January 18, 2012 - Dear Me
Dear Me . (Written November, 2011)
There is a book that poses the question … if you could write a letter to your 16 year old self, what would you say? Having experienced bullying, abuse and traumatic life experiences that left me feeling life was too unbearable to continue on, that letter might read something like this …..
You’ll get through this. You’ll survive way beyond things you believed you couldn’t. And there will be many more times when you can’t bear the thought of living another day. Another moment.
But know that it is but a moment. A moment in which you have only this desperate thought and sense of hopelessness. Moments come – and moments pass. Tomorrow may not feel a whole lot better but it can be a starting point – not the end. ‘You Can Do Anything’ video. ‘Tread Carefully In Mind’.
Links to Support.
You’ll need to take some seemingly impossible steps. Every day. Day in. Day out. And you’ll need to keep working towards change and creating a place, a life, you feel more comfortable and less despairing in. Find something that provides a sense of purpose and meaning. And you don’t necessarily have to know exactly where or what that will be. You just need to maintain the drive and determination to find it. Trusting – despite being hurt by trusting before.
And you’ll have some massive spills along the way that will lay you flat for varying lengths of time – but you’ll get up. Eventually. Every time. You’ll get up. You must. And you’ll go another round so you can at the very least, prove to yourself you can. Your weakest point will be to rely on someone else to do this work for you…
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A Week Away .
Sit in awe and wonder of a woman who wears her possible fate in a way that marks a question on the mirrors of us all. For nothing is ever more beautiful that pure courage and truth shared in the absence of fear. While she may feel there is now little she can give – she has never been so full. And despite energy low and time much shorter than most, she commits to home made juices, savouring every dip of spoon – offering a recipe for us all.
Her touch is void of hurry, lingering long and toasty warm. And the serenity of her space sits you firmly in your seat and somewhere goes your list of ‘things to do’. The treat is the mischievous sparkle that skips across tiring eyes to reveal a woman who’s swapped ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to invite little girls to play. And we do. Following her shuffling slippers on legs we joke are now so fashionably thin and a bottom all but gone. She steps into her garden world, full of birds she points high in gums. Willy Wagtails snapping insects in her wake.
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Did you know … books were never designed to stand on their tails. According to the very unique, Douglas Firth from Biblio Folio; “As more and more books were produced in the 13th and 14th centuries, storage problems caused a change from laying books on their back covers to standing them on their tails. This is now normal but little consideration has ever been given to the engineering modifications needed. A medieval binding will stand up for some time before the text block collapses due to its over engineered structure, but a modern dictionary, atlas etc with all its ‘binding refinements’ certainly will not. Ironically medieval bindings were stored lying down and modern bindings are stored standing!”
Baring Souls.
Below is a talk I presented from The Black Dog Project at Princess Margaret Children’s Hospital, Bridge’s inspirational evening, during Body Image and Eating Disorders Awareness Week, September 2008. Audience – patients, sufferers, carers, families, health professionals.
I think a lot of you here tonight would have heard of or know about The Black Dog Project so I’ve decided to step out from behind the Black Dog tonight and talk (uncomfortably) about myself. I’ll start by talking about what prompted me to change the focus of my talk.
On Monday I attended the launch of Body Image and Eating Disorder Awareness Week. One of the speakers was Chris Harris (a Psychologist from Princess Margaret Children’s hospital). Chris said something very simple yet quite profound. It was along the lines of;
“ . . . eating disorders are an indication that something’s not right. “
It was the ‘not right’ that made me sit a little taller in my seat. . . . his use of not right when he could have said ‘something’s wrong’.
Being diagnosed with having something wrong with you can feel much like being crushed into the carpet. I’ve been diagnosed with depression, anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and post traumatic stress disorder. It was so refreshing to hear someone flip the whole ‘disorder’ business on its head with a slight change of words. And words are really that powerful, that significant, to who we are and how we feel. How we see and perceive ourselves and the world around us.
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