As part of Carers Week (6-13 June 2022), our Peer Specialist Carer Joy has written a poem which reflects on the theme of ‘Make caring visible, valued and supported’.
Invisible Army
We’re the person that tries to help, to understand, their troubles, their pain that makes their world turn inside out
We’re the person that loses sleep, sighs deep, forgets to eat, cries from the heart in the dark, to make it right from the start
It’s a ticklish sort of job
Especially when you first start
No training, just getting on with it
Because we’re the person that tries to help, to understand, their troubles, their pain that makes their world turn inside out
We’re the person that loses sleep, sighs deep, forgets to eat, cries from the heart in the dark, to make it right from the start
Dismissed as an expert, yet full of experience
We’re over looked, ignored, invisible
Not something we expected or wanted to do
Yet we’re the person that tries to help, to understand, their troubles, their pain that makes their world inside out
We’re the person that loses sleep, sighs deep, forgets to eat, cries from the heart in the dark, to make it right from the start
So tired out, don’t know where to start
Loneliness goes straight into the heart
Love, responsibility, duty, so many reasons why
We’re the person that loses sleep, sighs deep, forget to eat, cries from the heart in the dark, to make it right from the start.
Joy Ford
The annually run Carers Week is a campaign that raises awareness of caring and highlights challenges unpaid carers face and recognises the contribution they make to families and communities throughout the UK.
It also helps people to identify themselves as carers and access valuable support when they may not have done so previously.
Joy works into the Dorset Mental Health Carers Project which is run by Peer Specialist Carers and has been a Specialist herself since 2013.
If you would like to find out more about our projects or get advice as a carer or supporter yourself then read more on our carers and supporters page