Fed: Hicks found unconditional love in ruins of terror bombing

AAP General News (Australia)
04-16-2009
Fed: Hicks found unconditional love in ruins of terror bombing

By Jeff Turnbull

MELBOURNE, April 16 AAP - For Gill Hicks, the Australian woman who lost her legs in
the July 7, 2005 London terrorist bombings, full recovery and salvation came only after
she rejected all hatred for her assailants.

Adelaide-born Ms Hicks said that as she lay close to death in the wreckage of a London
Underground train carriage, she experienced unconditional love from strangers who risked
their lives to pull her free.

That love continued with the police and the nurses and doctors in the London hospital
where she spent three and a half months recovering and learning to walk on prosthetic
legs.

When her surgeon discovered she was an Australian, he said: "That makes sense. You
are tough little buggers, aren't you."

Then he proceeded to keep her up to date with the cricket scores.

The final stage of her recovery was to walk out of the hospital without hating the
people who had changed her life forever.

"It was love that kept me alive. Love is the main contributor to rebuilding and creating
my new life," Ms Hicks said.

"Not being filled with hatred is a disabler - they don't expect that and don't know
how to deal with it.

"The greatest thing I could do is to say the cycle of hate has to stop with me. Looking
at it as an eye for an eye is never going to change the world in a positive way."

Ms Hicks is now an ambassador for Peace Direct, which focuses on building peace in
areas of conflict across the world.

She recently walked 400km from Leeds, where some of the bombers came from, to London
as part of the cause.

Ms Hicks, who has lived in the UK for 16 years, delivered an inspirational address
to the Rotary Club of Southbank on Thursday which was raising funds for bushfire survivors.

About 30 people from the devastated townships were in the audience as she told them
she cried as she watched from afar the tragedy of the Victorian bushfires.

"I hated being a mere observer to the pain of those who were devastated by the loss
of communities and the loss of life in the bushfires," she said.

"My heart was with them, firstly as a fellow human being who equally had been through,
and knew, tragedy, but it was also as an Australian.

"A lot of my friends asked me why I was so upset and why I was crying and I said that's
what it means to be Australian, to be connected, and I felt helpless."

She said it was important for her to be able to contribute to the bushfire recovery
and to be physically in Australia.

She said living through tragedy and rebuilding your life was not easy.

"It's bloody hard going through something and thinking where do you start to rebuild," she said.

"I view it as a journey where you slowly put the pieces back together..."

Christine Nixon, head of the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority,
shared the stage with Ms Hicks and said the clean-up of the ravaged communities was starting
to gain traction.

She said so far 150 sites have been cleared but around 4,000 homes and businesses were
burnt to the ground.

"About 3,000 families and individuals have signed up to have that clean-up undertaken
and many of them have been contacted and the clean-up is underway.

"Over the next couple of weeks it will pick up and continue but it is a major undertaking
to clean up all those sites."

AAP jxt/mh/jnb/jlw

KEYWORD: HICKS (PIX AVAILABLE)

2009 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.