Dare To Live

You can't teach an old dog new tricks? Really, whoever decided this? Life is for living and that means living until the day you die. I have grown up with a few phobias, one of which was a massive fear of dogs and the other was being claustrophobic. But recently, I went away and packed a different mindset to the normal one. This time, I decided that I wanted to achieve something outside my comfort zone. I wanted new things and new experiences in my life. I wanted to be a participator instead of a spectator. I , as in the real me, wanted to make changes in my normally responsible, safe yet half-living life. The people I was staying with have two dogs, one is a boxer cross pit bull breed and the other is a huntaway cross collie breed. To say that this was a daunting prospect would be an understatement as I was cornered by two boxer dogs as a child. They cornered me between a pillar and a wall and snarled, barked and threatened me. So, what do I do - stay in a costly hotel or s

I met the Mask when I was just 17 years old. I fell in love with it. It told me that it would protect me and look after me for all my life. Well as the years unfold in our lives yes, it did protect me from life - my own life that is. Once I lived by it’s rules and conditions my life was being driven by the mask rules. It told me how to dress, what to drink, how to behave, whom my friends should be, where I should work. Sometimes I was bold enough to challenge the mask’s rules. From time to time, I did escape with friends and family but once I returned home the Mask would be waiting with it’s words of anything but kindness. Roll on 35 years and something happened in my life to make me STOP and see that the Mask was actually not a nice mask at all – it served no protection. It merely blinded and misguided me. I decided to take off the Mask and look at the world without it.   And guess what? I like what I see. I am a strong person who can live life without the M

There’s times in life where we can feel like happiness is a bit of an abstract concept. It’s out there somewhere, maybe we even think it’s only out there for everyone else, and sometimes it can feel just plain unattainable in our own lives. It can feel like there’s a lot of terms and conditions we have to fulfil first in order to get a slice of it. When you’re in a negative mind-set especially, it can feel like happiness just isn’t on the cards at all. Negative thinking steals away the potential for happiness by blinding us to the abundance of it that’s actually already in our lives. More often than not there’s happiness to be found all around us, but if our eyes aren’t open to it of course we won’t be able to see it. Nothing external actually needs to change, there doesn’t need to be a huge shift in our lives, we just need to look differently at our worlds and seek out the joy. When you find that contentedness inside, it’s funny the things that actually create it. For m

Hello. Welcome. It's great that you're reading this. Well done for logging on. You could choose not to but you chose to come here. Go you. I believe I am here because a power greater than I supported me and helped me when I did not know how to help myself. It may be considered politically incorrect to post about God, but I don't know of any faith system whose God is bound by human laws, so I will go ahead and type. It may help someone and that is the whole point of this blog.  I really feel that it is so important for everyone, whatever your walk of life, whatever your background, whatever your current state of mind, to contemplate what you believe in and trust as your personal faith.  Some people pray; some express themselves through dance or song and find connection with  higher power in this way; some people believe in angels and ask them for guidance. Some people invest trust in traditions with which they were brought up; others find meaning in the very

Inspiration is sort of everywhere isn’t it? When we’re actively looking for it, it declares itself into various avenues of our lives. Taking a trip to a gig, setting your sights on a painting, or losing yourself in someone’s writing can provide inspiration beyond measure. Countless places in our lives are the birthplace of inspiration, the place where we look at the work of another and refuel our own passion, the itch of creativity tickling our minds. But nowadays right at our fingertips, it seems there’s more available than ever. Without having to even get up and go anywhere, we can dive into a world of inspired minds and creators. People doing what we want to do, people who are following their dreams, people who have overcome a serious struggle. It just takes one look across our extensive world of social media, with a quick search for #inspiration numerous results willingly greet our hungry eyes. There’s blogs, quotes, pictures, talks, and videos not to mention the array of

It would be hard to deny that we’re active thinkers. Our minds can race around on overdrive exhausting all possibilities, exacerbating many a problem and evoking anxiety from just about anywhere. It has a pretty hectic schedule; but this isn’t necessarily a bad feature, because, while it could have its sights set on the above, it could also be on overdrive dreaming, creating or affirming positivity.   Like everything in life - it’s what we make of it. I hadn’t realised the power of my mind until I started working on myself. I knew it could memorise things and figure stuff out, you know everyday normal stuff. But I hadn’t given it credit for the impact it had on my feelings and behaviours. Actually not just really impact so much as absolute creation of them. It wasn’t medication or some magic operation on my mind that changed my self destruction, panic attacks or behaviours. It was changing my thinking. This came into my mind yesterday because I had a decision to make.

I've frequently turned to poetry throughout my journey, as I've found it to be an effective way I could express freely and untangle the confused mess of thinking in my head. Quite often they were pretty stormy poems about the struggle I was feeling but identifying that struggle helped me to overcome it. So more recently, I returned to writing poems but with a completely different mindset and initially I nearly felt unable to write unless I had some dramatic difficulty going on. It was like using an old tool in a new way. But I still love words and using them to create, so I got familiar with using them differently and here's one of the results - my personal journey in poem form;  Well it’s been a journey, I’m not going to lie, You don’t just wake up one day not wanting to die. I shuffled to therapist rooms one through four, Each time ending with me walking out the door, Collecting diagnoses and Prozac to numb the depression, Weighed down with questions from

Welcome to this blog post. That sounds a bit silly, but I mean it from the bottom of my heart. You are so welcome because if you are reading this, then you are a survivor. You have chosen to be here, rather than to go away. You have decided to acknowledge whatever demons or challenges that may have held you back up to this point, and to do something about them. You may not even be sure yet what that 'something' is, but you are not going to do nothing. This makes you a hero and I extend a warm welcome to you to this blog. You are our kind of person. Today, I learned that a local mother of three has taken her own life. I don't know this lady. I barely know her children and it was a very upset friend of mine, who knows the family, who told me this evening this awful news. I kept thinking, as I drove home in my car, of the colossal loss this poor woman's death means for the community. I cannot begin to imagine how her children and her husband feel...it is so huge a tra

March 1st  2015 was Self Injury Awareness Day ; another awareness day. I'd just like to point out that these awareness days (following the recent Eating Disorder awareness week) are often quite toxic, largely misinforming, and inversely worsen stereotyping & 'awareness'. The nature of these distresses/illnesses/disorders are that they are competitive in a perverse way. The person rarely feels 'sick enough' or that it's 'bad enough'. And thanks to efforts to "increase awareness" it seems there's no shortage of people to compare to. Social media is littered with photos of people's injuries and their scars. This DOES NOT raise awareness in my opinion. All this does is worsen stereotyping. All this does is worsen comparing and misinform the public. I think we need to focus on raising awareness that recovery is possible for everyone! Self injury, also know as self harm or deliberate self harm, is very often cloaked in sham

The beginning of March has arrived and tomorrow begins a brand new week.  New starts can be a great opportunity to look ahead and set ourselves up with the potential of more spring in our step. Sometimes Sundays can be tricky days, particularly if the week ahead is daunting; back to the grind of work, early mornings, trying to figure out what we're going to do or what we have to face, how we're going to deal with another batch of days to get through... But Sundays can also give us a chance to take time to support ourselves and gain strength for that path we embark on from Monday to the following Sunday. I remember coming across the topic of self support in a care-work session and finding it quite intriguing but at the same time, almost foreign. It would never have really crossed my mind before, I've always been pretty proficient in being hard on myself - 'support myself? But... I hate myself.'  I now love the idea and practice it as much as I feel I need t