How do you know when an internet based community project works?
Well, when you start getting e-mails from people saying the project has helped them talk about their childhood experiences and to bring out into the open a social disease that was once regarded as taboo.
It is as if the simple decision to bring those repressed memories out acts as a liberating experience from that childhood trauma which so many of us experienced.
I was reminded of this yesterday when I got another e-mail:
“Great news about the lottery funding. am pleased for you as you have worked so hard, but the most important thing to come out of it all has been the fact that you have helped patients meet up once again, it has also been therapeutic for many of us. I shall look forward to the exhibition in Swansea.” – Beryl.”
Looking through all my research notes I find several from people who say it is too painful to talk about , except for a brief email or phone call -even after half a century.
This has been the most astonishing fact to come out of the project: that there exists so many people within the community with unspoken about grief from a time when the emotional needs of children were never acknowledged.
Another woman has done an entire in-depth interview on email -because she can’t bring herself to talk, even on the phone, about those traumatic experiences of her childhood over 50 years ago.
