Elephants move in herds. Fish swim in shoals. Lions hunt in packs. Birds fly in flocks. Bees move in swarms. What do they all have in common? They are all groups of a single species, travelling together to reach their desired destination. It is not only humans who follow the theory of safety in numbers.

The old well-know idiom asserts that a person is less likely to come to harm or run into trouble, if they surround themselves with a crowd of friends; if we stick together, we can keep each other safe.

So, is it also true that with familiarity, there is security?

Last weekend, I went to a fashion show and afternoon tea in honour of Crohn’s and Colitis UK and a charity called Beyond Cancer. The two causes joined forces to generate as much money as possible, and to raise awareness of these horrible illnesses in the process.

We had planned it months in advance (before I had even been twinned with Nelly I think) when my cousin, Debbie, suggested it as the perfect girlie Sunday afternoon for us all. We turned up in full force: Mum, my eldest sister Nicky, Debbie, her sister Steph, who had made the day-trip from Birmingham with her fifteen year old daughter, my sixteen year old niece and one of her best friends, Debbie’s sister-in-law and mother-in-law. My auntie and my middle sister Shelley couldn’t be there, but they had bought tickets anyway to show their support.

It was incredibly well-attended, with well over 300 people already settled in the banqueting suite at the Queen’s Hotel when we arrived. I stood in the doorway with my mum, staring into the ocean of stylish, happy people, and I suddenly felt terrified. It was as though I had been struck down by a crippling wave of teenage anxiety before arriving at a social event with all the wrong gear. I was painfully aware that no matter how many times I had changed my outfit that morning (and it was a lot, believe me!) the one item I couldn’t dress differently, was the least fashionable bit of me: the tube. For someone who is normally so low maintenance, I had done a good impression of a person with the opposite temperament. Everything I put on made me look too fat (I know!?!?) or too skinny or too old or too scruffy or just too….too…wrong.

Of course, there was nothing the matter with any of my outfits. The problem was my mindset. I felt wrongly fitted up for a fashion show. Something that conjures images of style and glamour seems not to go with an NG tube and a feeding backpack. A great one for ignoring my feelings, I hadn’t registered these nerves until the moment I stood in the doorway and held up the queue. I grabbed mum’s hand and whispered to her, ‘Mum, I feel sick. I don’t think I can go in.’ Mum turned her head to look at me. She has learned to tell, from my tone of voice, whether I mean physically sick or psychologically so, and she simply said, ‘Of course you can. Nobody’s even looking at us. And anyway, you look beautiful.’

I don’t think I actually believed her for a second, but with a squeeze of the hand, she marched us into the sea of faces. Sod’s law dictated that we had to go the full lap of the room before we found our allocated table, but by the time we were almost there, I had been stopped by someone mum knows. Also a Crohn’s sufferer, she had wanted to enquire about me and chat about how things were going. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel at odds anymore. All of a sudden, it didn’t seem to matter where I was. Someone had invited conversation, and they hadn’t left Nelly pushed into the corner. I was suddenly aware that this would be no different from what I’ve been doing for the past ten weeks. Since meeting Nelly, I have made a point of just getting on with it – I have taught, run workshops, attended creative development meetings, made a short film, gone to the Theatre, the cinema, galleries, run rehearsals, I have even been on holiday…the recollection of all this almost made me laugh at myself.

Of all places to be nervous about acceptance, why on earth was I worried about an event run by charities which understood. Almost everybody in that room was there because they had either beaten cancer or were still in combat, had done battle with Crohn’s or were still going 20 rounds in the ring with it, or because they knew and loved someone who carried either of these battle scars. Who on earth in this room did I think wouldn’t look at me as more than just my Nelly?

I relaxed just in time for the acquaintance we had been chatting with, to tell me that I ‘look great. You do. Sorry, but I’m not going to say you look sh*t, cause I’d be lying.’ Somehow it sounded different coming from someone with the disease. It wasn’t as if she was questioning the severity of the illness by telling me I looked good, or doubting the pain I was in. There was an unspoken ‘all things considered’ that came after the compliment, and somehow I just felt grateful for it. In that moment, it was what I needed to hear. But I needed to hear it from someone without familial bias and with enough awareness to know how deceptive appearances can be.

I suppose that’s the security of familiarity I was pondering about earlier. The event whizzed by in a blur of outfits, goodie bags, watching a lovely afternoon tea being devoured, catching up with relatives I don’t see enough of and then speakers. Among these was someone who has been in recurring combat with cancer for many years. She is someone with inspirational amounts of positivity, in spite of the cards she keeps being dealt, and she shared her feelings through the varying stages of her own fight. I have lost count of the number of times mum and I sideways-glanced each other ruefully, but there were so many conversations being recalled and narrated from onstage, that I have had in recent years. Many of them have been conversations with myself. Some have even been thoughts that I have shared on this blog. The important thing is, hearing them that afternoon made me realise how many people there are who really do get it.

I am blessed to have a great support network to help keep me upright: Lovelyman accepts and continues to love me, no matter how many hurdles we have to leap over. My family is the most incredible family in the world, and I really would be lost without each and every one of them. My gaggle of nieces, nephews and the honourary additions to the collection in the form of close friends’ and cousins’ children are the sunshine that keeps me smiling. I have some dear, dear friends; the kind who have stuck by me through the repetitive bumps in the road that make up my life. All these people are capable of empathy, and they offer it in abundance. That said, there is a distinct difference between imagining and understanding what a person is going through. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t wish this level of understanding on anyone, but there is something unspoken between two people with shared experience of chronic illness or disease. It is something which renders justification, explanation and apology totally redundant. It is something one of my closest friends and I learned very early on in our relationship. We were briefly baffled by the way we could share so much and be so honest with each other, when we had only just met. Particularly given that our natural inclination with others, was always to be okay. Then it dawned on us: that unvoiced unity. (It was lucky that we also happen to have a lot in common and get along very well, or the connection may have simply been a wasted coincidence!)

All at once, in the Queen’s Hotel last weekend, as I listened to the speaker wrap up by telling us that she knew her cancer was back, but she also knew she had the strength to weather the storm once more, I was reminded of something from a long time ago. At the age of 10, I sat between mum and dad in my consultant’s room, listening as he described a children’s charity that was opening a Leeds branch and commemorating it with a balloon launch. He explained that there would be lots of other children like me, then turned to my parents to add that there would also be a great network of parents like them, undergoing the same worries and facing the same fears. I can honestly vividly recall my reaction. I was silent while still in the room, which was rare for me even at that age, just allowing the conversation to continue between the grown-ups until it was time to leave.

Once out in the carpark, mum and dad asked what I thought about the balloon launch, ‘it’s this coming weekend. Shall we go?’

‘No thanks.’

I realised they were both waiting for an explanation, something more. So I told them, ‘I don’t want to go somewhere to meet people like me. I am not going to make friends with a bunch of strangers just because we all have Crohn’s. I don’t want to see how it is for other people. It won’t make it better for me. And it doesn’t mean I’ll like them just because they curl up on the settee after they eat too. What are we going to talk about? The pain we get, the tablets we take or the last time we had a camera up our bottoms?’

Now it was my parents’ turn for stunned silence. They broached it once or twice more in the week that followed, but they didn’t push. Over the years, as I grew up, I learned that I could join these charities, support the causes and access the assistance they offered members in return, without confining myself to a world only inhabited by people like me.

It wasn’t until I was 28 that I finally attended my first event, and I almost turned back and went home before I had even reached the sign-in desk. If not for mum, I would have done. I suppose, with the insight of age and self-reflection, I can assume that as the label of disability was such an issue for me, the thought of being united with people where that was our only common thread seemed frightening.

All these years on, I realise that there really is comfort in being surrounded by people who get it. Even when that is our only common thread, it’s a pretty big thread in itself. Hearing the ways in which others hang on by that thread, and recognising that I’m not the only one to have felt a certain way, brings a sense of the ordinary to an otherwise extraordinary past-time: survival.