Trigger warning: This post contains details of attempted suicide. You may find it triggering if you have personal experience of this subject. The memory is a funny old thing! There are times when I can’t remember what I did yesterday. Then there are days that stay with you forever. Sometimes these days are the best days of your life – the day you got married or gave birth to your children. But sometimes these days are the worst days of…
Trigger warning: This post contains references to depression and attempted suicide. You may find this triggering if you have personal experience of such subjects. Dear Lucy I know that this is the most traumatic year of your life. I know that you’re broken. And you’re looking for a way to mend yourself. But there doesn’t seem to be a solution. The pain and depression are too intense. The hole is too deep. Nothing can fill it. You feel like you’re…
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week. It’s a week that is hugely important, as we still have such a long way to go before we’ve broken the stigma that surrounds mental ill health. Last year, I wrote a post for Mental Health Awareness Week claiming that I was going to start sharing my story of living with depression, beginning with my nervous breakdown and diagnosis. Yet, these posts never materialised. Writing your own tale of living with depression is…
Sometimes when I write about my depression the words just flow. It’s as if they were always there just waiting to be written down in black and white. On other occasions, I want to write but the words aren’t forthcoming. They won’t flow. Words are created and deleted. Sentences are written and rewritten. Paragraphs are formed and unformed. I can start a post about one thing and then it becomes about something completely different. For example, when I sat down to…
Before I became a mother I could never imagine turning my back on a crying child. Especially not MY crying child. Of course, I knew that children had tantrums but I foolishly imagined that my children would be different. They would be angels. And they would never tantrum in public or get so upset that I wouldn’t be able to calm them. I also thought that I would be a natural mother. That from the moment they were born I…