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Walls of Silence by Ruth Wade

I suspect that the world would be a better place if all of us wore our damage proudly on the outside, but we’ll never know, will we? Life makes us who we are, Edith – deformities and all – and how we react to the cards we’re dealt is what makes us unique individuals. In the end, it is our differences that define our humanity.’ No it wasn’t: it was humanity that defined the deformities.

Memory, often of our worst moments, is the aid by which we construct the tale of our lives, by which we define who we are and develop a sense of ourselves. Sometimes, memory or the acquisition of knowledge of our own past becomes too much for us, and the professionals meant to support us are far from perfect themselves. A tale of how we shape our own reputations, of how the quest for fame possibly in the guise of scientific enquiry can override basic decency, of how identities are constructed for us to cope with the realities thrust on to us, of how we construct identities to cope with the realities which we create ourselves, and of how unauthenticity can destroy us.