dave Oliver
- 25 November: Comms Hero, Birmingham.
Post author: Rachel Miller
Peace for Paris pic.twitter.com/ryf6XB2d80
— jean jullien (@jean_jullien) November 13, 2015
First published on the All Things IC blog 15 November 2015.
