This morning, in the car on the way to the station, the Eldest casually mentioned that it was Mental Health Awareness Day. \u00a0She told me that she\u2019d written a couple of pieces and perhaps I might want to post something on my blog. \u00a0I asked her to send me the articles – she suggested that I may want to edit some of the content – I have removed some of the more graphic parts. \u00a0Reading her words brought back a lot of the utter fear of the places that we found ourselves in this year – for her, for her siblings, for us as parents and for our family unit. \u00a0This \u2018thing\u2019 that is mental illness knows no boundaries – it can affect anyone, even those who appear, to the outside world, to have everything. \u00a0And it obviously doesn\u2019t stop with the individual themselves; I have spent too many waking hours worried about the impact on the rest of the Tribe. \u00a0I have seen how people have reacted when I\u2019ve explained about her illness -some have suggested a course of vitamin C, others have glazed over and looked slightly embarrassed, others however have been incredibly warm hearted and have shared their own stories of dealing with mental health either themselves or someone close to them – that has helped so much. \u00a0The stigma is still there but the more we talk about it the more likely it is that more people will get help and we can all begin to understand how to deal with this illness. \u00a0What\u00a0the Eldest has been through has made me realise how utterly precious this life is, how the simple things really are some of the best and kindness and generosity of spirit are much underrated and should be practised more often – totally free and brings happiness and joy. \u00a0And she\u2019s in a better place now, recovering, but living, laughing and loving.<\/p>\n

So, these are her words; I am proud that she is standing up and talking, it is brave and inspiring – I hope they will help you understand or know you\u2019re not alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople always make out that mental illnesses shouldn\u2019t be <\/em>talked about, and the amount of stigma surrounding it makes it <\/em>somewhat awkward. But seeing as it\u2019s Mental Health Awareness Day, I thought It seemed appropriate for me to talk about it as <\/em>it\u2019s something that has played a very large part in my recent life.<\/em><\/p>\n

Surviving or thriving? Those are two states I\u2019ve swung between for most of this year. Often all I\u2019ve been doing is existing; just <\/em>trying to get from one day to the next. \u00a0When my mental health hit an all time low this <\/em>year, it got so bad that I required multiple hospital admissions. I was at the hopeless mercy of my \u2018black dog called depression\u2019. Getting up, showering, speaking, all things that we take for <\/em>granted, were physically impossible. At night I\u2019d lay awake for <\/em>hours simply because I couldn\u2019t find the motivation to close my <\/em>eyes.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Mental illnesses can sometimes get to the point where they <\/em>threaten your physical health as well. Only my close friends and family really got to see the amount of pain I was in, but even <\/em>they could never understand the full extent of it. It\u2019s so difficult <\/em>to explain to people what\u2019s going on inside you, when you can\u2019t even understand it yourself. It\u2019s difficult to tell, when you look at someone, to see that they\u2019re mentally ill. When I first became ill, people actually found the idea of it slightly funny, because what could be wrong with my life that caused me to struggle?? I <\/em>mean, I looked fine, I was smiling. What could be so wrong that it meant that someone who had everything she could ask for, <\/em>still didn\u2019t feel she was enough?? Even now, I still can\u2019t tell you. Maybe I\u2019ll never know. These things happen, and they don\u2019t <\/em>always have something to be justified by.<\/em><\/p>\n

By watching me struggle, so many people in my life have had <\/em>the blurry patch of \u2018mental illnesses\u2019 brought into light by what <\/em>I\u2019ve been through. I feel that so many more people understand <\/em>now, even if not completely, that these things DO happen, and\u00a0despite the common associations made with it, I\u2019m not crazy, psychopathic or dangerous!! I have had an illness, just like a person with pneumonia has an illness. And I can get better, just like a person with pneumonia can get better. These things don\u2019t go away easily, you have to work hard. You can\u2019t \u2018just eat\u2019 if you have an eating disorder, and you can\u2019t \u2018just be happy\u2019 if you\u00a0have clinical depression, so stop treating people as if that\u2019s going to fix all their problems!! You wouldn\u2019t tell someone with cancer to \u2018just get over it\u2019, so think about that before you say it to someone who\u2019s mentally ill.\u00a0<\/em>Believe it or not, some people actually in the profession still fuel the stigma. I once had a paramedic say to me \u2018you can\u2019t be suicidal, you\u2019re not chronically ill. You\u2019re being so selfish, there are people out there dying of cancer\u2019. This was in an ambulance on the way to hospital and I was completely shocked as to how someone who had to deal with suicidal people on a daily basis could actually say this to me. People do not always need something to justify their feelings, sometimes the feelings are simply just there.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019ll always have to fight. But I\u2019m still here, I\u2019m still living, and I\u2019m still loving, and that\u2019s all that matters for now. So let\u2019s stop the stigma, and support the people who need support. Here\u2019s to all of the amazing people who have helped me through this year, and all the incredibly strong people who have had to fight their own battles.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

www.mentalhealth.org.uk<\/p>\n

www.mind.org.uk<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning, in the car on the way to the station, the Eldest casually mentioned that it was Mental Health Awareness Day. \u00a0She told me that she\u2019d written a couple of pieces and perhaps I might want to post something on my blog. \u00a0I asked her to send me the articles – she suggested that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[197],"tags":[87,385],"class_list":["post-2120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family-life","tag-featured","tag-mental-health-awareness-day-2017","wpcat-197-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/C1B8DD22-A888-4C19-9EC4-202403D0E0C0.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4llmx-yc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2120"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2130,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2120\/revisions\/2130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifewiththetribe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}