If you bought flowers for your girl friend or wife today, you’re in the company of men who come in to help Pádraig. But, women’s day, believe me, is not a day for flowers. Must be one of these intercultural things.

I visited a family today I had not met before. Their son was very badly injured about six years ago, suffered a severe brain injury, and is now living in a care centre, a nursing home. They are neither Irish nationals nor EU nationals and are having an even harder time then us and the other families I’ve met to access the right support, even to find their way around the Irish system. Being a kind of a refugee is one thing, being one with a brain injury is another! And it would be so easy to help them…

In more uplifting news: early this afternoon, I called Prof Joseph Fins of Cornell Medical School and author of “Rights come to Mind” – the most amazing book about severe acquired brain injury I’ve seen, ever. Prof. Fins had sent an email last night saying he’d be very happy to talk to me over the phone, about Pádraig specifically and the way persons with severe acquired brain injury are being treated (or: not being treated).

It was the most uplifting and inspiring, confidence and energy infusing half an hour conversation I’ve had in a very long time.

After that conversation I thought: we are really going to change the world.

We’re thinking big here (while fixing the ‘small’ every day problems in the process).