“I had the distinct impression I had bitten off more than I could chew…”
Rebecca, Community Commissioner for Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission begins here — sitting across from a Facilitator, unsure what she’d signed up to and questioning what she could possibly bring to a room like this.
This blog traces what happened next.
Across a year with the Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission, Rebecca reflects on the reality of stepping into the process; the discomfort, the honesty, the relationships that formed and the way her understanding of poverty began to shift.
She writes about sharing experiences that are often kept hidden, about what it means to be met as a person rather than a problem and about the kind of change that grows slowly through trust.
This is her journey.
Sitting across from Phil (Morecambe Bay PTC Facilitator), who seemed like a lovely chap, I had the distinct impression that I had bitten off more than I could chew, and I’m not talking about the delicious lemon drizzle slice. A dear friend of mine had put my name forward to him as a potential Community what-now? I was being invited to sit in a room full of strangers and talk about the hardships I’ve had?
What happened to “Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and carry on?”
The Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission, that’s what.
April 2025
It’s hard to believe I wrote these words in September 2024, and it’s already April (2025). We’re about 4 weeks away from the Round 3 launch event, and this experience has already broken me wide open and rebuilt several misconceptions I had about poverty. It suits the suits that when you hear the word “poverty”, most of us think of Victorian waifs, or maybe 3rd world countries. You don’t immediately think “heating or eating”, or feeling sideswiped when the bus fare increases 50% overnight.
I was really reluctant at first.
I’ve been keeping a diary, you see, because I sensed at the start that I would want to look back over this experience, and the hardness I felt when I walked into my first meeting was all over my early entries. Bristly, not friendly, standoffish and probably downright rude. What could I possibly contribute? I don’t know anything about this stuff! Don’t they know I’m a fraud? I’m surprised I wasn’t kicked out. But Phil and Ally and Erin and my fellow Community Commissioners knew something I didn’t…
This process genuinely changes people who come into contact with it. You get to see there’s a different way to work, without the fancy titles and the power imbalance of the world outside the meeting rooms.
I’m naturally a very introverted person, and I simply hate talking about myself. My friends were very used to my aphorism that “You shouldn’t share your problems, half the people you tell don’t care and the other half are glad you’re up against it”. A healthy outlook. Not so here- after getting to understand the broad stripes of the issues which brought people to the process, we started with the personal experiences in earnest. In bar work, you learn pretty quickly that everyone’s got a story that will break your heart and most of them are only a drink away from telling you theirs, but we were talking about overcoming abuse, addiction and truly horrific experiences over coffee, mostly in the middle of the day. The systemic breakdown is heartbreaking en masse, and nobody shies away from the fact the fury you feel about it is righteous. But the gift of the PTC is the hope it imbues you with.
We haven’t met the Civic Commissioners yet, we do that after the launch event, but already by sharing our issues among the Community Commissioners it feels lighter, like something we can take action to change. In the Community meetings, we’ve laughed and raged and cried. We’ve suffered a loss from our ranks, an amazing chap called Grahame whose desire for change and driving passion to help others has fired us all up, and we’re feeling heart-sore for missing him but that little balloon of PTC hope keeps bobbing along beside us. I’m so honoured to call that room of strangers my friends, now, and I’m excited to bring our issues to the Launch Event in May to see what change we can affect.
April 2026
It’s now been a year since I wrote my pre-launch blog post, and I am revisiting this post ahead of the visit from our East Lancashire guests next week. I have a few things to impart that I hope will help sway your heads and hearts, and potentially those of many other future Commissions, towards undertaking this vital work.
- This process isn’t easy, but nothing in life worth having ever is.
- This process will change you, and the best thing you will ever do is to let it.
We’ve been a full Commission for nearly a year, which feels bizarre to say. I’ve had opportunities to meet people and get into rooms that I never even knew existed, let alone thought I’d ever get access to. My words and the video I co-produced have been used in rooms I haven’t even entered, to change hearts I might never meet. Being able to effect that kind of change is mindblowing. Some of my fellow Community Commissioners now have more confidence than they could ever have dreamed of. Some of the sternest-looking Civic Commissioners have shed tears for the first time in years.
The Poverty Truth Commission has an unequalled way of inveigling its way into the hardest hearts to crack them open; and once the light gets into those neglected places, it provides a sense of hope you might never have experienced before.
You have to be willing to put the work in, and it is bloody hard work at times. I’ve sat at my dining table deep into the night with a stack of books I couldn’t have imagined ever owning in my life, trying to get abreast of topics and concepts I didn’t know existed. But that tenacity has been repaid a thousand times over.
I used to think I was confident, and I appeared to be, but it was a fragile kind of confidence- easily bruised and thin as tissue paper. Now, I feel more grounded in myself than I ever have before. This kind of soul-deep transformation has only come about through embracing the vulnerability that the PTC quietly expects of its Commissioners, and the patient guidance of our Facilitation team. I am eternally grateful to Phil, Ally, Dusty, Roger and Sue for their insights and encouragement, even though at times they didn’t necessarily know they were providing it.
At the Annual Commissioners Gathering in October (2025), I said “I just want to hug me so hard!”. Now, if I could go back and impart any information to myself at the start of this journey, I would say “You feel how you do now because you know you’ve only ever been disappointed by authority. You will not be disappointed by the Poverty Truth Commission. You won’t believe me now, you won’t believe me for about 18 months, but you have started a journey that will truly and singularly change your entire life for the better.
“Your job, whether you choose to accept it or not, is to let it.”