LETTER OF THE MONTH

As I write this on the last day of what has been an extraordinary and challenging 2020, it would be easy to dwell on all the things we’ve lost or sacrificed this year. But doing that would only give a green light to focus on all things negative, allowing all those positive and joyful times (small and insignificant as they may have seemed at the time), to blur into nothingness. And while our worlds shrank around us, life, in all its new and different forms, went on. There was always a new day to greet us, and encouraged by new-found resilience and boldness, many of us found new and creative ways to celebrate life, despite the necessary COVID lockdowns and restrictions.

But as difficult as those conditions proved to be, nothing could compare to the suffering, deprivation and violation inflicted on young Grace Arach at the hands of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army retold in ‘Holding on to Hope’ (January/ February). Her harrowing story is a powerful reminder of just how precious life is, and the freedom we enjoy in this country that we so often take for granted.

Judith