Tilda is Visible

For many years I have had, from time to time, the feeling that I must be wearing my invisibility cloak. These instances include waiting to be served in some shops, when navigating through shopping centres being forced to stop as someone (without peripheral vision) heads towards me with no intention of stopping or changing direction, thinking I am having a conversation with someone who suddenly changes the topic or walks away (am I really that boring?), being pointedly ignored by many of the mothers in the schoolyard when I took grandchildren to and from primary school, having to duck to avoid being hit by bags in shopping centres when I was in a wheelchair for a few months.

I was therefore interested to read Tilda is Visible by Jane Tara, published earlier this year. Tilda is fifty-two and sometimes felt that she was invisible to other people. However her life dramatically changed when she was typing and noticed that she could not see her little finger. She could feel and use the finger but the  finger itself was invisible. Before long other parts of her body, including her nose and neck, were also invisible.

Fortunately Tilda had a strong support group of friends as well as her daughters who supported her and tried to find solutions to this problem. Eventually she went to a therapist who helped her come to terms with the situation and recommended remedies that might solve the problem. The first thing she had to do was learn to better understand herself and come to terms with PEARL, her inner voice, who usually expressed negative feelings.

Then Tilda met Patrick and a firm friendship was formed. Although Patrick was blind he did not allow this to stop him living a full life. Tilda later discovered that Patrick and his brother Stephen ran a website with aids for people facing a variety of challenges. A number of people had suggested that Tilda should try meditation and eventually she discovered that regular sessions definitely helped her to relax and defeat most of the negative thoughts from intruding into her mind.

Tilda also discovered that she was not the only person with this affliction and worked to help others in her situation. She also took time to reflect on her early life and her often tormentuous relationship with her father as well as issues that occurred during her previous marriage to Tom. 

Often amusing, Tilda is Visible provides an account of how our thoughts and childhood traumatic experiences can affect our adult lives. 

At the end of the novel [page 306] Tilda sums up her conclusions on what it means to be visible:

What does it mean to be visible? Everything. It's what you yearn for, in every relationship, no matter how brief. To be seen means we matter. But visibility must always begin with self. We must first see ourselves. And to do that, we must sit by ourselves and listen. Who are we really? What stories  are we telling? And why?