Tribute to our founder, Betty Harrison
Words by William Harrison (Betty’s son)
Portrait by Jamie Park (Betty’s son-in-law)
I had the great fortune to have Betty Harrison as my Mum and it is a pleasure to be asked to submit a few words for this Volunteer’s Week blog for the York Women’s Counselling Service.
Betty Harrison was born in 1924 into a blue-collar family in Pontefract. She was the youngest of three children, excelled at school and became the first member of her family to go to university. She lived in many parts of the world, as an Army Wife, before Yorkshire pulled her back 50 years later.
She trained as a teacher during the second world war and apart from brief career breaks to raise children, she continued teaching until the then compulsory retirement age of 65. Resenting this forced retirement, she re-trained as a counsellor, getting the top masters degree from the University of York.
She had married an Army Officer, Bill, during the war. As was the custom in those days, her career played second fiddle to his for the first 30 years of their marriage but she was always itching to work. When Bill was appointed as headmaster of an Army school in what was then Malaya in 1949, Betty worked unpaid as headmistress. Malaya was still a war zone, with insurgent raids and frequent ambushes. Betty recalled going to the nearest hospital to give birth to her first child, being driven by Bill along a very rough road in an Army jeep, a loaded revolver on his lap.
Throughout her life, she worked whenever she could, teaching, counselling or volunteering. She was still working until two weeks before she died, taking supervisions and studying for an Open University degree in creative writing.
At some point, she’d evidently helped found the York Women’s Counselling Service. I say “evidently”, because although she’d referred to it in passing a few times, she never mentioned that it was her creation.
Bill was a charismatic person, a pied piper, but needed Betty to balance his occasional excesses; she so often played the quiet, practical, guardian angel role, organising or rescuing him as the situation frequently demanded.
But the truth is, she didn’t enjoy being in his shadow, “the stooge in the double act” as she once said. Much of the last 20 years of their marriage was about her need to emerge and grow as a person in her own right. Looking back, it is plain that the foundation of the York Women’s Counselling Service sprang in part from this need to fulfil her own purpose.
After she died, we found a rich archive of writings which she’d left behind, thoughts once private but clearly intended to be read after her death. And they revealed a more complex person than she seemed during her lifetime. You could call it a journal, but that would be too tidy a word. Some of it was on scraps of paper, some in notebooks, and leaving aside the interspersed shopping lists and To Do Lists, it included poems, essays, quotes, jokes, ideas, philosophy, feelings, prayers, reflections and dreams recalled.
Some of it was sad, some cheerful, some profound. All of it was thought-provoking. She talked about hopes and fears, what made her laugh, what made her cry, what made her angry. And it revealed her search for life’s purpose and meaning; an unceasing quest to make sense of things.
There were hints in the journal of Betty as wounded healer, inspired by adversity from her own childhood to help others.
One example from her journal recalls a time when she was close to death from a childhood illness, her heart-broken father weeping over her, begging her not to die. It left her with a fear of illness and death but such was her courage that none of us knew she had this terror.
She referred, but only very obliquely, to a particularly bad experience when she was a child. She used the words “The betrayal” as shorthand for this experience but evidently wanted to spare the reader anything more explicit. However, I did understand what it was about because my Dad had told me some family secrets not long before he died, including the events Mum referred to.
The journals weren’t all serious though. Some of it was very funny. On several occasions, she repeats Winston Churchill’s famous battle cry: “KBO!” (Keep Buggering On!).
Her notebooks and journals show a person of modesty, courage, humanity, wit, wisdom, and compassion.
She was also a fighter who stood up for those who couldn't stand up for themselves. She gave voice to those who had none and argued for justice where others were silent.
A few days before she died, she was so weak that she could barely speak and yet talked with passion about the wrongness of hitting children. "How could it ever be right to attack a child?" she said. She referred in her journal to a memory of being caned as a very small child for being late to school, aged just 5 years old, an injustice which she’d never forgotten.
So many people benefited from her wisdom, compassion and insight, and her incisive - almost X-ray - vision into other people's minds. Can you imagine what it was like to be a little boy growing up with a mum like that – someone who could spot a fib before I'd even finished saying it?
Let me close by quoting something she had scribbled in the journal, a few years before she died. It is entitled: “Reflections from a Dream”:
“I must go out into the world and take visits outside of my safe place. Especially now.
I am free to think what I choose, to do what I choose. I am no longer answerable to anyone except God.
I can be clear how I want to be, in the light of my lived experiences and thoughts.
I can listen to myself. I don’t have to hide anything from myself or anyone else – unless I choose to. I can live by what I know. I can be me.
There is much of my story I choose not to tell. I know it. I have survived. Why should I distress those who have loved me, unnecessarily?
There’s something too about having confidence in my own body – in its health and power, even in old age. Of course I’m decrepit. My eyes fail, my knees hurt, I get tired so easily. My hands and face are wrinkled and discoloured. My skin is old. My heart is patched up. My bones and muscles hurt. But I can see enough. I can read and write. I can taste and hear and touch.
So what can I do at this point in my life? My list:
Eat properly – fruit, vegetables, no junk.
Massage – use oils and creams lavishly.
Exercise.
Sleep well.
Keep clean.
Dress well enough, and comfortably.
Take responsibility for myself.
Go out and talk to people, whoever they are. I like people, having been afraid of them all my life, I actually do know now how to relate to them.
I need to cast off all that I imagine people make of me and how they see me (as old and useless, to be ignored or patronised). I am not that person. I am me. I live inside this battered tent, but it will serve for a bit longer if the weather holds out.
For the rest:
Read poetry!
Look about me.
Hold fast to that which is good.
Count my blessings.
Keep learning, even when it is slow work.
Let go.
Search for what is going on under the rocks, the metaphors, the joker in the pack, the wonders of the mind.
Sort out the everyday stuff and set it in order as far as possible – then take no further thought for the morrow.
K B O!
‘And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’ ”
Like I said earlier, it was extraordinary good fortune to have such an inspiring and life-enhancing person as my mum.
I am truly delighted that The York Women’s Counselling Service continues to thrive.
Good luck and best wishes for all your wonderful work.
William Harrison.