Lots of things being said about Patrick Stewart at the moment but I think the thing that sticks most in my mind is from this Q&A from 2011 (CW: Domestic Violence) where he talks about his childhood, and, just talks with such a profound sense of empathy.
My lightly edited transcript below:
The work that I do in campaigns about violence towards women, particularly domestic violence, is something that grew out of my own childhood experience.
And I'm associated particularly with one organization in England called Refuge, which has since the 1970s provided, along side many other services, safe houses for women and children. And I mean SAFE houses. Where they can go and feel perhaps for the first time in years secure with their children. Refuge is a great organization.
Now a few months ago I did do this event called "The Million Man Pledge" which was co-sponsored by the United Nations and it was, it is, a great campaign which is based on the belief that the people who could do most to improve the situation of so many women and children are in fact men. It's in our hands to stop violence towards women. So I do what I do... So I do what I do in my mother's name, because I couldn't help her then.
Now I can.
But since, and I've talked often about this I'm on record about my childhood, but last year I learned things about my father that I didn't know and my elder brother didn't know. And that was in 1940 due to his experiences in France with the British Expeditionary Force my father was suffering from what was then called severe shell shock, and that's what I read at his notes at the Imperial War Museum in England.
We now know it as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And we also know that there are solders all over the world, here in the United States and in the United Kingdom who are returning from combat zones with a serious condition of post-traumatic stress disorder. Now we know what it is and we know how to deal with it. In 1940 it was just shell shock. And basically soldiers were being told pull yourself together, get a grip on yourself and get out there and be a man.
Well an expert in this condition who works with a charity, another organisation I am now happy to be a apart of of called Combat Stress, has said to me what your father had in 1940, because he was never treated, never left him. And all the conditions of your childhood that you have described to me are classic symptoms of veterans who were suffering from this serious physiological and physical illness. So I work for Refuge for my mother and I work for Combat Stress for my father in equal measure.
