Be Brave. Be You.

Fifth Form student delivers ‘the most powerful assembly we have ever heard.’

Last week, Annabel Power (Fifth Form, The Orange) delivered an extraordinary address in assembly that left us feeling both humbled and inspired. In recounting her experiences of undergoing brain surgery and the challenges she faced during the recovery process, Annabel delivered a powerful message of courage and resilience – but also one of kindness. By redefining bravery as the mark of ‘somebody who owns up to their feelings and tries always to be kind to others’, Annabel prompted us to change our perspectives.

Every member of the Wellington College community has now had the opportunity to hear Annabel’s address and she has kindly agreed to publish it here.

Hello everyone! My name is Annabel Power and I’m in the Fifth Form. Today I would like to talk to you about the significance of mental health, and in particular mental resilience and how I came to realise just how important it is.

In August of last year, I was diagnosed with a satsuma sized benign brain tumour. It was giving me all kinds of problems – pressure headaches, deafness, tinnitus and bad balance. I ended up having brain surgery to remove the tumour very soon after the 9th October.

Before I tell you about what happened in my operation, let me tell you about what I was like before…I was exactly like you. Now that’s not a criticism of anybody in this room but I worried about how popular I was: am I too chubby? Are my trainers cool enough? You know, all the little things we worry about every day. I would say I didn’t know what was important – I was soon to discover that these things didn’t matter one bit.

My operation was due to take 4 hours, and then I was supposed to have one day in intensive care and be home in a week. In fact, it took 10 hours. I spent 9 days in intensive care and in total a month in hospital. My one operation turned into four and along the way I even got meningitis! The surgeons told me that it was the hardest one they’ve ever done, and I nearly died in the operating room. When I first woke up, I was functionally blind, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t talk and half of my body was paralysed. I really didn’t think I was going to make it.

So, what did I learn in my month in hospital and since then?

I’m going to illustrate my thoughts with some well-known quotes.

Firstly: “No man is an island”.

Before my operation I tried to deal with everything by myself and I wouldn’t dream of asking anyone for help. Especially if I was feeling stressed or sad, I would just bottle it up and get on with it. It left me feeling quite anxious a lot of the time. In hospital it was initially a massive shock for me as I had to completely rely upon the nurses. Nothing was in my control – my life was literally in their hands. They would clean my teeth for me, roll me over to go to sleep, feed me through a tube in my nose and even wipe my…you know…Because I was with them for so many hours a day and wasn’t able to do anything else, I started to talk to them about how I was feeling. I was awake until 3am every morning talking with them about all the emotions I had bottled up before. I would then discuss these worries with my parents the next day and even with friends who came to visit me. It felt like the burden of anxiety had just been lifted off my shoulders. I would encourage you to do the same, don’t hold anything in, no matter how small it might feel to you, you don’t have to suffer on your own. You really have the best support you could ask for, your friends, family and even teachers.

Secondly: “Even the longest journey begins with a very first step”.

No big problems were ever fixed in just one go. When I was learning to walk again, my physio asked me to jump over a small bottle of water which was flat on the floor. I just couldn’t – I didn’t have the nerve. She said step over it…. And I did, then skip over it…. I did! Finally, she said “Go on Annabel, you can jump over it… I did!! It felt like climbing Mt Everest!

The point is that I couldn’t do the difficult thing in just one go – it took a bunch of attempts.

When you have a problem, it takes a lot of courage to take the first step, but if you don’t take it, then you’ll never get to where you want to be. My experience is that my friends, family and teachers are all really keen to help but I had to give them the chance to actually be able to help. I would urge you to let people know if you are feeling down and ask them for help to cheer you up.

Finally: “Everyone you know is fighting a battle you may not know about. Be kind, as kindness is the most admirable trait a person can have”.

I think one of the major things I learnt in hospital is that you don’t know what people around you could be going through. After about 10 days I was finally allowed to go outside. My parents and I went to Regents park in a wheelchair because I still couldn’t walk properly. Everyone was just so thoughtful towards me. A week later I went outside again however this time – not in a wheelchair. I had been doing endless physio, like going up and down the stairs, trying to walk down the corridor on my tip toes etc, just to make sure that I could go along the street without a wheelchair. However, this experience without the wheelchair was very different to before. Sometimes, I was walking along, and I would stumble a bit into people because I lost my balance. They would give me dirty looks and frowns. Some people would just bump straight into my arm….my arm which had a tube in that went all the way to my heart and constantly hurt. Now, this might seem small to you all, but it really got to me. These people wouldn’t have acted the way they did if they knew what I had been through. So, I ask you to always be kind to people because you don’t know what they might be going through. Think about the last time you were unkind to someone in the past month, or even the last few days. Imagine how good you could’ve made them feel by just being simply kind. It takes a lot of mental courage to be that person who would tell your friends to stop making nasty remarks or who would go and sit with that less popular person at lunch but trust me you can make an enormous difference to someone’s mental wellbeing.

In summary (and maybe cheesily?), we are all really lucky here at Wellington. As well as a generally kind and nurturing environment, I’ve realised that we have the best school motto:

“Fortune favours the brave”.

Bravery is not only jumping in front of a train to save someone’s life, it is also the courage of somebody who owns up to their feelings and tries always to be kind to others. It takes a great deal of self-confidence to be the person that you really are and not try to be the person that you think others want you to be.

Be brave. Be you.