Malcolm Stern: 0:46

Okay, well, welcome to our podcast. Slay your Dragons with Compassion, in conjunction with online events, and we're interviewing people who have come through adversity, with some learning, with some shifts in their lives. Some are well-known, some are less well-known, but in the main, they're people who have a story to tell and have found a resource that they may not have known they had before they started. So today's guest I'm very happy to welcome someone I've known for many, many years as Adela, and Adela, welcome to our podcast.

Adela Bevan: 1:24

Thank you.

Malcolm Stern: 1:25

thank you, malcolm, and when I met you, adela, you were a yoga teacher, incredibly fit, energetic and full of the joys of life and you're still full of the joys of life, I think as well. But a lot's happened since then and, I think, the only thing I observed was that you were bed bound for quite a long time and that actually took away your independence in many ways. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about what. What happened from yoga teacher to bed bound?

Adela Bevan: 1:57

yes, thank you. That's a good place to start because there was like a before me and a me now. So, as you said, yeah, the before me was very, very active. I was also a dance teacher. My whole life was about movement, so I was constantly moving and dancing. Dancing had really played a massive part of my life and then gradually, over years, I had started accumulating pain in my body and I didn't know what to do about it. So I do all the normal checkups, like going to doctors and having scans and everything, and nothing ever showed up. So the more and more it didn't show up, the more I sank into despair. But instead of stopping, I kept going. So I overrode it and I overrode it and I overrode it for years and during that time I would say also with that level of pain I was experiencing, it was very, very hard for my mind to manage, you know, to manage this level of pain. So you could almost say I was beginning to lose my mind throughout that process.

Malcolm Stern: 3:05

That's very powerful. So and I really hear that I think for most of us what we would do is try and push through in the hope that would disappear. But actually you probably weren't given advice on how to manage your situation and you kept pushing until eventually there was I presume there was, there was an explosion or an implosion.

Adela Bevan: 3:27

Yeah, a breaking point. Actually it could have been. Could have been two reasons one, I couldn't have gone on any further, um. And two, I'd found someone that was safe to help me. So I'll never know, um in my mind I basically believe I'm very, very close to death, actual physical death, not just psychic death. I'll never be able to prove that, you know, and that doesn't really matter, but that's how I experienced it. There was very little of me left, sort of inhabiting my body.

Malcolm Stern: 3:59

And I think that's what pain often does it actually sort of. You know, when we're dealing with constant pain, it's almost as though the rest of life has to go away because we're just dealing with the pain.

Adela Bevan: 4:11

Yes.

Malcolm Stern: 4:12

And so eventually, you found someone who was safe. Was that a doctor?

Adela Bevan: 4:15

Yes, so I was blessed, or was it constellations meeting, whatever it was? I threw a friend, someone who told me about a woman who did somatic healing, which is dealing with trauma in the body. At that period of my life as well, I was very unsure and uncertain about the mental health world, so I never saw myself as having mental health problems. Of course they they were coming because of the pain, but I really saw myself. It's really purely physical. So one day I can remember April 2018 I pressed on her link on Facebook I was in Mexico at the time, deep sea, diving of all things, but again, constant activity and I pressed on her link and I wrote to her immediately and that's. Everything in my world began to change at that moment. So that was April 2018. And then, by June 2018, I stayed in my bed long enough and I wasn't, didn't realize at that point I wasn't going to be moving again for some years some years years so you were unable to move for years from having been a dance teacher and a yoga teacher.

Malcolm Stern: 5:32

Yeah, you were suddenly bed bound absolutely and was there anyone there to look after you?

Adela Bevan: 5:38

well, I'm very fortunate. Yes, I wasn't on my own in my home. I have a partner called Rene and he stayed throughout the whole process with me. There were certain practical things, of course, that I couldn't do, so I couldn't go and get food, I couldn't shop, I just, you know, I wasn't leaving the place and also, obviously, I couldn't work anymore. So I had to get sick notes and once a month we'd have to get into the car. Every level of movement was a nightmare because I was in so much pain. So, yes, I wasn't entirely on my own, though I did need a lot of my own space, I should say. I suppose at that point also, I wasn't really talking either. I wasn't like a normal human being having a bit of pain. I really everything had shut down at this point, um, I wasn't talking. So, poor guy he managed to stay with all of that and stay. You know, other people might have kicked me out and just said what the hell is going on the day like, because I literally couldn't articulate what was happening.

Malcolm Stern: 6:39

Yeah, and you know, it sounds like you know we often come across the right person at the right time, and it feels like you had a partner who was a rock, which is exactly what you needed yeah, absolutely he was, and I think that's what I mean by had got the safety.

Adela Bevan: 6:53

So I had a home environment, physical environment, to be in. I'd often felt very homeless as a person also, so even though you could when I say homeless it's almost like my soul had has often found it very hard to inhabit itself in the body. So I had the safety and then so the woman who helped me was a woman called Karen and she was actually in Canada of all places. So we zoomed and this was pre-covid days, so it's just before covid had happened. We were, she was connecting on zoom with me and uh and she so I was probably very afraid in the psychiatric world someone telling me that I was depressed or anxious or bipolar or schizophrenic Because my mom had suffered mental illness and it had been very secret. So I was very glad I found someone that wasn't linked to that world.

Adela Bevan: 7:43

She was a somatic healing practitioner and I just started doing things that were completely unusual to me, like obviously stopping moving, and every day I'd say, ok, I'll stand up, tiny voice, try and get up. I couldn't, and I think there was a period of, I would say, about a year and a half, what I called intensive care, as if there was no way I was going anywhere. And then, gradually, as the years moved on, you know, I got my health back, and it's only since last September of 2023 that I've been able to go out of the house regularly on a consistent basis. So, even though it began a long time ago, that sort of crisis, it's still quite new the actual capacity to manage it on a daily level outside walking, talking, eating, sleeping, you know.

Malcolm Stern: 8:36

So we'll come back to how you found your way through, but I think what fascinated me about your story is that, actually, from someone who was lying in a bed, unable to do anything, you found another skill, a skill that actually gave your life meaning, which was you became a pretty profound artist and a poet so there are there? Are you know, there are some real um capacities. It's almost like to dig deep into the treasure chest of who we are to find unused resources perhaps you can say a little bit about those, those um yeah, I think you're right, mal, malcolm.

Adela Bevan: 9:11

It's almost like I'd lived my life on the very surface, very superficial surface, not super. I'm not negating me, I'm just saying everything about moving and dancing was very much surface and quite high. And then as I lay there, I mean I was in so much agony that I couldn't sleep and I couldn't reach for sleeping pills and I was pretty convinced if I took much I wouldn't come back out of it. So prior to all my dancing, I had been married and my husband had been very um permission giving to my art. I found this great safety in doing art with him and that had been cut short when we split.

Adela Bevan: 9:53

So I had this tiny, this memory of wanting to do art from before and that was literally what drove me to, even in pain, to lift up a pen and make one small dot on the paper and that was it. But I also have this wonderful woman encouraging me from across the waters. She wrote to me every single day. She wrote back to me every single day for years, containing and allowing my experience to be held in a way and also to be seen. So it's really without those two people either side of me that got me through, helped me get through.

Malcolm Stern: 10:33

So, I know your experience was pretty horrendous and no one would want to go through that there were and I see this more and more in the interviews that I'm doing here on the podcast is that it's almost like the right person comes along at the right time and gives you just that extra bit of push that helps you get through the seemingly impossible place.

Adela Bevan: 10:57

Yeah, absolutely. This is exactly what happened. But I also had this belief system. So I had been born a twin and my twin had died. And throughout my life I've always been a searcher, a seeker in life. I've never been able to just assume life is easy and we carry on. And at one point in my life I remember thinking, well, why has he died? Oh, he's died because he just helped me be born, the two of us that I was born, we were both born. So I had this little belief system also inside my head and sometimes that really helps us like it might might be an untrue belief system, it doesn't matter, but because this woman, karen, was there, I really, really believed that there was someone there with me now and that I would go through everything I had to go through to get through it.

Adela Bevan: 11:44

And I've got a strong sense of fighting. I've to fight for my, for my life, for myself. Yes, so all those things that might seem negative from before were actually turned into a positive when you have to really fight for your life and keep going. And she tracked me, she recognized loads that was going on. She never, um, gave me a what's the word when you? She never diagnosed me, which at that time was very, very helpful. Yeah, it's interesting how you could have got a diagnosis of mental illness, because what's the word?

Malcolm Stern: 12:13

She never diagnosed me, which at that time was very, very helpful. Yes, it's interesting how you could have got a diagnosis of mental illness, because actually what happened is that you lost your resources in the dealing with the pain. And who would not have mental illness at that stage? Because the physical illness becomes the mental illness.

Adela Bevan: 12:28

Yes, interestingly, malcolm, as I got better my mental illness. Yes, interestingly, malcolm, as I got better my mental illness showed more because perhaps I was safer to show it, but I was also well enough for it to come out like to I spent and also having been diverted um.

Adela Bevan: 12:46

Well, I'm slightly in the process now of getting a diagnosis.

Adela Bevan: 12:52

Initially I was told that I had anxiety and depression, which is valuable, but it never actually made much sense to me, but maybe because I've always lived with it so I've never understood what's different. But I'm just at the moment exploring whether I'm actually bipolar because I've had such extreme highs and such extreme lows, and the only reason it might be useful to have a diagnosis is because of medication and when I was first coming out of it I was given quite substantial doses of a drug that helps people that have psychosis and bipolar, and just recently I started taking it again because the physical strain on my brain of what has happened is exhausting and I still don't always know how to manage it. So I'm just in that process now and I think before I mental illness never occurred to me. It didn't mean anything to me. I think I mental illness never occurred to me. It didn't mean anything to me. I think I just felt perhaps ashamed about it or that I should have done something different to make it not be there, you know.

Malcolm Stern: 13:59

Well, I think you know, if we look at it in a broad way, what we can see is that actually you have been terribly ill. You've come through a place of terrible illness and the mental and the physical sort of um can't be separated at that level. Yes, I'm just wondering how useful the diagnosis would be, but that's a different conversation no, I'm the same malcolm.

Adela Bevan: 14:20

I I only think it's useful if I get the right medication, because the other thing that people like me do is they get good medication and when they start feeling, when they I start feeling better, I just I just let go of all my medication and recently, this summer was really tough for me never as tough as it was, you know, for years in bed, but I really felt like I wasn't coping that well and I I said to my therapist I really think I need some medication actually, because there's a huge amount of my energy is going to try and keep myself um, balanced and stable where my nervous system, I would say, is not naturally balanced or stable. So it does take a lot of effort yes anyway.

Adela Bevan: 15:02

But I agree with you sometimes diagnosis doesn't mean anything. But it only means something if it's going to help me get the right support.

Malcolm Stern: 15:10

Yes.

Adela Bevan: 15:10

And care. But I suppose what we could go back to is actually creativity is a huge, huge, huge, huge part of my support, and it could be that sometimes in life I'm not allowing myself or giving myself enough time for that creativity to come through me, and then I start going off track a little bit again.

Malcolm Stern: 15:31

I mean, you are fabulously creative. Your art is beautiful, it's very original, your poetry is also very deep, and so, in some ways, this was born out of the experience of actually what else could you do lying in bed other than bore yourself to death by just lying there and not being able to do anything at all? But you found a resource.

Adela Bevan: 15:53

Yes, I think that's a, that's a sort of a statement of incredible strength yes actually, you dug deep into your internal resources and came out with the artist yes, yes, I think that artist and had been inside me somewhere and wanted to come out.

Adela Bevan: 16:11

I should also say, malcolm, when I was really ill, I was never bored because I was in an altered state for most of the time interesting and so I think that's why sometimes a diagnosis might help, because I just beginning to realize now there was a level of psychosis in there when you're so far disconnected from this world. But it's taken me this many years to understand that, because no one told me that was happening and also I really believed that world was completely real. So I was really somewhere else but very protected because I wasn't in a psychiatric, psychiatric unit. Um, and for some people that works. I think I wrote to you one time when I was going to go into a psychiatric unit for a short period, for a period of time, and I wrote to you because I thought somewhere you might understand that I just needed that little bit of reassurance. It was okay and actually it did help me go to go in, but because there was so much that had gone on and so I'd written to this woman, karen, every, every single day, this stream of consciousness, and then at some point she had to leave very abruptly the relationship. So there was no handover, nothing, and there was no trauma-informed person in Geneva helping me. So the only place they put me was the psychiatric outpatients and by then I couldn't even. I was still, was still.

Adela Bevan: 17:30

You know, really not sure a little bit what was going on a lot of the time, but anyway, so the creativity is this sort of stream of me, you could say me in a way. They just kept coming through me. Whatever was happening, it was just always be there and it was really literally like a dot at times. I just made dots and put them all together and um, and it was also another way to connect to people. So suddenly my life had stopped and all the people I used to know and see like friendships I'd been working at international school and had good friendships I couldn't see them, I couldn't speak on the phone, I couldn't connect with them.

Adela Bevan: 18:09

So I was in this huge isolated bubble and different world and as I got better I'd be like well, if I make a piece of art, I can give it to that person. So I'd make a. I call them soul flowers. I haven't got any anywhere, but I'd make these dots and I put them all together and make a sort of flower and say, oh, that's for lizzie or that's for tina, and and then I'd hang them on my wall. Or no, renee hung on my wall. You know, I wasn't really doing anything and, uh, it was my way to reach out to other people. It literally was my way not to get so far lost in this other world that somehow I was pulling myself back to this you've.

Malcolm Stern: 18:51

You've got extraordinary um capacity to resource yourself in in the midst of unbelievable adversity, of adversity that would actually possibly sort of overwhelm most people who would get it yeah, I mean it was incredibly overwhelming, but I have to say the woman who taught me, who helped me at the beginning, she almost taught me everything.

Adela Bevan: 19:14

I literally had no sense of self-care prior to meeting her and she taught me everything.

Adela Bevan: 19:20

Like now, years later, I'll remember what she wrote and I think it's because I was also reading her. If I'd been hearing her, I'm not sure I could have taken it in because I couldn't take in the whole form of the body and the voice, but I could read her words on the page and she would say small steps, you know, tiny steps, go back to basics. We had all these sort of lines to help me through. She was utterly amazing in what she did and how she helped, because she also stepped out of the box. You know, she wasn't. She was contacting me on weekends, every single day. She realized there was something wrong and I think up until that point I had had such a strong facade that no one knew you know that something was really wrong and that's often what people do.

Malcolm Stern: 20:10

They keep the facade up because they're terrified to let it be seen that they're actually falling apart.

Adela Bevan: 20:15

Yeah, absolutely yeah, completely. That's exactly what happened. The thing is also, I don't think I had a very strong trust of the medical profession for family, historical reasons, so that wasn't really helping me. But I did have a woman came around to my house who was a friend of a friend's and she was a psychic medium and she channeled that. I was incredibly ill and I was in a state of emergency. She channeled that and when I heard that I also began to listen. So it's almost like I felt safer listening to the spirit voice come through. Unfortunately for me, I didn't pay attention immediately and I carried on for some years. So by the time I was lying down, you know. So, yeah, I'm just, I don't know what I would have done without the people, but also just that creativity coming through. I had, I had facilitated creativity before in my job, but I hadn't really directed it towards helping me. I directed all my energy towards helping others and them be creative, which is classic.

Adela Bevan: 21:23

I literally didn't know how to put myself first. Or you know which I'm sure you hear plenty of times in your life?

Malcolm Stern: 21:31

of course, yes, I mean. I think what's interesting is that you, there you are, you're lying in bed for years, unable to do anything much except paint and and write yeah, it wouldn't have been painting because it dripped.

Adela Bevan: 21:42

I had to do everything horizontally, so it was okay, oh right, so it's not even painting wasn't even paint, you know, couldn't get up to get water.

Malcolm Stern: 21:50

How did you come through that? What shifted to bring you back to some sort of normalcy?

Adela Bevan: 21:56

Yeah. So basically, with Karen, what she was doing was allowing what had not been able to come through me come through, so basically you would say trauma. So in a way, the frozen parts of me. She was letting that come through my body and hold that and know that I was safe within that. And so, step by step, I began to inhabit my body a little bit more gradually over and over the years. You know, as the trauma left.

Adela Bevan: 22:22

It's incredibly painful and I definitely sounded a little bit um, uh, I used to work crazy, but mentally unwell. I'd be saying things like there's the light. The light, it really hurts, it's coming. And she was saying people are always searching for light. And I said, but I don't want it, it's too much, so you can never tell. That was my reality, that's what I believed was happening, and maybe it was a creative way to understand that there was this malfunction or my brain wasn't really functioning that well and so she just let all the madness in a way come out. You know, I definitely wrote very paranoid things about being alien and being an alien, so it was all very discreet. I wasn't saying these things through my mouth, I was writing them.

Adela Bevan: 23:09

And she didn't bat an eyelid.

Malcolm Stern: 23:12

That's wonderful yeah.

Adela Bevan: 23:13

So step by step I began to get my strength and then I became much more, how I would say, slightly normally unwell, as in just sitting up and doing a little bit sitting up. But then also I joined in with you and Sarah doing Get Worse, get Creative. And again it was another group of people that had also accepted me lying down. I mean, I was still lying down a lot when.

Malcolm Stern: 23:38

I was, you were yes.

Adela Bevan: 23:39

Even if I wasn't doing the sessions all the time around it, I was, I still was, and then I had to just face fears of what it's like to stand up again. Will it go back to that? Then I had to just face fears of what it's like to stand up again. Will it go back to that? Because I hadn't really understood what happened? Of course I'll not go back to that, you know. So. It's a very slow process. I call it, um, putting my soul back into my body, you know, weaving my soul back within and and I think, yeah, I have got had some blessings out of it.

Malcolm Stern: 24:09

I have understood that I do have a natural affinity to create, to help me you do, and I think there's also a natural wisdom in you that has actually had an opportunity because of the the sort of like the stillness you had to endure. Yeah, actually the wisdom had a chance to come through as well. So you've come out of this somewhat different person from the person who went into it.

Adela Bevan: 24:33

Yeah, definitely completely. I think before I was very, very, very, very guarded. I had a massive mask on me, I didn't let people in. I didn't have much trust with people, I was constantly afraid of rejection, and of course I still go into those modes. But it doesn't continue for so long and one of the things I've really noticed is my friendships or relationships with people are very different. It's almost like there's a bit more me now so I can actually have a bit more of a dynamic with someone, um people, people respond to me very differently than before. I see a lot of kindness in the world and in the relationships and friendships. I don't think I really knew how to even make friends before this happened.

Malcolm Stern: 25:25

I think it's almost like you. You were hidden behind the mask of what you presented to the world. By the nature of what you've been through, your mask got smashed to smithereens effectively yeah, so you've had to reform. This is how I see it, and and again, you know we've worked I've worked with you, um, online in in groups as well, and and seen that actually there's a nakedness about you, that actually you don't any longer cover yourself over.

Adela Bevan: 25:58

You show up for who you are, and it's often a very native wisdom that comes through as a result of that I've definitely been able to be very truthful in certain areas of my life, like with your workshops, sarah's singing group, and I do another writing group with someone and again, it's incredibly truthful and I I surprised myself as well. It's not like I knew I was being untruthful, I was just being so guarded. So I'll write and all this will come out and I'll go oh, that's what's happening, you know, that's it's. It's like the art is a reflection of me, of the me that I don't really knew, I didn't know existed. So now I've got far more safe places in my life, and before I, you know, I didn't really have safety at all so.

Adela Bevan: 26:49

I'm'm a much more truthful person.

Malcolm Stern: 26:51

And I think you've found a medium of expressing it. It isn't just about sort of, you know, working with intellectual concepts, but your poetry, and you sent me a poem this morning suggesting you might read it and I'm just thinking perhaps you might read it. I don't know if you've got it accessible.

Adela Bevan: 27:06

Which one did I send Malcolm? You sent me a poem this morning that said basically, I've got a poem up on my phone which I'd love to read well, let's have one of your poems, because I think this is the way in which you do at a very different level.

Adela Bevan: 27:25

Let's hear one of your poems so, yeah, it's true, writing and poetry is a very truthful way. I feel like when we do art from a truthful way, our souls are speaking. Our souls are speaking to each other. And so this summer the lake was very important to me, just going in the lake I live right next to Lake Geneva, so going in the lake and I wrote two shortish poems linked to the lake, so I'll read them.

Adela Bevan: 27:51

The first one is called Swam. She swam in this dark reservoir of love, her body entwined with ancient ancestors, past, where fish swam, dancing through her DNA, where jewels dropped from the blackened sky, transforming emptiness into glory, concentric circles giving space for her head to rest, rippling outwards. She was held, supported by this body of water. She swam in this dark reservoir of love as time moved on, but she had slowed as time moved on, but she had slowed back to the time before she was born. She swam in this dark reservoir of love.

Adela Bevan: 28:38

And then the second one is called Moon, and again it's about the moon and the lake, the crescent moon, held up by the luminous blue strings of light pulling the moon into her womb. Stay with her, reside with her, entwine with her and weave with her. Sing your songs of glorious calm. Sing your songs of glorious calm. Let nothing stop you on your journey. Your path, your place, your space, your harmony Show her how to live as one. The crescent moon, held up by the luminous blue Sparkles of light across the surface, distracting us from her depths of darkness. Floating backwards, she will climb towards that crescent moon, rest her head in the curve of her arm, knowing she's home safe and sound. Oh, that wondrous, magical curve of the moon, holding the tides, the waves and the weather, floating gently across that lake like a sliver of silver.

Malcolm Stern: 29:48

no prisoners it takes, restful, peaceful, guiding us on our way it's very beautiful and, um, it sort of feels like, as I listen to you reading your poetry, that it's almost like you're reading something between the worlds. So there's something of a mystic in you that is able to come through, and certainly I've seen it in your art as well. I don't know if you've got any of your art immediately accessible. Just give us an interesting look to see what. Don't worry if it's not easily.

Adela Bevan: 30:22

The space is sort of filled with art. I've got something very, very teeny, tiny inside in front of me let's have a look at that oh, can we get the?

Malcolm Stern: 30:32

oh, let's tell us about it, because some of this probably blurry. So again this is.

Adela Bevan: 30:37

this is something to do with the soul, the soul inside, being contained, but also it's that fear, that slight fear of facing being trapped in suffocation. So, rather than being suffocated and worried about that, it's like well, it can, you know, it can still be there. So these are very simple. They have meaning to me. Obviously, they don't necessarily have to mean anything to anyone else.

Malcolm Stern: 31:04

But I think you are actually translating something that's extra, it's almost extra worldly that seems to come through you, and so something in you has got born in this process and is bringing something through from the realms where most of us don't go. And yeah, I'm very wary of sort of like of you know sort of new agey, sort of like, um, spiritual bypassing and all of that sort of stuff and you know sort of fantasy things. But my sense is that you've earned your place in being able to be a bridge between the worlds as well.

Adela Bevan: 31:38

There is something that that gets carried there yeah, I think you're right, malcolm, and again, I find that quite hard to talk about out loud.

Adela Bevan: 31:47

But I think it's because my twin died and I think that somehow when I got ill I began to connect more to the other world and then I had to work out how to be in this world and the other world and because if you think about a twin and the nervous systems, they grow together in the womb and then one dies.

Adela Bevan: 32:08

That death, that human form disappears, but the nervous system that I grew up with had gone somewhere, you know, into the spirit world. And so, finding myself again, I also had to find that part of me that was linked to death. And it's funny because often people talk to me now about death whereas before they wouldn't have. Like when they've got experiences of death in their life or things they haven't talked about because of the shame about death or just the unspokenness about death, I definitely feel now people will just tell me things and I'll be oh yes, and it's often connected to death, like they might have had a child that died, or miscarriage, or someone in their family died and they haven't really been able to speak about it, and somehow they just open up to me and say things about death that you know might not have been there before and I guess you've, you've.

Malcolm Stern: 33:03

You were knocking on death's door for a number of years as well, so that, yeah, that's, that's a part of you. Would you say that your attitude towards death has changed? Are you scared of death, for example?

Adela Bevan: 33:14

no, I'm not scared of death at all, and I think what I, what I think perhaps make many people might not be. I think what we're really scared of is pain.

Malcolm Stern: 33:25

I think that's right so actual death is nothing.

Adela Bevan: 33:30

I mean, it's not painful, it's a pain before the death and everything that gets created around it. Actual death is not frightening at all.

Malcolm Stern: 33:40

It's funny, my sister lived for years in fear of death and she was in a camp and she died a couple of weeks ago yeah and um, as she died, she held her hand out to her carer and she took his hand. She said I'm going and he said, no, you're not. And she just died. And it was most beautiful experience of death that I, that I heard, and all her fear seemed to have gone as well.

Adela Bevan: 34:03

It's so, so true, malcolm, and I think the other thing I know quite a lot about is how people would like to be cared for when they're dying. Yes, because we don't need very much when we're dying. We really need presence and like that carer was holding your sister's hand, all I wanted, all I literally wanted, was someone to hold my hand yeah and not even to offer advice or anything, or even say staying, or are you okay?

Adela Bevan: 34:33

literally, I just wanted a hand and this woman was so clever because she wasn't physically near me and she would say hold a hold, an object like a soft toy, because it's softer. And I held something in my hand for some years while I was in bed and even well, I think you saw me holding something in my hand.

Adela Bevan: 34:51

I did yes, yes and you wouldn't have realized why, but it was like to keep that connection with the, with this world, and when people are dying, they don't really want much, they want presence and I think you know, just talking about creativity and sarah's songwriting group, everyone is able to talk so truthfully and I won't mention names that people have written about their experience when someone close dies to them and and and also, you can't. You don't really often want, you can't speak when you're dying. I mean it's just, it's just not part of the equation, but you're't really often want to. You can't speak when you're dying. I mean it's just not part of the equation, but you're there and you want care and love and kindness, compassion and holding and nothing abrupt.

Malcolm Stern: 35:35

I think it just struck me. I had a sudden thought as you were speaking that you could be a death doula. You could be someone who actually sits with people while they're dying. I you'd be an incredibly calming presence.

Adela Bevan: 35:45

Yes, yes, that would make a lot of sense and there's actually a hospice quite near where I live and I've wanted to work there, I've wanted to volunteer there for a while. But at the same time, malcolm, it's interesting because at the moment I work with a very a young child, a oneyear-old, and that same level of presence is needed in those very early years because they're just being formed and somehow at the moment I know I'm in completely the right job Right, and my intuition is so good because, again, it's that vulnerability of that new little nervous system that's been born and I'm very in tuned in to what this little being might need, you know. So it's death and birth, isn't it the beginnings and the endings?

Malcolm Stern: 36:30

And, after all, it's the human condition that we're exploring as well. So, you know I'm very wary of the mystic. I see a lot of people over the years having to put on lots of lectures and other things like that. I've seen people sort of hide behind mysticism. But, I really hear that what you're dealing with is really authentic and I'm touched by your access to a world which most of us can't touch.

Adela Bevan: 36:57

Yeah Well, thanks, Malcolm. I mean, I have to say sometimes it's challenging, yeah Well thanks. Malcolm. I mean, I have to say sometimes it's challenging because I'm definitely needing to always do my utmost to be grounded, so certain things are really easy for me and other things are really difficult.

Malcolm Stern: 37:20

It sounds pretentious to say, but it's easy for me to write.

Adela Bevan: 37:27

I think there are some things that flow easily and other things really work, but I so I have to work harder on other things. You know, like being very grounded, very practical, very I have to put very clear routine in my day things like that. They were all the things I had to relearn again also after being lying down for so long. Um, I also had to learn something that's a bit strange about not being understood, like desperate longing for someone to understand what I'd been through and knowing that some people weren't necessarily going to understand it and to not even talk about it and just to allow that to be okay go. You know you've been through something. You're not going to be able to explain it necessarily.

Malcolm Stern: 38:00

Yeah.

Adela Bevan: 38:01

But I think in the end that stops mattering. What most people want is contact and connection with each other, you know. So, however, we manage to do that, that's the important thing.

Malcolm Stern: 38:13

Yeah, it's interesting. I know you were quite nervous about doing the podcast today, but actually I just think you've flowed in the same way as I see you flow very easily in other situations we've been in together it's interesting, isn't it? You find you find your feet very easily once you're in the flow of things yeah, when I have that safety, it's because I don't really do much planning yeah.

Adela Bevan: 38:35

I told a few people I was doing this and they said have you planned? And no, no.

Malcolm Stern: 38:41

Me neither we just communicate, and actually then what's born between us is something that I think is quite profound as well.

Adela Bevan: 38:51

Just remind me what was your sister's name? Just remind me.

Malcolm Stern: 38:54

Beverly.

Adela Bevan: 38:55

Oh, beverly, yes, Thank you.

Malcolm Stern: 38:58

May she rest in peace.

Adela Bevan: 38:59

Yeah exactly.

Malcolm Stern: 39:01

So we're coming towards the end of our podcast and there's a question I always ask at the end, and I don't ask you in advance because I don't want you to plan anything. I want to see what just emerges and that is what's the dragon? You've had to slay in order to become who you are right now.

Adela Bevan: 39:27

Almost my ego Like. Sometimes, of course my ego is actually very fragile, but the way I believed I had to be wasn't going to and didn't work for me. So I've had to really let go of that ego that says you look a certain way, you do a certain thing, you earn a certain amount of money. I never knew what those things were or how much money I should earn or whatever. I have to constantly let go of those ideals. Perhaps it's ideals actually.

Malcolm Stern: 39:52

Yes, and perhaps it's just a surrender.

Adela Bevan: 39:54

Yeah.

Malcolm Stern: 39:54

You have to do a lot of in your time.

Adela Bevan: 39:57

And let people in and let people be kind to me, because people are incredibly kind to me and sometimes I'm just like, wow, how did that happen? And I think perhaps I wasn't always able to let that in.

Malcolm Stern: 40:12

But it's like you know, and you reap what you sow, so that you carry a level of kindness, and if you're wise, you'll also allow that level of kindness to reverberate and be part of you too. So yeah thank you so much for coming here today. I really appreciate your um, your input. It's uh, it's a fascinating story and and I think it will help touch other people as well.

Adela Bevan: 40:34

So well, thank you, and thank you for the others. I've been listening to some of them too. They're very interesting because they're also very different, which I think is so valuable. People have all their different ways to manage on the planet and manage to be here.

Malcolm Stern: 40:48

Well, I think what I've been interested in is that I know a wide selection of people and I'm interested in what their stories are, how they've been educated by their stories and by their adversity, which is, of course. I was educated by the death of my daughter and it changed my life yeah, I'm not surprised.

Adela Bevan: 41:04

Yeah, exactly, and.

Malcolm Stern: 41:05

I can hear that you're you're a sojourner into the wilderness also.

Adela Bevan: 41:09

You had your you know your your days of darkness, so that actually also changed your life yeah, definitely, absolutely completely, and I really believe our brains actually can change and they are elastic and whatever goes on in our brain it's not set, and I think we used to think it was very set and now I know that I've I've gone way. I almost think I've gone beyond what was ever expected of me, like it would have been much more expected, in a way that I wasn't going to make it much further.

Malcolm Stern: 41:38

So somehow life gave me a different path and the road has opened for you as well as well so lovely to see you and we'll be in touch, okay bye, bye.