It’s Thursday morning. Sunshine is bouncing off the walls and windows of Rachel House. Birds are singing. After a long, cold spring, flowers are bursting with pent up energy.

“You chose a good day to visit,” a smiling Lyndsay Stobie opens the front door to the Kinross hospice for children. 

As welcomes go, it could hardly be warmer. Yet many people (including Lyndsay herself) admit to feelings of uncertainty on their first visit. That word ‘hospice’ casts an end-of-life shadow.  But, as I’m about to discover, the building, the blossoming garden and the dedicated staff and volunteers who work here, are full of cheerful life. Like the children whose families enjoy comforting respite here, some of them for many years to come. Defying stereotypes, their stories are as uplifting as they are moving.

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