Bouncing Back

Day 38 (Saturday 7th January 2017)

38 patients were tested for 26 weeks in April 2016 in Denmark, in a drugs trial that appears to

offer the first breakthrough in treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers. Imaging showed that Liraglutide 

maintained the brain metabolism of sufferers while in those given a placebo it decreased.

We are a week into 2017 - I hope the New Year is treating you well. 

Today's post comes from Helen Green, the Director and founder of Orient8 Consulting Limited, a business that focuses on improving performance and which helps individuals to shift their focus from "what is" to "what could be". Helen herself is an excellent executive coach and able to help individuals and teams, regardless of the challenges - check out the client testimonials on the Orient8 website. Helen has a background in Sales and Marketing for FMCG organisations and she has a genuine interest in understanding what drives behaviours. She has an MsC in Organisational Change, a Postgraduate Certificate in Executive and Business Coaching, a Systemic Team Coaching Certificate and a BSc in Psychology, having studied STEM subjects at A Level. She is well-grounded, commercial, analytical and empathetic. You can connect with her on Twitter (her handle is @orient8you)

It should come as no surprise that Helen is a thinker - her below post is full of observation and all the pictures in Japan were taken and provided by her. It is a piece that will make you, amongst other things, think about power, impact, hope, shame,  war, grief, harm, conscience, courage and resilience. It is personal but simultaneously universal. Thank you Helen.

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Bouncing back

“Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes.” Psychology Today

New Growth Sprouting Up Through the Ashes of the Spring Prairie Burn by Madison Guy

When I was contemplating what to write for this year’s series, I thought about reviewing my year with its wild ups and downs, but one memory kept coming back to me. I was held, transfixed by what I saw on a holiday to Japan this Autumn, in the delightful city of Hiroshima. It is this that I feel compelled to write about.

My Lonely Planet guide states “Leafy Hiroshima, with its wide boulevards and laid back friendliness, is a far from depressing place. Present day Hiroshima is home to a thriving and internationally minded community and it’s worth spending a couple of nights here to experience the city at its vibrant best.”

We didn’t have a couple of days, unfortunately, just a few hours before we boarded the bullet train back to Kyoto, but in the short time we had there I experienced it as a lively, attractive and friendly city.

Our limited time was largely focussed on the history of the city.

The word Hiroshima will be forever associated with the atomic bomb dropped on the city in 1945.

On the way to the Peace Memorial Museum, we passed the Atomic Bomb Dome. It was built in 1915 by a Czech architect and was the Industrial Promotion Hall until the bomb exploded almost directly above it. Everyone inside was killed, but the building was one of the very few left standing near the epicentre. The shell has been preserved as a memorial and in 1996 it was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site.

In the photograph I took that day, you can see the Atomic Bomb Dome and also the kids walking by. It was a school day and very much business as usual in 2016 Hiroshima.

Matsui Kazumi, Mayor of Hiroshima, wrote these words in the Peace declaration written on August 6^th 2016,

“1945, August 6, 8:15am. Slicing through the clear blue sky, a previously unknown ‘absolute evil’ is unleashed on Hiroshima, instantly searing the entire city. Koreans, Chinese, Southeast Asians, American prisoners of war, children, the elderly and other innocent people are slaughtered. By the end of the year, 140,000 are dead.”

It is estimated that 350,000 people were directly exposed to the bomb.

We visited the Peace Memorial Museum along with a few hundred tourists and probably a couple of thousand Japanese schoolchildren and their teachers.

We silently filed through the various rooms depicting the horrors. The schoolchildren looked at the images and artefacts without saying a word. I cried.

A few moments later, I caught the eye of another tourist. She looked as I felt, shocked, sad, raw. She said something like “it’s terrible. And the kids ………. they are being exposed to all of this……..” I nodded and with anger rising said “and those who really need to come and see this will never come.”

The last image in the main part of the Museum was this one. I stood and stared at it for a very long time.

The words are these; “That Autumn in Hiroshima where it was said ‘For seventy-five years nothing will grow’ new buds sprouted. In the green that came back to life among the charred ruins, people recovered their living hopes and courage”.

Seeds from a tree damaged by the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima have been successfully grown in an Aberdeen park.