Survive or thrive
This week 8-12 may is mental health awareness week. Recently for various reasons, the conversation around mental health has grown, yet despite changing attitudes, maybe people still feel reluctant to open up about there struggles, often even to them selves. The theme for MHAW2017 is surviving or thriving which is something that resinates a lot with me. For much of my life I was simply surviving and somedays I still feel that's all my life is... an existence in which I'm simply surviving. So, what is the difference between surviving and thriving? Mental illness and poor mental health have the ability to strip an individual of everything. Family, friends, employment, interests, dreams, independence...... when someone is battling against their own mind daily, it can become an exhausting chore to simply keep on breathing. Purpose is lost and replaced with desperation. And often, even if an individual appears to be functioning, days, weeks and even months are simply a case of going through to motions and surviving. Personally, I spent years, in which every day was the same as the next. Everything had becoming nothing, all meaning was lost. I was trapped in a game I didn't want to play. A boring, repetitive, exhausting game! BUT, the thing with life is that, regardless of the circumstances, we have a choice. We don't have to simply survive! In 2014 I was told I would never live outside of hospital. I was frequently told that if I were allowed home, I wouldn't last a week before being readmitted. I was told that if I returned to education it would be self sabotage and that I should set my sights lower than nursing. So I kept on barely surviving and existing in a world where there was no hope. All my life was, was illness and because of the power of professionals, it looked like that was all it could ever be. In 2015, I got a chance. Sure the professionals weren't supportive of this, but that only made me more determined to stop surviving and thrive instead! I choose to make a change, to go against everything I had learnt to believe and build up a life with purpose. I didn't have to be the person who spent her whole life in and out of hospital! I wasn't going to be! A month after I was discharged, my best friend successfully took her own life. The anger I felt in regards to the circumstances of Katie's death could have broken me, but instead it fuelled my determination to not only prove professionals wrong, but to do what I could to help as many people as possible. I went to college and completed my access course. I gained a place at university to study child nursing and even on the days I wanted to give up, I was no longer surviving, but thriving. I was building up a life. I was taking back my life and removing the control and power my mental health had over me. I was proving everyone wrong. However, it didn't feel enough, I needed to make a difference! So in summer 2016 I started the recovery shoebox project. My journey had taught me a lot and I wanted to share that. I also had experienced and seen the failings of mental health services first hand and I wanted to offer something, however small, to help plug the gap. I have no idea whether the recovery shoeboxes are helpful to those who receive them. I hope they are. But most importantly, the project in its self offered me purpose and allowed me to grow as a person. And as the project has expended, more people have become involved, gaining an anchor to help them in their fight to thrive!!! It's easy to fall into the trap of losing yourself when fighting against poor mental health and mental illness. However, regardless of what you are lead to believe, you have the power to choose a different path. Not because it's easy, or because you are choosing to be ill in the first place (because that's not true) but rather because you are still in there somewhere, however lost you may feel. You always have to options to say 'this isn't how much story is going to end.
