When Black Becomes a Rainbow

For as long as I can remember I have been different to those around me.  My interests weren’t the same as others, my ability to express myself was limited and instead of being able to verbalise my struggles, I only managed to keep them inside of me.  From a young age these internalised struggles rapidly turned into anxiety, depression and anorexia. I didn’t have a clue about mental illness when I was a teenager.  This wasn’t something taught about in school, not something spoken about at home and certainly something seen as ‘taboo’ within the Orthodox Jewish Community. I am the third of a family of 6 children and both my older siblings were straight A students with an innate ability to manage a good social life. At 14, both my older siblings left home and concurrently my grandmother was diagnosed with terminal Cancer. In tandem with this, I became more introverted and found I wasn’t able to understand the interests and activities my classmates and peers found to be so...

As promised, I am back here again. Life seems to have taken over and I have got back into the swing of things. I have had a job interview and I'm now the proud Mum of 6 guinea pigs and a hamster. I am also apparently mothering an expectant guinea pig so I am going to be a PigGrandma soon. I'm too young to be a Grandma! These are my beauties (I am *slightly* obsessed): In reality, it is hard not to keep going over the past and what has happened; intrusive thoughts seem to have a way about them making it hard to block them out at times. But instead of using these negative flashbacks to punish myself and remind myself of bad times, I need to learn to embrace my difficulties and use them to show me how much better things are now. I realised in the past year that I no longer believe in 'recovery'. Don't get me wrong - many people who have had mental illness can 100% recover from this.  There are however many who will not fully recover.  Mental illness will ...

Having just been asked to speak at a small event for a local mental health charity, I started typing up a short speech. Once I started I realised how much I missed writing.  I totally forgot how cathartic it is. So maybe I am back!? There is a lot to catch up on – the last time I wrote properly on here was August 2015 and a LOT has happened since then.  I’m not going to go into all the details – too lengthy and boring! In short, 2016 was not my year. I spent 6 months+ between December 2015 and July 2016 on various different wards in a variety of hospitals, struggling to manage my depression. It was the worst time of my life and I never want to repeat any of those experiences again.  In the past year I lost so much including my job, my old treatment team and so many friends.  I don’t blame anyone for leaving me; I  was struggling to survive and was not able to be there for anyone. For those who stuck with me – thank you! I know it was hard ...