By Naomi Miles, Chair and Founder of CEASE
January is a hard month. And for those of us who knew Dr Lucie Moore, CEASE’s Chief Executive who died from a sudden cardiac arrest late last year, it is especially hard.
The period of acute mourning has passed, and we are now facing the new year without Lucie. Her absence is an almost palpable presence in our midst, and it lends the new year a peculiar starkness.
Back in September, Lucie and I enjoyed a day together. At lunchtime, we strolled through a beautiful Victorian park drenched by golden, autumnal rays of sunlight. Lucie spoke about the turning of the seasons and the coming of winter and recommended a book she often turned to at that time of year called Wintering by Katherine May.
The book is about “the power of rest and retreat in difficult times”. It was a more appropriate recommendation than either of us could have imagined then. I bought it soon after she died and enjoyed reading it. I was particularly moved by the chapter on “Santa Lucia”, the 3rd-century martyr Saint Lucy whose life used to be celebrated on the winter solstice, “amid oppressive darkness”.
May describes how Saint Lucy’s name is associated with the Latin word for light or lights (lucis in Latin). The story goes that she would bring provision to Christians escaping persecution in the Catacombs of Rome and to “keep her hands free for her duties, she wore a crown of candles so that she could see her way through the darkness.” In later centuries, Lucy comes to represent light and “female sacrifice for love”. She is also “a figurehead for that moment, at the darkest point, where there is little light remaining.” (pp.110, 112)
That made me smile. I had always associated Lucie with light.
There was the fierce, burning light of her convictions. It felt as though her work at CEASE was the culmination of a lifetime’s work. She had landed on her vocation and she flourished here.
There was the piercing light of her wisdom and intellect, which penetrated the murky layers of deceit that conceal the sex industry’s dark heart of exploitation, violence and abuse.
There was the warm light of her compassion, which drew out the gold in everyone she met.
And there was the dancing, scattered light of her sense of fun and her ability never to take herself too seriously.
Lucie was a joy to be around, and her passing has left the world a colder and darker place.
Her funeral took place just a few days before the winter solstice, the midnight of the year.
But spring follows winter. Even now, the days are lengthening imperceptibly and though the tree branches are bare, buds are preparing to unfurl at the right time.
Lucie’s light remains within all who knew her, and within CEASE. Her season with us was too short, but we are grateful for it. We miss her but we are carrying her flame into the new year and into the future, whatever it brings.