Havens Stories

“So when you go for your break or for fifteen minutes; morning break, I usually have it here and just, you know, just relax.”

“Sometimes you want to socialise, but other times, you just want peace. Like reading a book or just watching TV. Or just calm.”

“Bacon roll and a quick cup of tea before back to work.”

“When you’re in the kitchen, there’s machinery, there’s people talking, there’s so much going on. Yet, when you come here – it’s silent, you know, it’s quite quiet. You can hear the birds.”

“What I really value about it is that it’s a personal space where I can have personal items that have been given to me over the year. So when I come in, I can remember that I’m a mother and sister and wife and a daughter, I’m not a consultant psychiatrist.”

“When I’m looking to unwind at the end of the day, I know that a quiet time is round about 5 o’clock, when everybody’s leaving their work or having to return to the wards. So that is a time I can potter about and unwind.”

“We always try and have lunch together. In the summer we’ll come round here, we usually have deck chairs and we’ll sit here half an hour because that’s usually all we will take.”

“This is a special place. It’s a haven in the midst of painful realities.”

“I just come here with my headphones and I meditate a little bit or just do some breathing exercises.”

“There’s very little noise, it’s peaceful. If it’s five, ten minutes, sometimes that five or ten minutes is enough to recharge you for the rest of the day.”