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All profits will go directly to the Healthcare Workers Foundation to support familie...
Locked Down But Not Out - A Covid-19 Diary
United Kingdom
Aim
Supporting bereaved families of NHS workers who lost their lives saving people from Covid-19 through a daily diary of events in lockdown.
“They gave their lives to help our families. Now we must help theirs."
In 2020 a virus turned our world upside down.
Healthcare workers have fought an arduous battle with this unforgiving enemy. Day after day they have put themselves on the frontline for us and sadly many of them lost their lives. Over 600 Healthcare Workers have died from COVID-19 whilst in service.
The Healthcare Workers Foundation has been supporting workers throughout the crisis and are launching a new Family Fund in December to specifically support the families of those we have lost since the start of the pandemic. They gave their lives to help our families; we must now step forward to help theirs. They helped us and now we must help them.
Our priority is to support and protect the children within these families. By donating to this Crowdfunder you have helped to provide specialist bereavement counselling and connection with a mentor to guide these young people with career development and education choices.
The whole family is given access to counselling, respite opportunities, and a caseworker to assist with all aspects of the aftermath of losing a loved one.
Thank you for your contribution – all proceeds will go the charity. Your support will help to ensure these young families can rebuild their lives together positively, after such a tragic and sudden loss.
Please visit www.healthcareworkersfoundation.org to find out more about the work they have been doing.
About the Author
Gillian Jones-Williams is the Managing Director of Emerge Development consultancy, a motivational speaker, a Master Executive Coach and an author of two coaching books – 50 Top Tools for Coaching and How to Create a Coaching Culture. In January 2020 she was named as one of the top UK Female Entrepreneurs in the F:entrepreneur #Ialso campaign, setting her up for her best business year in 25 years trading. But that was before COVID-19 hit…
Why Donate?
I have a question for you. In 5 years time when we have banished COVID-19 and lockdown is no longer a word in our vocabulary, will you remember the sacrifices that the workers in the NHS made to save us during this difficult year?
If you are honest, it probably won’t be part of your daily thought process, and who can blame you, life, when we are free and allowed to live as we wish can be extremely busy.
But for the families of the NHS workers who lost their lives they have a daily reminder – the gap left by their father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, sister, brother, uncle, auntie, cousin or friend will stay with them for ever.
I’m Gillian Jones-Williams and I am working with the Healthcare Worker’s Foundation to ensure that these people are not forgotten and their families are supported.
Which is why I have decided to publish this book. What started as a diary of events which I wrote to give me a focus each day when we were locked down then turned into a fundraising idea, plus it took my mind off the fact that my business was dissolving before my very eyes.
I founded my business 25 years ago, a face to face training company, and on March 23rd we lost everything. We sat and watched in horror as our bookings fell off a cliff and we spent six months trying to reinvent the organisation. I call this Zoom, Gloom but not all Doom, as our learnings from these six months as we started to pivot have been incredible. I have never been so tested as a leader as I have in this period.
Each day I wrote in the morning and the evening. I watched the news religiously and recorded my thoughts on every press conference. As news came in, I added it to the book and wrote of my rollercoaster struggle to save my company and my sanity. And as the death toll grew I knew that I wanted to finish the book and publish it to raise money for the families of the brave people (they don’t like to be called heroes), who were going in to battle every day, many without appropriate protective clothing, to save us from this dreadful disease.
More about the back story
Who would have thought that 2020 would have been like this? And as I write this we are deep in lockdown again. The second wave looks like it could be even worse than the first, and yet, it already feels as if we may have forgotten the bravery of the NHS staff and key workers during the first phase of the lockdown.
Which is why I have written this book. I wanted to ensure that there was a full and detailed record of how the lockdown played out and how those people served us. And more importantly, for those members who died of COVID-19 whilst doing their jobs, to provide some funds for their families, who seem to have been forgotten.
So, why would you write a book about the worst year that many people have ever experienced in their lives? Would anyone want to read it? Or would everyone just want to bury the memory of 2020 year deep inside the hidden vaults in their brain, instead, remembering it as one of the hottest years recorded in history?
Because we must never forget. For me, 2020 has been the richest journey of my life, filled with fear, sadness, desperation, hope, joy and learning. Lots of learning. More than probably in the entire 60 years I have been on this earth. But, never ever, have I experienced the depth of introspection 2020 threw at me. The need to throw away my internal rule book, rethink my entire approach to life, both personally and professionally, and to accept the challenge to truly step up as a leader and business owner. In March, 2020 my training business crashed and we lost everything – but we fought back, with everything we had.
But that is not why I wrote the book. I started recording the events surrounding COVID-19 the week before lockdown, when COVID-19 started to take hold and everything started to get serious. I wrote every single day, in the morning about how I was feeling personally, and my struggle to hang on to my business, and in the evening when the Downing Street briefing happened, but also throughout the day when things pinged up on the news. And I could not believe what I was writing, it felt like I was writing a fiction novel and even now, when I read it back, I still am shocked at some of the things that happened.
But why was I recording it all?
At first, I did not know why I was so obsessed with writing it every day, as I thought it was just to be a record for my children and friends, but then things changed. Suddenly, I was not just recording deaths of people in hospitals but watching the very people who were dedicating their lives to saving us all, going to work, contracting the virus and losing their lives And this is when I started to realise that I wanted to publish the book to support those workers.
This was a battle and they were our frontline troops. In the armed forces, people are thoroughly aware of what they are signing up for when they join. From day one, they know that they face the possibility that they will be in a life-threatening situation and they are given the equipment to ensure that it is as fair a fight as can be anticipated. However, doctors and nurses sign up to their role believing that they will go to work and save people’s lives, not to go to war. This is particularly true for those who are still at medical school. And yet, we sent them in to war, in fact we begged them to go into war for us and they did it, willingly, diving deep into the frontline, often without the equipment that they needed, and with little knowledge of the enemy. All we could do was clap. Then, as they continued to battle, working long hours every day, often sacrificing their home life with their own family in order to protect them, and whilst they worked in terrifying conditions, helplessly watching people die, over worked and overwhelmed, they had to contain their anger as the public refused to stay at home and flocked to beaches and street parties.
Suddenly the playing field was levelled – the rich were as much at risk as the poorer community, it did not matter how much money you had, it afforded you no protection at all. It did not matter how clever you were, or how important you were at work there was no value you could add to saving lives. The only people who could save us were the NHS workers. And meanwhile, as we locked down, we suddenly realised that all of those people who you might not have noticed as important in your life, the shop assistant, the bus driver, the delivery driver, the postman, and many others were suddenly elevated to lifesaving status. But not for long? Once the pandemic started to ease did the public still celebrate them and thank them? From where I stood it felt like their efforts were very quickly forgotten as people flocked to the beach and had parties. That is why this book is so important – to ensure we always remember what they sacrificed and to give back to their families.
So, now I need your help, we need to get this book published and get some funds to these people to show that their loved ones are not forgotten. Not only that, in ten years time, can you imagine how important it will be to take this book off the bookshelf for one of your children or grandchildren that allows them to read exactly what it was like to live through the most life-changing year that the world has ever seen. So please donate and spread the word and anyway, look at all these incredible rewards you can get!
Thank you so much in advance for your wonderful support, I promise every penny of the profits will go towards the Healthcare Workers Family Fund.
This project successfully funded on 2nd January 2021