Audrey’s Blog on living well with disability and breast cancer

I'm in a strange paradoxical place just now; slowed by the rhythms of breathlessness to a different pace that's closer to becoming my norm now. My head is in a dilemma of how to recover my former state whilst accepting or at least working within my new reality. It's the challenge of managing a long term condition and knowing how and where to push the boundaries of an undiagnosed problem. It's exhausting at one level and at another level, strangely, it's quite compelling; that call just to sink into the soft landscapes of being peaceful.During the time in the wonderful landscape we visit in Bulgaria it was simpler just torespond and to rest. The mountains reach into the soul and soothe it in a way that justinvites a different pace, a different living. The internal and external find an equilibrium that is so very inviting. I found myself thinking of it today as I listened to this podcast by John O'Donohue and Krista Tippett. I'm reflect

As part of the portfolio of work I do, I'm proud to be the Associate Director for the Health and Social Care Academy, a programme of the Health and Social Care Alliance. The Academy’s particular purpose is to "drive transformational change in health and social care in Scotland through the lens of lived experience" a focus I strongly believe is a key component of transforming care. Following a recent think tank we developed the Five Provocations to help focus on key areas  where our work highlights that we can make a transformational difference to peoples’ lives. Through all our work we  seek to embed and reflect the PATH ( person-centred, asset-based, transformational and from a human rights perspective) and both shape what we do and why. One of the key provocations identified was the need to review the target culture of our care systems. There was a consistent and insistent theme that targets affect the whole system of care and consequently set a culture of care t