The theme of the UKAGP conference this year is “We are not alone – Being with our differences, our commonalities”. One way of exploring our differences and our commonalities is through telling our stories. This weekend a new acquaintance told me that her mother was born in Germany in the late 1930s and grew up in Germany during the Second World War and its aftermath, surrounded by the fears engendered by war and by living under a dictatorship. This story evoked for me my grandmother’s experience of growing up in a different era, a different country, and different circumstances but similarly fearful of the judgements of others and betrayal by her neighbours. My friend and I have different histories, but we are aware that our present can be similarly haunted by a fear of judgement by the other. We are not alone.