tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17846828318821798822024-03-12T17:21:44.576-07:00Let Creativity Begin ...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-56008297410955568092013-09-10T07:37:00.003-07:002013-09-11T01:55:38.352-07:00We need to talk about HelenAs I type this blogpost there is <a href="http://blackdogtribe.com/news-features/suicide-prevention-conference" target="_blank">an entire conference taking place in London with the sole purpose of saving my life</a> ... yes, it's the How Can We Save Helen Harrop? conference and approximately 100 delegates there will be discussing how they can to apply the findings of a five year research project in order to prevent me from killing myself.<br />
<br />
Of course I'm exaggerating for comedic effect, the conference hasn't been held purely to discuss how to save my life, there's a *slightly* wider remit than that ;-) But given that I currently find myself once again in the icy clutches of a suicidal crisis it does mean I have a very larger than average personal interest in what's going on there.<br />
<br />
Over the past week I've watched as hundreds of tweets in my twitter stream shouted loudly about the fast approaching World Suicide Prevention Day - All full of very worthy sentiments and proclamations about 'tackling stigma' and 'getting people talking' and 'saving lives'. I don't have any problem with any of that sentiment but I do find myself doubtful about whether any of that admirable sentiment will lead to a reduction in the number of suicides.<br />
<br />
I don't doubt that the stigma around suicide meant that I put off seeing my GP for months but the brutal truth is that for all the stigma-busting I've been doing by seeing my GP, seeing a therapist, and with the people I know in real life, through Bettakultcha presentations (not <a href="http://bettakultcha.com/2012/05/helen-harrop-at-york-bettakultcha/" target="_blank">once</a>, but <a href="http://bettakultcha.com/2013/06/the-first-silent-bettakultcha/" target="_blank">twice</a>), via <a href="http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/our-encounters-with-suicide/#.Ui8vjFGEnfY" target="_blank">a published book chapter</a>, on twitter and here on my blog, I still find myself standing to all practical intents and purposes alone in my fight to save my own life. Yes I have wonderful friends, family and colleagues who all know what I'm going through but I don't think it's being unfair of me to suggest that for the most part they have no idea what to say or do in order to help me through my dark night.<br />
<br />
Yesterday I went for a check-up with my GP and to update him on my rapidly declining mental health. We talked about the 18 month waiting list I'm facing before I can find out if CBT sessions will help me. I fought back tears as I explained with a violently shaking voice that asking for help and then being told I have to wait for more than a year was making me feel like my life wasn't that important. My GP was as patient and sympathetic as ever but in the face of my suffering he effectively shrugged his shoulders and admitted that there just wasn't any funding to help me. In retrospect the question I should have asked is 'What if money was no object? What would you be advising me to do then?' At least then my husband and I can make a pragmatic decision about what we do with our combined income this year ... pay off the mortgage or gamble it on expensive private therapy.<br />
<br />
Actually I already have an idea of what that advice would be because my therapist gave me that advice earlier in the year - An intensive course of individual and group therapy involving Dialectical Behaviour techniques which would be centred around helping me recover the self which was forced into hiding during a childhood that appears to have left me suffering from complex post-traumatic stress/personality disorder symptoms. Price tag: £14,000 per year. [which coincidentally is approximately the same as my entire annual salary after tax]<br />
<br />
Or maybe I could save up and take a chance on <a href="http://www.hoffmaninstitute.co.uk/" target="_blank">the Hoffman Process</a> which looks like it would be helpful and claims to have helped 95,000 people worldwide to turn their lives around, including none other than Thandie Newton and Goldie. Price tag: approx £3,000<br />
<br />
Or maybe I could start seeing my therapist again or start again with a new therapist. Price tag: approx £2,500 per year<br />
<br />
And not forgetting the approx £100 a year for my current anti-melancholy prescription that I'll need to keep paying on top of whatever path I choose.<br />
<br />
And maybe I'd gradually find that I'm well enough to work full time again and every single pound and every single hour I'd spent on therapy would have been totally worth it. Or maybe I'll just be another £10,000 poorer but at least I would still be alive, albeit still in utter anguish. Who knows? Spin the wheel and place your bets. Whatever way I play it the house will certainly win.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
I'm sure the funding situation is worse, or better, or just different in other parts of the world and in other areas of the UK but I get the impression that services here in York are currently stretched to breaking. I made contact with the local Mind office last Friday to see what support and advice they might be able to offer and I'm yet to hear back from them [update, they phoned me yesterday afternoon]. I stumbled across the York Women's Counselling Service yesterday but it looks like they can't even add me (or anyone else) to a waiting list at the moment (and it looks like they haven't been able to since March). It takes an awful lot for me to ask for help but at the moment it feels like whenever I do it leads to a door with a solid brick wall behind it. It's making me wonder whether I'm looking in the wrong places or simply not using exactly the right words I need to use when I finally ask for help. Or maybe that's just my depression talking.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So today, on World Suicide Prevention Day, I feel like running through the streets of York shouting at the top of my lungs: "My name is Helen. I am Suicidal and I am Standing. Right. In. Front. Of. You!" </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But no, I won't do that, because I was raised to be as invisible and as silent as I possibly could be in order to try and stay out of harms way. So I will sit here and I will wait and I will try to my hardest to keep up hope while I continue to work as hard as I can at trying to save the only life I can. And all the while I will try to stave off the nagging fear that I am doomed to become a news headline on the front of our local paper: 'NHS Fails Tragic York Suicide Woman'</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-67390432546662347502013-09-07T05:31:00.000-07:002013-09-07T05:31:25.497-07:00Nurturing my hopeful monstersThe latest donation to my Saving the Only Life I Can comes courtesy of <a href="https://twitter.com/thepublicoffice" target="_blank">Matt Wicking</a>, who is the lead singer from the Australian band <a href="https://twitter.com/TGAssembly" target="_blank">The General Assembly</a>. I fell heavily heart-first into their music when I saw Matt performing at my first Uncivilisation Festival in 2011. I hadn't yet mustered the courage to contact Matt and ask for his permission to include General Assembly tracks in my creative project but happily he fortuitously and unexpectedly materialised in front of me at this years Uncivilisation (which I was at last month). I excitedly bounded up to Matt and blathered away at him about wanting to use his music for my Saving the Only Life I Can project. I waxed lyrical about how much one of the tracks from The General Assembly's Dark Mountain Music EP had meant to me at the depths of my depression. He generously said an unreserved yes pretty much straight away and then he asked me which track I was talking about ... my mind went blanker than a very blank thing and I couldn't even recall a single lyric ... it was totally mortifying. We hastily agreed that it was probably the track 'Wildwood' I was talking about and left it that. For the next few days of the festival I wracked my brains trying to remember *any* of the lyrics that had purportedly meant so much to me during my darkness last year.<br />
<br />
Of course the moment I was back in York and safely out of blathering range of Matt I remembered ... it was the whole gosh-darned EP that had been a life raft for me. Wildwood was indeed thickly rich with lyrics that resonated with me:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Got me searching for the answers on the forest floor" </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"And now I don't know where I'm going and I don't know where I've been so it's hard to find a place where I fit in" </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I’m searching for a feeling that might not even exist. It’s like looking for a fog in the middle of a mist. I’ve got a compass in my pocket and a watch on my wrist but I’m lost." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"And nothing's keeping me from losing all the things I've learnt so I'm lost." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Now I don’t want to search no more, for an answer I don’t know no more than I did when I started, don’t want it keeping me awake no more"</blockquote>
You can listen to the track 'Wildwood' here [it's featured on Dark Mountain's 'From the Mourning of the World' LP]:<br />
<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1429255040/size=medium/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=63b2cc/t=2/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://darkmountain.bandcamp.com/album/from-the-mourning-of-the-world">From the Mourning of the World by The General Assembly</a></iframe><br />
<br />
But every other track on that General Assembly EP had lines in them that seemed to be speaking directly to me too:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Too nervous to talk, too scared to be silent" </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We're howling in the mountains, burning bones, firing up flares, calling you home." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The story starts at the end of everything." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The thought of thinking it just makes you ill. Your mouth is moving but your mind is still." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"You aim at nothing and give it all you've got" </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"It's what your body won't forget and your mind can't understand. The only way out is through. The only way in is under. If you try to measure it you're bound to lose. If you run from it you won't discover [...]" </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"So hold on, just hold on, hold on, hold on. Yeah hold on, just hold on, hold on."</blockquote>
You can listen to the whole of The General Assembly's 'Dark Mountain Music' EP:<br />
<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3481714832/size=medium/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=7137dc/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://thegeneralassembly.bandcamp.com/album/dark-mountain-music">Dark Mountain Music by The General Assembly</a></iframe><br />
<br />
In fact it was the last track on that EP, Hopeful Monsters, that helped to keep me afloat. I remember singing the 'hold on' lines at full voice with hot tears flowing down my cheeks on more than one occasion. It still brings a lump to my throat when I listen to it now.<br />
<br />
Listening to the EP (for the hundredth-plus time) again it strikes me that there's something more than the lyrics alone resonating with my bones - There's a beautifully mournful quality to the music and at times Matt's voice sounds like a wounded animal which has taken human form - His voice spoke to the wounded animal in me that wanted to just curl up and howl silently into the forest floor.<br />
<br />
Huge thanks to Matt for giving me permission to include these tracks even though I couldn't recall a single lyric or song title when I barrelled up to him at the Uncivilisation festival last month :)<br />
<br />
Incidentally you should tarry not, go sally forth and dive deep into Matt's solo project, Huckleberry Mockingbird, which is the name that he <a href="https://soundcloud.com/huckleberry-mockingbird" target="_blank">sings</a>, blogs and poets under. If you find yourself moved by murmurations, silence, funeral parlours, childhood or imperfection then <a href="http://huckleberrymockingbird.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">you will find yourself very much at home on his blog</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-6505355553911645082013-07-30T03:13:00.000-07:002013-07-30T03:13:21.214-07:00Semi-suicidal - first draft
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<span lang="EN-US">Something has kept me silent in recent months - I'm not entirely sure what that something is but I think a large part of it is the fact that I couldn't bring myself to tell you how dark things have got for me again. The 'conquering hero' persona felt so comfortable that I didn't wan't to admit how distant that identity was becoming. When I first wrote my contribution to 'Our Encounters with Suicide' in October 2012 I felt safer than I had for many many years - In fact I felt pretty much bullet-proof. I'm not sure what changed or why it changed but Our Encounters with Suicide has now gone to print and it's gutting that I can no longer relate very strongly to the final paragraphs. But the good news is that my latest medication seems to be helping (third time lucky!) and I've felt completely safe for more than a week so I'm pretty optimistic about everything right now.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">You can read the first draft of my chapter in full below - I'm hoping that the editors have tidied up the glaring errors but it's fairly readable as it stands. The only feedback I had during the submission process was "It's fine" so I have no idea if it's any good but I feel something approximating pride when I read it back so hopefully it will be kindly received and hold it's own alongside the other chapters. I'm still waiting for permission to republish this on my blog but I'll leave it here unless I get asked to take it down. You can order the full book via PCCS's website: <a href="http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/our-encounters-with-suicide/#.UfePcFFk--K">http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/our-encounters-with-suicide/#.UfePcFFk--K</a> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">"I am standing by the sink in our kitchen. I
am holding a knife in my right hand. I am pressing the very tip of the blade
hard against the artery that runs up my left wrist. I want to puncture the vein
and let some blood flow but my skin is unyielding and resists my efforts. I am
not trying to kill myself but a part of me wants to know how easy it will be to
slit open that vein if I do decide to die. I’m disheartened to discover that it
will be much harder than I have imagined.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Arguably this is the closest I have come to
acting on my suicidal impulses. Looking back I can see that it represents the
summit of a mountain that I have been desperately trying not to climb and yet
somehow I find myself standing here pressing a knife into my wrist. I shrug off
my death wish once more and carry on unloading our dishwasher.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">At that moment it was less than six months
since my GP had diagnosed me with severe chronic depression and prescribed the
minimum daily dose of Citalopram. I was now up to the maximum dosage of 30mg
and the safety net that I had hoped anti-depressants would provide has failed
to materialise. In one of our weekly sessions I tell my therapist that I feel
as though I wake up every morning looking into the abyss and have to spend the
rest of the day inching my way back from the cliff’s edge. And then I go to
bed, eventually fall asleep and wake up the next morning to find myself at the
cliff’s edge once more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMqAjjpTfMCCDsju43XtNB3kUgzJiIkT_Pqn3Q3rckq80yXBVifvz0ENirRtQikWgDsDySh-U7AigHkmbivc__nQp_3FoQxPC5deJUq-AJU080jxDhKPrQYTs1VZShK5lhV6vmx9uoM5A/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-06+at+10.45.55.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMqAjjpTfMCCDsju43XtNB3kUgzJiIkT_Pqn3Q3rckq80yXBVifvz0ENirRtQikWgDsDySh-U7AigHkmbivc__nQp_3FoQxPC5deJUq-AJU080jxDhKPrQYTs1VZShK5lhV6vmx9uoM5A/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-10-06+at+10.45.55.png" width="636" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I’d been battling with this death wish for
much of my adult life but by this point it had evolved from an occasional
intrusive brutal thought, often involving being instantly wiped out by a
passing lorry, to thoughts that were becoming more frequent, more deliberate and
more insistent. And there was a voice that had started accompanying the thoughts.
The voice had started repeatedly whispering “Do It!” as a train pulled into the
platform or as a bus hurtled by at the traffic lights. So far another voice
inside me had always dismissed the whisper but that voice seemed to be fading fast
and the whispering voice was getting louder. I am terrified that the whispering
voice will win out, deeply ashamed that I seem to be failing at the simple task
of being human and exhausted by my seemingly Sisyphean struggle. More than
anything I just want the battle to be over – one way or the other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In truth I wasn’t scared of dying but I was
scared of the legacy my suicide would leave behind for the people I knew.
Particularly those I loved; my husband. My twin sister. My mum. My grandma. My
older sister and her young children (who are still struggling to cope with the
unexpected death of my brother-in-law). My aunts, uncles and my cousins. My
best friend. My work colleagues. My therapist. My wider circle of friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My next door neighbours. Even the 2000 people
who followed me on Twitter. I worried that one day I would stop worrying about
what my death would do to them. Because when that day arrived I would be free
to jump. In a notebook I wrote: “too scared to live, too brave to die”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I didn’t feel brave – I felt pathetic and
I felt trapped by my own cowardice. I wanted to not exist, to stop breathing,
to fade away – I did not want to take my own life. I couldn’t bring myself to
commit to suicide but by this point it was the only solution that held any
hope. I wanted my death to be painless, painless for me and painless for those
I would be leaving behind. My fear of a failed attempt and of the suffering a
successful attempt would cause for those who know me were the only things
keeping me alive. One day I was hit by the realisation that the only way I
could kill myself without hurting anyone else would be to take the entire
planet out with me – the thought was absurd, brutal, deeply shocking and it was
the first glimpse I got of the deeply buried anger that lay beneath my
depression and my tendency towards self-destruction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">At the time I had no idea of how close to
the edge I was in reality and whether I would ever act on my suicidal impulses
but I stepped up the precautionary measures I’d been taking for years – While waiting
at tube stations in London I’d force myself to stand with my back pressed
against the back wall away from the platform edge until the arriving train has
come to a halt. When my husband handed me a large box of 400mg ibuprofen I took
one strip from the box and asked him to store the rest at work. And as the
deathly whispering got louder I devised delaying tactics and made bargains with
myself to buy extra time – I started knitting a blanket 400 stitches wide and
internally agreed not to kill myself before the blanket was finished.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I clung onto lines from songs, poems and
books as if they were life rafts, all the while staying almost silent about my
battle to everyone except my GP, my therapist, my husband, my twin sister.
Everyone I met on a day to day basis would scarcely have suspected I had
depression let alone guess that I was suicidal – it is no wonder that
depression is sometimes called ‘the grinning madness’. I lived in fear of anyone
uttering the phrase “are you *okay*?” with anything close to genuine concern –
I was convinced that I would completely fall apart. The silence is cast iron, completely
self-imposed and I didn’t consider breaking it for even a moment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj7ndoo2hLmczSRLrUy3Ls64ETlM2XTp3-UN_xU5qHqCwvM_Ve_TLomP4bmqmFDT7qOgT_VzZWorH6PtE7YYvCjQ2_i0kbAg0H_8Y5opTuJ1t_2GyXvxnF3SG8EcLr0f5jkN-Bk6C2hjA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-10-06+at+11.35.52.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj7ndoo2hLmczSRLrUy3Ls64ETlM2XTp3-UN_xU5qHqCwvM_Ve_TLomP4bmqmFDT7qOgT_VzZWorH6PtE7YYvCjQ2_i0kbAg0H_8Y5opTuJ1t_2GyXvxnF3SG8EcLr0f5jkN-Bk6C2hjA/s640/Screen+Shot+2012-10-06+at+11.35.52.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I’m walking across Ouse Bridge on my way
home from work. I stop half way across to stare into the barely moving, thick
inky water below. I feel the weight of the laptop and other belongings in the
rucksack I’m carrying on my back. I’m certain that if I walk back over the
bridge and make my way to the river’s edge then I can slip into that inviting
darkness and disappear with barely a ripple; the weight of my rucksack enough
to drag me down to the river bed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The impulse is echoed in the opening lines
from an unfinished poem I’d scrawled on the back of an envelope a few months
beforehand:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Let’s fill our pockets<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">With the rocks we find<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 4.0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">And take our tears<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Back to the sea;<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">We’ll walk into the river,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">We’ll walk into the stream,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">We’ll walk to the bottom <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Of the wave-ridden lake;<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">We’ll wait in the depths<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">With our faith, hope and
dreams;<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Until the bubbles stop
rising,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Until the air leaves our
lungs,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Until we breathe our last
breath,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 78.0pt; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Until our desolation
drowns.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">My thoughts are jolted back to reality;
someone might see me going under. Or someone might jump in to save me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that someone might lose their life trying
to save mine. I shrug the thoughts away and carry on home but as I walk away I
launch an internal investigation to try and establish what this morbid part of
me thinks it will gain from sinking below the surface of the Ouse. I ask myself
what I was feeling as I looked down into the dark river and the response that
comes back is immediate: a feeling of comfort, a sense of sanctuary. Shortly
after that night I make contact with the Maytree Respite Centre in London; a sanctuary
for the suicidal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm;">
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<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">As I make my way across London to the
Maytree Centre, on an unseasonaly warm and sunny morning in April 2012, I make
one last bargain with myself – I won’t kill myself until after my stay at the
Maytree. As my anxiety levels rise on the train, I put my headphones in my ears
and cocoon myself in The Silent League’s songs to keep me safe during my
journey. I arrive at their front door with a feeling that could best be
described as chronic battle fatigue and I surrender myself completely to their
care for five days. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I’m there I
sleep, talk, eat, knit, read, laugh and cry. In my cosy attic bedroom, in the
sun-filled garden, at the dinner table and in the one-to-one therapy sessions I
finally find the sanctuary I’ve been so desperately searching for. In one of
the individual therapy sessions one of the directors tells me that she has a
picture of me in her mind – I’m standing on the hellishly hot banks of a river
and cannot bring myself to jump into the cool, revitalising waters of the
stream that is running alongside me, even though I know how much better I will
feel once I do. I worry that I will leave after four nights and will still be
afflicted by the feeling of paralysis that has plagued me for so many years. On
the sheet of paper left by my bedside table I write<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I have a river of tears trapped inside me” –
I feel like I have both a volcano about to erupt and a dam about to burst
inside me. A day later I scribble the words “I am already dead inside” and part
of me realises that killing myself would be utterly pointless because something
in me has already been murdered many, many years earlier. The thought is much
more comforting than it probably sounds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In one of my last one-to-one sessions the same
director tells me she hopes that even though I can’t yet take off my armour she
hoped that my time at the Maytree had at least thinned it out a little. As I
prepare to leave the next day I feel like a different person. In fact I feel
like a person full stop – I have a fledgling sense of self for the first time
in living memory. And as my train back to York pulls out of Kings Cross Station
I have a sense of ‘going home’ for the first time too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I look out of the window and see a small
stream glinting alongside the traintracks and I write in my notebook: “a river
of kindness is following me home”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm;">
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<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I still don’t understand exactly how or why
but my persistent suicidal thoughts disappeared overnight, as if a switch in my
head had been flipped to ‘off’ while I was sleeping – But I do know that I know
longer see bridges, rivers, roads, train-lines, knives and painkillers are no
longer weapons that I can use to kill myself. The void that I woke up next to
every morning has also receded from view and the grinding, aching empty
nothingness that I once felt is already hard to me to imagine. And I suddenly
feel like I’ve not only discarded my battle-worn armour, I’ve removed myself
from the battlefield completely.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">When I look back at what I went through it
is my self-imposed vow of silence that I still find chilling and I worry that
if the darkness envelopes me again in the future I would stay silent once more.
So I feel like I have a moral duty to break my own silence about what I went
through while I can and also speak up about my experiences on behalf of those people
who cannot yet bring themselves to reach out and let someone know that they are
drowning inside. My weekly therapy sessions continue, possibly to be succeeded
by group therapy sessions in the near future. I still have a lot of work to do
around safeguarding myself and building a resilient sense of self but I no
longer feel like I’m doing so on borrowed time – I now have my whole lifetime
to unravel and embrace the mystery that makes me who I am."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-72721440652062663272013-03-10T13:22:00.001-07:002013-03-10T13:25:06.094-07:00Dispatches from the edge of life<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/1074669942/" title="do not cut here ----------- by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="do not cut here -----------" height="480" src="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1154/1074669942_270fc1d2d6_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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My words are going to be published in a book. Two thousand and nine of my words to be precise. They form a chapter entitled 'Semi-suicidal' which will appear in a book called 'Our Encounters With Suicide' later this year. I have always wanted to be a published author ... how strange that the lowest point of my life so far would be the inspiration for those words. I'll hopefully be able to share more of the chapter with you once it's been published but in the meantime here is the opening paragraph {Spoiler alert: I survive}:</div>
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"I am standing by the sink in our kitchen. I am holding a knife in my right hand. I am pressing the very tip of the blade hard against the artery that runs up my left wrist. I want to puncture the vein and let some blood flow but my skin is unyielding and resists my efforts. I am not trying to kill myself but a part of me wants to know how easy it will be to slit open that vein if I do decide to die. I’m disheartened to discover that it will be much harder than I have imagined."</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-69531920928839923392013-02-18T13:05:00.001-08:002013-02-18T13:07:44.122-08:00Forty Days of Silence, or 'why I've given up tweeting for Lent'I'm in danger of becoming a bit of a silence bore [<a href="http://letcreativitybegin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/breaking-silence-beyond-silence.html" target="_blank">exhibit A</a>, <a href="http://letcreativitybegin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/its-time-we-talked-about-silence.html" target="_blank">exhibit B</a>]. Luckily for you I'm only on day 5 of my 40 day twitter silence so my opportunities to badger you about it are somewhat limited until Easter arrives. But while I have your attention, let me tell you about silence and why I've given up tweeting for Lent.<br />
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For the last 18 months or so I have been anything but silent. First I broke my silence to a therapist, then to close friends and family, then to my GP, then to my managers at work, then to more friends and family, then to the kind staff and volunteers at the Maytree sanctuary for the suicidal, then to a room full of near strangers, <a href="http://letcreativitybegin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/i-have-been-leading-life-of-quiet.html" target="_blank">then to the whole internet via my blog</a> and twitter.<br />
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And then I realised that breaking my silence about depression and suicidal thoughts wasn't going far enough ... so I broke my silence on physical and emotional abuse, first to the world via my blog and twitter, then to my mum (hardly the ideal order to break the news but that's the order it happened in).<br />
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And then I ranted and raved on twitter and set out my vision for a kinder society. And then I ranted and raved a bit more.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/2141016191/" title="why hold on with tears in our eyes? by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="why hold on with tears in our eyes?" height="640" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2119/2141016191_6e48c48f89_z.jpg" width="508" /></a><br />
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And I found myself wondering whether all my silence breaking had really changed anything. And I wondered how many other people's stories need to be shared before anything changes. And that's when I thought I'd stay silent again instead and see if people would react more to my public silence than than they had to my public silence breaking. Putting it simply, I decided to yield the floor and stop talking about silence for a while to see what happens when I stop speaking up.<br />
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The main aim of my 40 day twitter silence is to raise awareness of silence and how it adds to the stigma experienced by abuse victims and those suffering from mental health conditions such as depression. If you'd like to support my 40 day twitter silence you can do that by sponsoring me or by simply talking to those in your immediate family and circle of friends about their mental health. The money you donate will go to the Maytree respite centre who helped me find my way back to the land of the living last year.<br />
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I'm not undertaking this twitter silence as a digital detox so I'm still looking at twitter and I'll be sending very occasional DMs to close friends. If that feels like I'm cheating then I'd like to politely suggest that you embark on your own twitter silence and make the rules for that as rigid as you'd like them to be ... and let me know about it so that I can sponsor you :-)<br />
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So anyway, enough words from me, please <a href="http://www.justgiving.com/iamcreative" target="_blank">visit my Just Giving page and make a donation</a> if you can spare the cash - but more importantly please talk about silence and get the support you need to break your own silence.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-19177854269429706572013-02-16T06:29:00.001-08:002013-02-16T07:40:39.460-08:00It's time we talked about silenceWe need to talk about silence. We need to talk about the way that silence kills loved ones. We need to talk about the way victims who break their silence find themselves re-silenced or turned away from. We need to understand who benefits from silence and who suffers. We need to notice the moments when we stay silent and uncover why we were so afraid of speaking that we swallowed down our words. We need to take individual responsibility for the times we silence other and the times we silence ourselves. We need to talk about silence. Let me start by telling you about mine.<br />
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My silence started young. In fact it started at birth when my twin sister and I arrived in the world two weeks early and I was born with 'primary atelectasis' (or 'lazy lung syndrome' as I prefer to call it). I don't know if military hospitals are particularly overcautious but before our mum had even woken up from surgery I had been baptised by the military chaplain. I'm not sure if I was put on a ventilator but if I was then I would have soundlessly been crying. In any case I almost certainly did not come out of our mother's womb with the customary vagitanus screams of a new born infant.<br />
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And then my silence deepened. My twin sister and I were in the neonatal intensive care unit for the first two weeks of our lives. I've only read fairly recently that <a href="http://kelleyward.hubpages.com/hub/The-Consequences-of-the-Cry-it-Out-Method" target="_blank">a crying newborn will stop crying out within a matter of days if they are not attended to</a>. That certainly sheds new light on our mum's observation that we were exceptionally well-behaved babies who very rarely cried throughout our early infancy. And I've also discovered over the past year that my challenging entry into the world, together with the impact of other traumatic childhood experiences, not only meant I was predisposed to becoming a future victim of abuse from day 1 but also that <a href="http://earlyyearsstudy.ca/en/report/chapter2-early-life-learning-behaviour-health/8-early-adversity-and-later-life/" target="_blank">my life quality and life expectancy were somewhat dented from that moment on</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/4565381287/" title="we scream in silence by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="we scream in silence" height="480" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3026/4565381287_b5c59c8924_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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And so my silence continued through childhood. No one really even had to tell me to be silent, a single glance from an irate adult and I effortlessly silenced myself. But I also found ways to speak up ... unfortunately they were silent screams in a world that doesn't want to hear the voices of those who are suffering. Headaches, sleep walking, sleep talking, earache, sore throats, ravenous reading, fainting without warning, excelling at school, fitting in, seeking sanctuary and respite in the school sick bay and our local library. My school reports largely comment on what a "pleasant" child I was. But early on a teacher venomously asked me if I knew the meaning of the word 'hypochondriac' and other teachers made it clear that I was trying too hard and my raised hand in class increasingly went ignored 'to give the other children a chance'. As the years went on I stayed silent through emotional abuse, bullying and intimidation. I stayed silent on the outside and put all my energy into trying to make sense of the world I found myself in on the inside. Tears and words swallowed down as easily as aspirin.<br />
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Through the eyes of a child my silence makes complete sense and, even though it didn't always keep me safe, it did keep me alive - even if I was simply surviving rather than thriving. Looking back now it is the silence of others that I find the silence of others most shocking. The doctor who diagnosed me with tension headaches, the teachers who didn't ask why I was trying so hard and worrying so much, close family who didn't ask my stepfather why it was necessary for young children to eat every meal in complete silence. And in recent years those who have responded to the news of my depression and anxiety first with sympathy and then with untold personal stories of their own suffering in silence. And also the silence of my current GP and the healthcare profession as a whole who seemingly have not once thought to tell me that the circumstances of my birth alone left me vulnerable to a profound sense of aloneness that would be very likely to lead me early to my grave, either at my own hand or as a result of the ghostly shadow my "early life adversity" is likely to have cast over my nervous system, my brain and my heart. It seems strange that when interventions to tackle the damaging after-effects of early adversity were first being rolled out, no one thought to ask 'and what of the walking wounded, the spirit murdered and those who harbour a terrified child within their soul? What of the damaged parents who will be taking these newly protected children home? What can we do to heal them? And what cost to humanity if they continue to roam the world unhealed?' Silence is met with deeper silence.<br />
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Silence told me I would be safe if I didn't talk back and that even rolling my eyes was a crime against my stepfather's authority. It told me that I was wrong to trust my innate sense of injustice and that I should ignore the swallowed down fury that made my throat hurt and my bones shake. Silence told me that the sky was not falling in and that threats to my safety came from strangers, not in my home. Silence told me not to shout for help, not to raise the alarm and not to cry unless I was alone. Silence told me I was invisible and that no-one was listening to my screams. Silence told me everything was okay. Silence became my home and silence nearly killed me.<br />
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I appreciate that my words above are veering dangerously close to being hyperbolic and maybe I am grossly overstating the risk. Maybe I'm not a fragile ticking timebomb after all. Maybe I should just shush up and get on with forgetting about the past. But the very fact that it feels like that's exactly what everyone hopes I will do makes me convinced that it's the last thing I should do. Maybe the new early life interventions will break the cycle of domestic violence, child abuse, rape, murder, poverty and despair ... or maybe we need to collectively break our silences and learn how to offer and receive solace rather than outsource our compassion to charities, experts and pharmaceutical companies. Maybe then we will stop having to bury people for the want of a shoulder to cry. Maybe then we can sit with our own suffering instead of reaching for the knife drawer, the wine bottle, the sleeping tablets or lashing out at our kith and kin, destroying someone else's sense of safety and security or travelling half way across the globe to lawfully murder other people's sons and daughters. Maybe then we'll see silencing ourselves and others as the most dangerous form of violence there is.<br />
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"Before you can exploit others you have to silence them." - Derrick Jensen<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-5445608942508092352012-12-08T08:22:00.003-08:002012-12-08T08:23:12.429-08:00The paralysed heart, the arrested soul<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/2206103049/" title="ready to jump by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="ready to jump" height="640" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2345/2206103049_4cf92a2ccc_z.jpg" width="460" /></a></div>
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In <a href="http://letcreativitybegin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/breaking-silence-beyond-silence.html" target="_blank">my last blogpost</a> I spilled my guts about things from my past that may have contributed to my descent into depression and suicidal thoughts. I also promised to share the legacy of those experiences - So in this blogpost I'm going to try and explain how my childhood experiences continue to reverberate through the years with some lightly sketched vignettes taken from my life:</div>
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<li>It's September 2002. I'm standing bolt upright on a paddle board which is floating on the still waters of a small breeze-less bay in Skyros. I am desperately trying with every fibre of my being to either return to a sitting position or jump into the water but I can't bring myself to do either and I am rooted to the spot. I don't feel scared, I just feel ridiculous and aware that Mark (my then boyfriend, now husband) is getting increasingly angry with me. He's not angry because I can't jump, he's angry because my board is slowly drifting out to sea and out of his reach. I am frozen to the spot but his protective anger and worry finally gets through to me - I hesitantly make it down onto my knees, then into a seated position and we paddle back in near silence. Strangely, a friend who is watching from the shore, later tells me that to her I looked like a statue of the goddess Athena - gracefully floating towards the horizon with an air of aloof confidence.</li>
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<li>A few years later I find myself standing in the reception area of a residential training college. It is late o'clock and I've left the bar so that a colleague can teach me to juggle, which I have always wanted to do but somehow never managed to. He hands me three juggling balls but, despite his gentle coaching and cajoling, I cannot bring myself to release any of them into the air. My colleague takes away one ball but still my hands and arms remain frozen and neither of the remaining balls makes it into the air. We are both laughing and I am convinced that any second I will release my grip on one of the balls. My colleague chuckles and, with a well-natured but despairing shake of his head, takes back a second ball. I am now standing with a single juggling ball in one hand and my other hand is empty, ready to try and catch it. Except I never manage to release that final ball into the air despite several minutes of my brain imploring my hand to 'just throw the jeffing ball already'. Our drunken laughter escalates into bewildered giggling at the absurdness of the situation we find ourselves in and I gradually deteriorate into teary hysterical laughter. My colleague accepts that his juggling coaching skills have met their match and we head back to the bar.</li>
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The scenes I've described above were not just real-life experiences - they also metaphorically represent a deep level of stuckness in my life ... I have a pervasively liminal feeling, like I am always on the edge, on the cusp, on the verge along with a sense that there is an invisible force holding me back from making progress on hopes and dreams that I rarely dare to consciously articulate. Earlier this year I was watching <a href="http://video.pbs.org/program/forgiveness/" target="_blank">a PBS documentary called 'Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate'</a> and one of the stories hit me like a thunderbolt. I was listening to Terri Jentz talk about her horrific experience of being attacked while camping with her college roommate and as she described the impact the single brutal trauma had on her life many years later:<br />
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<i>"I had a feeling of stuckness, of paralysis, a loss of concentration, a seizure of my ordinarily unflappable will. Something was different. And with each passing year it got worse. [...] I began to fear everything. My body was afraid of being crushed by a vehicle. I had apocalyptic fears. I felt like I had to split into a kind of wildly overreacting, intensely emotive, even manic, self. And then I would just switch. like that, into a completely numbed out, deadened version of myself that was just kind of asleep, narcoleptic. Some invisible, hampering paralysis had set in. It was as though my ability to take my destiny in hand had been wrested away from me. [...] I wasn't aware of the anger I was carrying [...]. I had to confront the trauma in order to be free."</i></blockquote>
The whole documentary is worth watching but the section featuring Terri Jentz and her roommate can be viewed below:<br />
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Watch <a href="http://video.pbs.org/video/1855885830" style="color: #4eb2fe !important; font-weight: normal !important; height: 13px; text-decoration: none !important;" target="_blank">Language of Anger</a> on PBS. See more from <a href="http://www.blogger.com/None" style="color: #4eb2fe !important; font-weight: normal !important; height: 13px; text-decoration: none !important;" target="_blank">Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate.</a></div>
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The fact that I could resonate so strongly with how Terri felt in the years after the attack shocked me - I still don't understand it at an intellectual level but that resonance was the start of me beginning to face up to the fact that the net result of the traumatic experiences of my childhood was, in some crazy unfathomable way, equivalent to being run over by a truck and threatened with an axe. I still can't quite comprehend how the childhood experiences I spent my whole life dismissing as normal or insignificant had been so damaging to my innate sense of safety. But hearing Terri talk was like hearing my own thoughts verbalised so I couldn't easily dismiss the realisation and, although I still have moments where I worry that I'm making a fuss over nothing or blaming my own inability to take action on a sob story from my early years, I know that that unexpected and incomprehensible recognition of the impact of my childhood experiences has been an important part of the healing process and a represented a watershed moment that, hopefully, will ultimately allow me to free myself from the invisible hand of my past and move forward to finally take centre stage in my own life.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-56688022625363402832012-11-11T08:41:00.002-08:002012-11-11T08:53:40.327-08:00Breaking the silence beyond silenceAs I sit down and start typing this blogpost my heart is racing, my palms are sweaty, my stomach is churning, my brain is crackling with fierce static and my fingers are trembling on the keyboard. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to express myself properly but I feel a need to say something, no matter how much I stumble over the words.<br />
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In writing this blogpost I'm keeping in mind a couple of tweets I, somewhat serendipitously, read this morning. The first is from <a href="http://twitter.com/anthonylawlor" target="_blank">Anthony Lawlor</a> who said "In all the truth speaking, what goes unsaid reveals the most." And the second is from <a href="http://twitter.com/stargardener" target="_blank">Teresa Robinson</a> who shared a quote from Anne Lammott: "You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."<br />
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The fact that I feel so fearful about writing this blogpost speaks volumes - particularly considering I have previously blogged about <a href="http://iheardherspeak.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/jean-kilbourne-killing-us-softly-4.html">my, too close for comfort, brush with an eating disorder</a>, and <a href="http://letcreativitybegin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/i-have-been-leading-life-of-quiet.html" target="_blank">my, even closer for comfort, brush with suicidal depression</a> - You would think that there are few shadowy areas of my life left to reveal to the glaring light of public disclosure ... but you would be wrong.<br />
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Over recent days, weeks and months it's fair to say that the UK has been rocked by a stream of shocking revelations regarding child abuse. As each scandal broke I watched the folks in my twitter stream reacting with righteous indignation and disbelief. And I gradually realised that two things seemed to be largely missing from the media coverage and the comments on Twitter. The first was recognition that the abuse cases being uncovered are exceptional, albeit no less horrifying, occurances and that the vast majority of abuse happens not in a celebrity's changing room or in a care home, but in ordinary family homes in our own villages, towns and cities. <a href="http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/resourcesforprofessionals/sexualabuse/statistics_wda87833.html" target="_blank">Statistics on the NSPCC website</a> state that 1 in 4 people experienced sexual abuse as children. Most children know their abusers and 80% of offences happen in either the child's or the perpetrator's home. In other word it is not just aged television presenters, pop stars and MPs who will be feeling uncomfortable as new disclosures about abuse come to light. One exception to this lack of recognition was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/a-lot-has-changed-since-jimmy-saviles-time-but-shame-and-stigma-still-allow-sex-abuse-to-thrive-8215067.html" target="_blank">Anna Nathonson's piece in the Independent</a> which was the first time I'd read the 1 in 4 statistic.<br />
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The second thing that was even more absent, in fact completely missing, was anyone putting their hand up and identifying themselves as a victim of abuse. This heavy veil of silence is a clear indicator to me that being a victim of abuse carries with it a massive burden of stigma. A few weeks ago I came to the personal realisation that although I had stepped forward and broken free of the stigma around suicide and mental illness (yay, go me!) I was still gagged and bound by the chains of the stigma attached to the contributory causes of my mental illness. I have spent a lot of time trying to work out how I could broach the subject of this double stigma without sharing any of the details of my personal experience. I'm feeling very dizzy and heavy-skulled as I type these words ... it seems to me that I probably cannot very easily do one without the other.<br />
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It feels unfair to me that having broken the silence once I now find myself needing to do it again. At least with my disclosure about my suicidal depression there was a happy ending - my personal experience of abuse and neglect is nothing but messy, shame-ridden memories which will no doubt deeply upset my close family and friends, and very possibly break my mum's heart. In the face of that, keeping silent seems the much easier path but the cost of that silence has been too high already - my ongoing mental health problems and recent suicidal episode (which I now realise was the result of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysthymia#Double-depression" target="_blank">'double depression'</a>) is directly related to my early childhood experiences and further exacerbated by experiences throughout childhood and into early adulthood. It is still very hard for me to accept my depression and my ongoing issues with anxiety as a mental illness - it just feels like the result of me not being very good at being human. At the same time I also struggle to reconcile the relatively low level abuse and mistreatment I experienced with the severity of the impact to my personality development and mental health - the result seems disproportionate to contributory factors. In all likelihood this is largely due to a failure on my part to accept the severity of those contributory factors, underestimate the impact it's had on my life and a failure to appreciate the complexity of those factors acting on top of each other over time.<br />
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By now your imaginations are probably running overtime so I'm going to share my experience as undramatically as I can - It would be inappropriate to share the full details but here are the main 'highlights' of what I experienced:<br />
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<li>multiple experiences of, relatively innocent, sexual contact at the hands of boys who were the same age or a few years older than me from about 5 years old through to puberty.</li>
<li>being 'flashed' by a stranger in an underpass on the way home from school, aged 11.</li>
<li>inappropriately early exposure to pornographic magazines and horror movies.</li>
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Other factors played their part too:</div>
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<li>when I was born I nearly died and my mum didn't see me or my twin sister for several days after we were born - I then had to stay in hospital for a couple of weeks after my mum had been discharged (they kept my twin sister with me). Interestingly my therapist informs me that children who experience early periods of hospitalisation/maternal separation are more likely to be abused.</li>
<li>my parents split up and then divorced when I was very young (less than two years old I think) - I only found out earlier this year that domestic violence was the final straw, following years of emotional abuse (interestingly, it was my Grandma who spilled the beans on that family secret, not my mum).</li>
<li>we grew up with a very strict step-father whose discipline was largely founded on threats of violence and whose outbursts I experienced as unpredictable and unjust.</li>
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Domestic violence apparently happens to 1 in 4 women (there's that 1 in 4 figure again!) so the scenario of my upbringing is not altogether exceptional. If both domestic violence and sexual abuse affect the same numbers as mental illness is strikes me as odd that they are still so deeply shrouded by silence ... particularly when there seems to be <a href="http://www.who.int/publications/cra/chapters/volume2/1851-1940.pdf" target="_blank">widespread recognition that childhood sexual abuse is directly related to the development of mental illness and personality disorders later in life</a>. I appreciate that the fight to breakdown the stigma around mental illness is very recent and is still ongoing but my feeling is that stigma around the causes of mental illness need to be broken too if those who are affected are to feel less isolated. </div>
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The <a href="http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/sheets/rs7/rs7.html" target="_blank">perpetrators of sexual abuse and other types of abuse were often abused themselves</a> as children so breaking the stigma of abuse and providing support and treatment for victims of abuse seems key if we want to stand a chance of breaking the cycle in the future. I keep wondering whether some kind of 'abuse amnesty' together with intensive therapy and mediation services might be one way forward ... although that looks unlikely with the ever shrinking NHS budgets. Of course the 'don't wash the family's dirty linen in public' atmosphere of secrecy and complicity that is pervasive among families, the Eighties media coverage of social care service horror stories which ripped seemingly innocent families apart, and the lack of awareness of what constitutes abuse and how high the abuse figures are all contribute to the problem of tackling this potentially fatal societal problem.</div>
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And so having blogged about this publicly I face having a very difficult, but long overdue, conversation with my mum - I feel guilty about not talking to her first but I'm sure that will be the least of her concerns. I'm not even able to express much anger towards my perpetrators, let alone forgive them yet, so this is just one more step for me on a very long journey. In a future blogpost I'll try and put into words the ongoing legacy of those early childhood experiences but for now, if you are on a similar journey then be reassured that with 1 in 4 people affected by the similar traumatic experiences you are far from alone - please consider seeking a sympathetic ear if you haven't already. I'm seeing a therapist every week and have been for the last year but there are also organisations such as the <a href="http://www.napac.org.uk/" target="_blank">National Association for People Abused in Childhood</a> who are currently somewhat inundated but may be a useful starting point in getting the help you need and deserve.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-55342654498701999362012-09-29T04:28:00.001-07:002013-09-03T05:18:10.274-07:00Sometimes I Feel So TemporaryThis is one of my first ever all digital illustrations - it was inspired by the lyrics of a Rumer song called 'Healer' which is one of the songs on my Saving the Only Life I Can playlist.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/8035376529/" title="Sometimes I feel so temporary by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="Sometimes I feel so temporary" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8320/8035376529_3aabc82e8d.jpg" height="375" width="500" /></a>
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So this is the first item donated by me to my Saving the Only Life I Can project. If I was feeling fearless I would write to Rumer and ask her if she could donate the track but for now here is a beautiful live version from YouTube:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TyeBTcjoIWs" width="560"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-32065906862857260132012-07-30T10:07:00.000-07:002012-07-30T10:22:14.390-07:00Don't. Wake. Up.<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1LZjRC2ZZLU?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />
Laura (aka <a href="http://shemakeswar.com/">She Makes War</a>, aka <a href="http://twitter.com/warriorgrrl">@warriorgrrl</a>) calls her music 'DIY gloom-pop' and, yes, her music does have a serious, weighty, dark and bewitching feel to it but I certainly never feel gloomy when Laura's sirenesque visceral vocals start insistently swirling around my brainspace. Something about the defiant tone in Laura's voice as she sings makes me feel galvanised whenever I listen to this track. On days when I felt adrift and rudderless Laura's voice was an anchor, life boat and safe harbour all in one.<br />
<br />
I first heard '<a href="http://shemakeswar.bandcamp.com/album/in-this-boat" target="_blank">In This Boat</a>' when Laura performed it live at <a href="http://shemakeswar.com/blog/2011/08/11/hsgardenparty/" target="_blank">the Hope and Social Garden Party</a> last summer and it blew me away - by the time she played '<a href="http://shemakeswar.bandcamp.com/track/scared-to-capsize-2" target="_blank">Scared to Capsize</a>' I was fighting back tears behind my sunglasses. I thoroughly recommend you <a href="http://shemakeswar.bandcamp.com/album/little-battles" target="_blank">buy her recent album 'Little Battles'</a> which you can download for however much you want on Bandcamp. The artwork is gorgeous though so you might want to splash out and buy a physical copy. And try to <a href="http://shemakeswar.com/live/gigs/" target="_blank">see her play live</a> if you get the chance - but Laura makes playing live look so effortless that you might well find yourself thinking you should learn to play the ukulele, buy a loop machine and start a band of your own ... don't say I didn't warn you.<br />
<br />
One of my favourite lines from 'In This Boat' is <b><i>'in these veins I hunt for poetry'</i></b> and I couldn't resist writing those words onto my veins - the same veins that a part of me longed to open up earlier this year. Those same veins somehow feel much more embedded in my body these days:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/7677298464/" title="hunt for poetry by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="hunt for poetry" height="640" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8023/7677298464_7f13331dd7_z.jpg" width="640" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-18878442527897943972012-07-27T04:38:00.000-07:002013-09-20T08:31:08.135-07:00Let's meet at Hope StreetI asked my friend Mark Ivkovic if he would contribute to my <a href="http://letcreativitybegin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/saving-only-life-i-can.html" target="_blank">Saving the Only Life I Can project</a> by taking a photo of my favourite street sign in York and he certainly did me proud ... <br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1c2w1s8NfD5dX7m7yE02EXA0JZeOGjF0MJ-GLw_DE_mP0FvVRy6cKguQ9ctSdoUmGVWZ6l4MdoL9FctnNYStAcyZ9XZy0vkG_bBjMo3Nlx0oC2Uden8FlUy-WDj6xvEBqNjJjd3n1wJo/s1600/hope_street_iamstolic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1c2w1s8NfD5dX7m7yE02EXA0JZeOGjF0MJ-GLw_DE_mP0FvVRy6cKguQ9ctSdoUmGVWZ6l4MdoL9FctnNYStAcyZ9XZy0vkG_bBjMo3Nlx0oC2Uden8FlUy-WDj6xvEBqNjJjd3n1wJo/s640/hope_street_iamstolic.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Hope is a word that I've used a lot over the past couple of years but it's a hard word to pin down the meaning of - Charles Snyder defined it as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope" target="_blank"><i>"the sum of the mental willpower and waypower that you have for your goals”</i></a>. Earlier this year I think I was running low on both willpower and waypower. At that point carrying on the battle against my own mind often became an act of faith with only a small slither of hope that I would ever feel like a halfway normal human being. I wonder now whether I lost hope completely for a short bleak time and that maybe it was running out of hope that signalled the lowest point for me before I started to resurface again. It's hard to know for sure - when I look back at the first three months of this year it's still as bewildering to me as it felt at the time. My hope now is that I stay well and that I help others hold onto hope and seek help a hell of a lot earlier than I did.<br />
<br />
You can see more of Mark's talent on his professional photography website: <a href="http://www.bangphoto.co.uk/" target="_blank">bang<span style="font-weight: bold;"> | Photography</span></a><br />
<br />
Mark's photography is inspiring enough but the way he mixes it with words on his blog is something else and this <a href="http://bangphoto.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/when-self-doubt-starts-to-give-way-to-self-realisation/" target="_blank">post on his own self-doubt</a> resonates wildly with me and my own cliff edge.<br />
<br />
And if you want to visit Hope Street yourself then you can <a href="https://maps.google.co.uk/maps/place?q=hope+street+york&ftid=0x487931b1f7be23c1:0x62e9f186c0b23394" target="_blank">find your own way there with the help of this Google map</a>.<br />
<br />
Mark and I are talking about collaborating on some more photos for this project and I'm hoping that some of his photography skills will rub off on me in the process :)<br />
<br />
Footnote: In the 'See Also' section of the Wikipedia page there is an entry entitled <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anything_is_possible_when_it_means_everything" target="_blank">'Anything is possible when it means everything'</a> which I love but it turns out that it's a non-existent page and there are only five search results for that phrase in Google, all of which go to dead ends ... how delightfully strange :)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-381887299995076122012-07-11T04:13:00.001-07:002012-07-11T04:13:40.262-07:00The Wait of the World: Act Three<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>The Wait of the World, a poem
in three acts</u></i></b> </div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span>by Helen Harrop</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span>June 2012</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><u>Act Three:</u></b><br />
The universe waits,<br />
The universe watches<br />
Its juvenile galaxies<br />
Of birth stars and death stars<br />
Leaving their light legacies.<br />
Destruction and destiny<br />
Played out through<br />
An infinite sky ballet.<br /> </div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
All stagnant satellites,<br />
All ghostly globes,<br />
All spinning baubles<br />
And enslaved pebbles.<br />
Numerous as grains of sand,<br />
Smooth and bright<br />
As playground marbles.<br />
All fire and brimstone,<br />
All hell and highwater,<br />
All gas and vapour,<br />
All clumsy collisions <br />
All futile and futureless.<br />
An orbiting ossuary.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The universe waits,<br />
The universe watches<br />
For the final falling star<br />
For the celestial light to fade<br />
For the future to fold in on itself.<br />
One dark night of the soul<br />
And then ...<br />
Nothing.<br />
All blank horizons<br />
And inert energy laid bare<br />
Across the wide waiting sky.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The nothingness
waits,<br />
The nothingness watches.<br />
And there is no end<br />
To the endless beginning.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-86352555362853002852012-07-11T04:11:00.003-07:002012-07-11T04:11:44.689-07:00The Wait of the World: Act Two<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>The Wait of the World, a poem
in three acts</u></i></b> </div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span>by Helen Harrop</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span>June 2012</span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><u>Act Two:</u></b><br />
The world waits,<br />
The world watches<br />
Each extinguished epoch<br />
With the ignoble grace<br />
Of a billiard ball<br />
Unwrinkled by time.<br />
The world is a spinning spectator<br />
As race follows race<br />
With no winners or losers.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The earth continues<br />
With no worries of science<br />
Or physics, or gravity.<br />
Simply everything in its place<br />
And a place for Everything.<br />
No historic histrionics<br />
Just a past-less presence<br />
With no fear to furrow brows.<br />
The world just is and always was<br />
The universe’s eternal yes.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The globe endures<br />
Impermanent parasites;<br />
A barely perceptible,<br />
Innumerable nuisance. <br />
From ethereal single-cells<br />
To insignificant Jurassic beasts;<br />
All imaginary mosquitoes<br />
Evidenced only by their egos<br />
And their venomous bites.<br />
All fury beasts,<br />
All faithless and dreaming,<br />
All fearful and hiding,<br />
All hopeless and hurting,<br />
All hate-filled and hunting,<br />
All pestilence and predation.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The earth devours
their dead<br />
Builds mountains from their bones<br />
And forests from their fallen flesh,<br />
Drawing their blood into its corpulent core.<br />
Deaf to their desperate prayers,<br />
Unmoved by their moods and means.<br />
Blind to the damage they do,<br />
The earth lives on in fermitude, not servitude.<br />
Each eon blinked by and instantly forgotten.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
The world waits, <br />
The world watches<br />
As the moon conducts tides and<br />
The sun devours time and<br />
The universe opens its waiting arms.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-75509884705999982662012-07-11T04:09:00.003-07:002012-07-11T04:09:28.120-07:00The Wait of the World: Act One<div style="text-align: center;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>The Wait of the World, a poem
in three acts</u></i></b> </div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Helen Harrop</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">June 2012</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Act One:</u></b><br />
The woman waits,<br />
The woman watches,<br />
All glacial grace<br />
As the world passes her by.<br />
All vitriol and volcano<br />
Beneath her micron thin skin.<br />
She travels on<br />
An arrested trajectory<br />
With no peace or progress.<br />
She is a dream dredger<br />
Who is drowning on dry land.<br />
Every day she fills her pockets<br />
With stone-dead desires<br />
And walks to “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the bottom<br />
Of a great ocean of air</i>”.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</div>
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The woman waits,<br />
The woman watches<br />
For permission to proceed.<br />
All chaotic energy and wet steam,<br />
All silent fury and invisible screams.<br />
The vestiges of verbal violence<br />
Still hang heavy overhead<br />
Like storms over Thor’s anvil<br />
Threatening her mind’s meniscus.<br />
Her heart is a prismic prison,<br />
All refracted hope,<br />
All shattered light,<br />
All white heat.<br />
She is held together<br />
Against her will.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</div>
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The world waits but
forgets to watch<br />
And even the orbiting satellites<br />
Avert their gaze<br />
Until one day it slips her mind <br />
To hold her molecules together.<br />
And hairline cracks that race<br />
Across her porcelain mask<br />
Become fractured canyons.<br />
And the whole universe glimpses<br />
The glittering carbon centre<br />
Of this daily doomed star<br />
As she achieves escape velocity<br />
And hurtles into the world’s waiting arms.</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-52787023579252059692012-06-20T10:37:00.000-07:002012-07-27T04:39:04.028-07:00I can tell I'm awake<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/2300028195/" title="tears in dublin by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="tears in dublin" height="640" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3102/2300028195_616cc74ed4_z.jpg" width="480" /> </a><br />
<br />
The latest donation to <a href="http://letcreativitybegin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/saving-only-life-i-can.html" target="_blank">Saving the Only Life I Can</a> is a particularly special one because it has been donated by my cousin, Peter Pollock. I found out that Peter suffers from depression after I told his sister about my depression. It was the same moment that I inadvertently broke the news to my Grandma (I'd naively assumed that she'd already know about it from my Mum). When I've finally mustered the courage to tell friends and family about my depression it's quite surprising how many times those people have responded by telling me that they, or someone close to them who I also know, also has depression. It made me realise how important it is that I carried on telling people - If I stayed silent about my depression then it meant that those around me would almost definitely stay silent about their depression. And a dark secret would be allowed to hide in the centre of my family and in the centre of my life.<br />
<br />
As soon as I read <a href="http://peterpollock.com/2012/05/crying/" target="_blank">Peter's poem on his blog</a> I asked him if he'd be prepared to donate it to my project and he very kindly said yes without a second thought. Thank you cousin - for your poem and for walking alongside me in the darkness.<br />
<h2>
Crying</h2>
I’m awake.<br />
I can tell I’m awake,<br />
I never feel like crying in my sleep.<br />
My eyes are closed.<br />
I’m not holding back tears.<br />
I never try to hold them back, they just never come.<br />
What happened?<br />
Why do I want to cry?<br />
What terrible thing is affecting me this way?<br />
Nothing.<br />
No horrible event,<br />
It’s all just my messed up brain chemistry.<br />
I hate it.<br />
It won’t go away.<br />
…Tomorrow will be the same as every other day.<br />
I’m awake.<br />
I can tell I’m awake -<br />
I never feel like crying in my sleep.<br />
<br />
by <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/peterpollock" target="_blank">Peter Pollock </a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-62450509285119716852012-05-05T05:13:00.002-07:002012-05-05T05:13:31.550-07:00I Am Trying to Break Your HeartsWhen I first volunteered to do my first Bettakultcha talk back in February my main motivations for stepping up to the plate were a) so there would be at least one female speaker at the inaugaral York Bettakultcha and b) so I could attend free of charge, because I was having cash-flow, ahem, issues at the time. With very little thought on my behalf I suggested that my talk might a (relatively) light-hearted take on my experience of depression and suicidal impulses, and how worry was both threatening and saving my life. Little did I know at that point that I was about to spiral even deeper into the darkness and resurface back into the light again. A week before my talk I had been to the brink and back so it was a very different talk than the one I'd planned to do - Richard and Ivor were kind enough to let me go first and for the 5 minutes I was talking everything was a bit of a blur.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo, enough rambling from me ... spend 5 minutes watching what I said and then take a closer look at the smiling friends and family that surround you - some of them may be silently enduring more pain than you can imagine possible. Find out who they are and then just bear witness to their pain - they don't need you to fix them, they just need you to listen and walk alongside them through the darkness until they can find their own way back home.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8UTkwDaBdhQ?rel=0" width="853"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
And here are my slides with accompanying notes.<br />
<br />
<div id="__ss_12206178" style="width: 477px;">
<b style="display: block; margin: 12px 0 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/iamhelenharrop/helen-harropbetta-kultcha" target="_blank" title="BettaKultcha Talk, York, March 2012">BettaKultcha Talk, York, March 2012</a></b> <iframe frameborder="0" height="510" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/12206178" width="477"></iframe> <br />
<div style="padding: 5px 0 12px;">
View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/" target="_blank">documents</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/iamhelenharrop" target="_blank">iamhelenharrop</a> </div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-89641090548487996352012-05-04T08:15:00.000-07:002013-05-30T09:26:28.754-07:00Say something I'll remember the next day<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wilfulmissing/7094766219/" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank" title="The bright white piano from DIY by wilfulmissing, on Flickr"><img alt="The bright white piano from DIY" height="450" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7120/7094766219_028d7b17c8_z.jpg" width="600" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wilful Missing's 'bright white piano'</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F14796365" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/wilful-missing/diy">DIY</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/wilful-missing">Wilful Missing</a>
<br />
<br />
I really pleased to announce that the third track to be officially donated to my 'Saving the Only Life I Can' project is DIY by the absurdly humble and beautifully melancholic <a href="http://wilfulmissing.co.uk/" target="_blank">Wilful Missing</a>. If you aren't as pedantic about punctuation as I am then you can sing along to the lyrics here:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DLTGJAfBaF4?rel=0" width="640"></iframe>
<br />
For me this song encapsulates the maddening ambivalence and amnesia of chronic depression - it got to the point where every morning I felt like I awoke at the cliff's edge, peering into the void and I had to spend the rest of the day inching away from the edge, desperately trying to find something, or someone, to treasure, something to celebrate, something to hold onto - any small fragment that would give me hope and help me in my daily remembering of why life itself was worth holding onto. <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"Baby say something,<br />say something I'll remember<br />the next day,
<br />but the shadows <br />conceal us <br />from hoping."</i></span></blockquote>
I'm hugely grateful to Wilful Missing for writing such beautiful music - You can hear more of their tracks <a href="http://music.wilfulmissing.co.uk/" target="_blank">on their Bandcamp page</a>. I strongly advise you to go and see them play live if you get the chance ... it's an indescribably magical experience. If you live in York then you are in luck because they're <a href="http://www.songkick.com/concerts/12189838-wilful-missing-at-stereo?utm_source=9128&utm_medium=partner" target="_blank">playing at The Stereo on Gillygate next Thursday</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-4019173048149320152012-05-04T07:15:00.000-07:002012-07-30T09:02:32.059-07:00Heading Home with Hope in my HeartGoodness only knows how <a href="http://www.ahawkintherain.com/about/" target="_blank">A Hawk in the Rain</a> (the combined talents of Cassis Birgit Staudt, Tom Lingard, Simon R. Goff, George Kirkham) managed to collaboratively compose a piece of music that is both heartwrenchingly beautiful and soul-soaringly hopeful but thank goodness they did because this track has comforted and uplifted me on countless occasions since I first heard it about a year ago. It's the second track to be donated to <a href="http://letcreativitybegin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/saving-only-life-i-can.html" target="_blank">'Saving the Only Life I Can</a>'.<br />
<br />
<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F13327254">
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<embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F13327254" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/simonralphgoff/home-22-11-10">Home 22-11-10</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/simonralphgoff">SimonRalphGoff</a><br />
<br />
I have always had an uneasy relationship with the word 'home' and last year I was suddenly struck by the shocking realisation that I had no feeling of being at home anywhere in the world, even in my own home. The poet David Whyte often talks about how we are often exiles within our own lives, more of that another time but one of his poems which resonates deeply with me is <a href="http://www.davidwhyte.com/english_rev.html" target="_blank">'<i>Revelation Must be Terrible</i>'</a> so that's worth reading if you have any 'belonging' issues:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;">"Being far from home is hard, but you know,<br />
at least we are exiled together."</span></blockquote>
On the 24th March, as I reluctantly readied myself to leave the warm embrace of <a href="http://maytree.org.uk/" target="_blank">The Maytree</a>, I realised that I felt like I was going home for the first time in more than 30 years. I listened to 'Home' by A Hawk in the Rain as the train carrying me back north pulled out of Kings Cross and I had the broadest smile across my face for every second of the track. Huge thanks to all the members of A Hawk in the Rain who unanimously agreed to donate this track to my Saving the Only Life I Can project. Special thanks go to <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/SimonRalphGoff" target="_blank">Simon Goff</a> who I first met in his role as the bassist for <a href="http://hopeandsocial.com/" target="_blank">Hope and Social</a> and who kindly contacted the other band members to make the request on my behalf.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-1977067411241651182012-04-13T09:38:00.000-07:002012-04-13T09:38:46.139-07:00Rethinking Depression, Virtual Book Tour<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006OGVTVS/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&tag=letcreabegi-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B006OGVTVS"><img border="0" class=" vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=B006OGVTVS&MarketPlace=GB&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=letcreabegi-21&ServiceVersion=20070822" /></a><img alt="" border="0" class=" vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=letcreabegi-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B006OGVTVS" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /><br />
Today is the day I welcome <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/ericmaisel" target="_blank">Eric Maisel</a> back to my blog again (well, technically speaking it wasn't this blog he visited last time but it was still my blog). Last time it was to <a href="http://creatinginthedark.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/long-time-reader-first-time-interviewer.html">talk to Eric about his book, The Van Gogh Blues</a>, and this time it's to share his latest book, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006OGVTVS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=letcreabegi-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B006OGVTVS">Rethinking Depression: How to Shed Mental Health Labels and Create Personal Meaning</a><img alt="" border="0" class=" vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=letcreabegi-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B006OGVTVS" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />.
<br />
<br />
If you have visited my blog in the last couple of weeks then you'll know that I've just emerged from chronic depression/a long-running existential crisis but back in February when I first purchased the Kindle version of <i>Rethinking Depression</i> I had barely accepted that I was depressed, let alone imagined that I would emerge from the darkness any time soon.<br />
<br />
Eric's latest book builds on the ground he explored in <i>The Van Gogh Blues</i> but it is not just a semantic restatement of those ideas, it challenges the very foundations that book was based on - <i>Rethinking Depression</i> feels to me like the work of someone who is running out of both time and patience with the world and is therefore determined to get their message across as clearly as possible to rouse an audience from their unquestioning slumber before it is too late for all of us. And Eric's message couldn't be any clearer or more provocative - in short, the long-standing trend towards defining sadness as depression and treating it as a medical disease serves only the purposes of the medical industry and not those of the patient. His aim is to "<i>point you in the direction of your own knowing</i>." and help the reader question whether depression really exists.<br />
<br />
Given that I had been diagnosed with depression and prescribed anti-depressants by my GP less than a month before I started reading <i>Rethinking Depression</i> you'll understand why Eric's assertion was a somewhat bitter pill for me to swallow. His words chimed deeply with my own knowing (as vague as that was) but at that very same moment I was putting my faith in modern medicine to provide me with a safety net while I continued working with my therapist to try and step away from the metaphorical cliff's edge that I found myself beside when I awoke every morning. To say that I was conflicted while reading <i>Rethinking Depression</i> would therefore be a massive understatement.<br />
<br />
Eric's argument isn't that a deep unrelenting melancholy doesn't exist but he offers some pretty persuasive arguments for why those feelings of despair and meaninglessness do not add themselves up to a medical condition.
What Eric seems to be aiming to do with his latest book is no less than achieve a monumental paradigm shift, one reader at a time. <i>Rethinking Depression</i> challenges the reader to enter into a conversation about the current state of the mental health industry and invites us to step up to the plate, stand still for a moment and decide to force our own life to mean something despite all of the barriers in our path. Although Eric doesn't offer all the answers, because only we can decide what makes life meaningful for us, he does offer some unflinching words of guidance to help with the journey:
<br />
<blockquote>
<i>"Decide to live until death wrests away your freedom."</i></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>"...create your life-purpose vision and then [...] do the best you can."</i></blockquote>
Eric's vision for the reader seems to be that they choose to fight the good fight, creating meaning in their own life day after day, year after year, moment to moment. To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes it requires us to do nothing less than get to the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity and to ignore the temptation to either exist in the mediocre, meaningless simplicity on this side of complexity or to lie down and try to make ourselves at home within the complexity itself. Now that I finally feel like I emerged from the chaotic, dark complexity that I made my home pretty much all of my adult life I am re-reading both <i>Rethinking Depression</i> and <i>The Van Gogh Blues</i> with new eyes and I can already report that the view from here makes it worth every step of the climb. I feel like I'll need to review both books again next month to do either of them the justice they deserve.<br />
<br />
You can see what other folks think about <i>Rethinking Depression</i> by <a href="http://ericmaisel.com/2011/09/24/current-attractions/" target="_blank">following the blog tour schedule on Eric Maisel's website</a>. <i>Rethinking Depression</i> is <a b006ogvtvs="" gp="" href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=" http:="" product="" ref="as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=letcreabegi-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B006OGVTVS"" www.amazon.co.uk=""></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006OGVTVS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=letcreabegi-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B006OGVTVS%22%3ERethinking%20Depression:%20How%20to%20Shed%20Mental%20Health%20Labels%20and%20Create%20Personal%20Meaning%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20alt=%22%22%20border=%220%22%20class=%22%20vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo%20vclserljrxvgsetgvnyo%22%20height=%221%22%20src=%22http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=letcreabegi-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B006OGVTVS%22%20style=%22border:%20none%20%21important;%20margin:%200px%20%21important;%22%20width=%221%22%20/%3E" target="_blank">available from Amazon in Kindle or paperback format if you'd like to enter into the conversation yourself</a>.<br />
<br />
NB: Any money that I make from the Amazon affiliate links in this blogpost will be donated directly to <a href="http://maytree.org.uk/" target="_blank">the Maytree Respite Centre</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-4921808126349479922012-04-12T12:51:00.005-07:002013-05-30T09:25:49.815-07:00Hope Still Shines for You<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz0_DQOJw429l4snKToFACSkEoqSynay9hmkzVyMSsglIyWJllulzsU2DdPWDbpVjzuwiB0ChBxrVkEGGQDS4kInbPvBuYA2EBfZJRqYkhaEtYbV_MfCYUHPhLiRxkCHRv4vohAUUt6GY/s1600/hope-still-shines-for-you-HH-instagram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz0_DQOJw429l4snKToFACSkEoqSynay9hmkzVyMSsglIyWJllulzsU2DdPWDbpVjzuwiB0ChBxrVkEGGQDS4kInbPvBuYA2EBfZJRqYkhaEtYbV_MfCYUHPhLiRxkCHRv4vohAUUt6GY/s400/hope-still-shines-for-you-HH-instagram.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I'm excited to announce the first track to be generously donated to <a href="http://letcreativitybegin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/saving-only-life-i-can.html" target="_blank">my 'Saving the Only Life I Can' project</a> - I first heard this track by Nicholas Peters last year when my friend <a href="http://www.artscollective.org.uk/" target="_blank">Katherine Jewkes</a> (who performs guest vocals on the tracks) tweeted about it. I loved 'Hope Still Shines for You' from the first time I listened to it but in recent months and weeks I found myself listening to it more often - The combination of Nicholas' lyrics and Katherine's ascendant vocalisations both comforted and uplifted me and with every listen I tried to internalise the lyrics to form a protective mantra as I fought my way through the darkness.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Through your pain and sadness, </i><br />
<i>Longing times of gladness, </i><br />
<i>Even through your darkness, </i><br />
<i>Hope still shines for you."</i></blockquote>
<br />
<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F21789517">
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<embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F21789517" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/nicholaspeters/hope-still-shines-for-you">Hope Still Shines For You</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/nicholaspeters">nicholaspeters</a><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrfnDOFS4Q5B4YPcXpVroiM_cxjpJx7wtM9viYatbpXULVkbZwWaTtft-dQYzH37-CTbPV5vAkhD3yDnozvy7Iy9atNq03E9rBlvSsslqoU1S7o8Gfw_kSD76-3RANadJWLGKHODlaOfY/s1600/Hope+Still+Shines+for+You+Artwork.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrfnDOFS4Q5B4YPcXpVroiM_cxjpJx7wtM9viYatbpXULVkbZwWaTtft-dQYzH37-CTbPV5vAkhD3yDnozvy7Iy9atNq03E9rBlvSsslqoU1S7o8Gfw_kSD76-3RANadJWLGKHODlaOfY/s400/Hope+Still+Shines+for+You+Artwork.JPG" width="397" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(c) Nicholas Peters - 'Hope Still Shines For You' cover art.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Nicholas is the first person I've approached to ask permission to use his track for this creative project and I'm hugely grateful to him for granting that permission so freely. I hope you like the track as much as I do - it has a sort of mournful yet angelic Monty Pythonesque edge to it and I love it more every time I listen to it. You can <a href="http://www.nicholaspeters.co.uk/index.php?p=1_18_Hope-Still-Shines-For-You" target="_blank">read the story behind the track</a> and listen to more of Nicholas' compositions on <a href="http://www.nicholaspeters.co.uk/" target="_blank">his website</a> or <a href="http://soundcloud.com/nicholaspeters" target="_blank">his SoundCloud page</a>.<br />
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Serendipitously, the cover art for 'Hope Still Shines for You' is very similar to one of my own self-portraits:<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/191967680/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="My Shadow Self by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="My Shadow Self" height="300" src="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/71/191967680_cb69c7ddd8_z.jpg?zz=1" width="400" /></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-69899702127578809962012-04-08T15:44:00.000-07:002013-05-30T09:26:07.519-07:00Saving the only life I can<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/2322737018/" title="the journey by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="the journey" height="640" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3034/2322737018_abf1c7ced6_z.jpg?zz=1" width="632" /></a>
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<br />
A few years ago I was introduced to the poetry of Mary Oliver during a creative workshop my friend <a href="http://wordsaucery.com/" target="_blank">Sophie Nicholls</a> was running - the poem Sophie shared with us was <a href="http://youtu.be/XnaP7ig69go?t=1m30s" target="_blank">Wild Geese</a> and I loved it. I looked up more of Mary Oliver's poetry and came across one that stopped me in my tracks: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNqSWiYWDaw" target="_blank">The Journey</a>. The whole poem is beautiful but it was the final two lines that made my bones vibrate and the words in those two lines have stayed very close by ever since:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"[...]<br />
determined to save<br />
the only life you could save."</blockquote>
For more than a year I've been thinking about doing a creative project inspired by those nine words and the time has finally arrived ... It is with great pride and delight that I announce my 'Saving the only life I can' project. Over the next 12 months I'll be gathering together a collection of songs, music, poetry and artwork. Some of it will be pieces that lifted my spirits in recent months and some of it will be things I've created as I tried to find my way out of the darkness. I'll also be creating original work and asking some of the talented folks who inspire me to contribute some new work to the project. On the 24th March 2013 I'll release a beautifully crafted, lovingly curated collection for sale and any money I make will be donated to the <a href="http://maytree.org.uk/" target="_blank">Maytree Respite Centre</a> and the <a href="http://www.thetukecentre.org.uk/" target="_blank">Tuke Centre</a>.<br />
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I'll release more details as the project takes shape and I'll be announcing my first confirmed contributor very soon.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-73890716168338246362012-04-04T06:38:00.000-07:002012-04-04T07:07:28.049-07:00We were blind and now we see<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/1074669942/" title="do not cut here ----------- by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="do not cut here -----------" height="640" src="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1154/1074669942_19942485b9_z.jpg" width="480" /></a> <br />
<br />
I've been looking back through the photos that I've uploaded to my Flickr account over the past six years and it's hard to believe that I couldn't see how deep and fast the riptides of depression were flowing within me ... the slideshow below features the photos that I now realise were quite obviously symptomatic of my often fragile state of mind:<br />
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The levels of self-deception, secrecy and concealment are troubling to say the least - no wonder depression is sometimes called the "<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jan/05/poetry" target="_blank">grinning madness</a>" and little wonder that I felt like I was wearing a mask all the time.<br />
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Anyhoo, moving swiftly on.... As a first step towards repaying my un-repayable debt of gratitude to the <a href="http://maytree.org.uk/" target="_blank">Maytree Respite Centre</a> and <a href="http://www.thetukecentre.org.uk/" target="_blank">the Tuke Centre</a> I've had an idea - If you like <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/" target="_blank">any of the photos within my Flickr Stream</a> then you can freely download, print off, re-use them ... the only catch is that in return you have to make a donation to either the Maytree or the Tuke Centre:<br />
<ul>
<li>The Maytree make this super-simple, <a href="http://www.maytree.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=31" target="_blank">you can just make a donation via their Just Giving page</a>.</li>
<li>For the Tuke Centre it's not quite as straightforward but they are a registered charity so you can<a href="http://www.thetukecentre.org.uk/contact-us.html" target="_blank"> just contact them to find out the easiest way to donate</a>.</li>
</ul>
I'm also planning a longer-term annual creative project to raise funds for both the Maytree and Tuke Centres and I'll be inviting you to contribute your creativity to that project as soon as I've got my head around how it will work :)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-41142066335595369332012-04-01T08:08:00.000-07:002012-04-01T08:45:26.152-07:00I have been leading a life of quiet desperationTwelve days ago I arrived on the doorstep of the <a href="http://maytree.org.uk/">Maytree Respite Centre</a> near Finsbury Park. Maytree is a charity that offers a 'sanctuary for the suicidal'. I don't quite know what I hoped for when I first contacted them but it felt like I was standing at the edge of an abyss without wings or a safety net to break my fall. My arrival at Maytree was the culmination of a 38 year journey during which I had slowly, almost imperceptibly, descended into a decade of chronic depression (varying from mild to severe). I didn't dare to dream it at the time but walking over the Maytree's threshold was the first step towards finally saving my own life. When I left the Maytree's warm embrace five days later I somehow emerged from the lead chrysalis that had nearly pulled me under, laid down my impenetrable battle-scarred armour and felt like I was heading home for the first time in 38 years.<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/6888337906/" title="Choose life. by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img alt="Choose life." height="598" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7092/6888337906_7e081ba870.jpg" width="800" /></a><br /><br />
Only half a dozen people knew where I was during those five days, my husband, my twin sister, one of my cousins, my best friend, my therapist and my boss. Only another half a dozen or so knew I was depressed, let alone that I had been fighting an epic, hidden battle with myself for my own survival. When I look back at my <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/tags/depression/">photography</a>, poetry, art and notebooks from that decade and beyond it's glaringly obvious that I was depressed but even when I finally saw my GP and was prescribed anti-depressants, at the end of last year, I still found it hard to accept that I was ill. <br />
<blockquote>
"Most [people] lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them" ~ Mis-quotation of a line from Henry David Thoreau's 'Walden' [<a href="http://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page">source</a>]</blockquote>
The first part of that line is from Thoreau and comes from Walden which was a manifesto for living simply. The full quote reads:<br />
<blockquote>
"The mass of [people] lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things." Henry David Thoreau [<a href="http://thoreau.eserver.org/">source</a>]</blockquote>
For most of my adult life I tried, and failed, to either fix myself, find myself or flee from myself but, to paraphrase Jon Kabat-Zinn, wherever I went, there I was and in the end I ran out of energy, stopped running from the insatiable <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost">hungry ghosts</a> haunting my mind and I did the only thing left to do - I faced myself.
With the last sliver of hope left inside me I hoped that a small shift would take place while I was at the Maytree - a shift that would keep me safe for a little longer while I continued the battle against my own thoughts. I have no way of explaining the total transformation that took place on my last day at the Maytree and I'm not sure I'll ever fully understand it but it was like waking up from a nightmare just as I was about to hit the ground. In February this year I wrote in my notebook: "my feet and eyes feel heavy as I drag my despair through the snow." However fast I ran, I couldn't get away from the darkness that had descended and the dark void felt like it was starting to surround me on all sides. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep until the snow covered my tracks and any sign that I had ever existed. I held tightly to any music and poetry that soothed my soul, if only for a second. I tried to memorise one of John O'Donohue's poems in the hope that it would come true if I recited it often enough: "I would love to live / Like a river flows / Carried by the surprise / Of its own unfolding." During my train journey home from London to York last Saturday I scribbled these words down in my notebook: "There's a river of kindness following me home." The next day I added these words on the same page: "it feels so amazing to be alive today."<br /><br />
I will never be able to fully repay the <a href="http://maytree.org.uk/">Maytree Respite Centre</a> or those of you who held me in your thoughts while I was there but I will spend the rest of my life breaking my own (and society's) silence around depression and suicide. My new goal in life is to be the poster-child for suicidal recovery and be a voice in the darkness for anyone who is fighting their own battle. At an existential level it's true that we are alone in life and death because we are the only ones who know what it is like to experience the weight of our thoughts and feelings but there are people out there who will walk beside you while you fight to save your own life - keep looking for those people and never give up hope that you'll find them ... they are probably already much closer than you can possibly believe.<br /><br />
This blogpost is just the first of what I'm hoping to share about the bewildering journey I've been on. Last week I did <a href="http://www.blogger.com/bettakultcha.com/2012/01/bettakultcha-york/">a BettaKultcha talk</a> about how the Maytree had helped me save my own life and I'll post the video of that talk (eeek!) as soon as it's available, then later this month I'll be <a href="http://ericmaisel.com/2011/09/24/current-attractions/">hosting Eric Maisel on my blog as part of his virtual book tour for Rethinking Depression</a>. In the meantime though, here are the slides (including the script that I used as the basis for my 5 minute talk):
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<div id="__ss_12206178" style="width: 477px;">
<b style="display: block; margin: 12px 0 4px;"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/iamhelenharrop/helen-harropbetta-kultcha" target="_blank" title="BettaKultcha Talk, York, March 2012">BettaKultcha Talk, York, March 2012</a></b> <iframe frameborder="0" height="510" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/12206178" width="477"></iframe> <br />
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View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/" target="_blank">documents</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/iamhelenharrop" target="_blank">iamhelenharrop</a> </div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-52959909356149564352011-10-25T09:14:00.000-07:002011-10-25T09:14:37.828-07:00Wanted: A creative manager and/or shadowy svengali<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A few months ago I came to the realisation that I need a helping hand to get done what I want to get done. After much umming and erring and some pleasant detours I'm ready to ask for that help ... If this is you then please get in touch:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
a) you <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/sets/72157606122345005/">love the art I create</a> and want to use your cheerleading/creative management skills to encourage me to make more and fly higher/deeper.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
b) you follow <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/iamcreative">what I say on twitter</a> with interest, curiousity, amusement and a large dose of forgiving patience.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
c) you are reasonably confident that you'll be able to tell the difference between when you need to prod / coax / trick me into taking the next step and when you need to simply hold back and wait for the tempestuous breezes of my creative enthusiasms and/or despairs to roll on by.</blockquote>
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If any of that applies to you then please do raise your hand or whisper in my ear and we can have a chat over coffee and cake, or wine and chocolate, or both of the above. My hope is that we'll find a way to work and play together 'in a spirit of mutual ambition' and that you'll get tangible benefits from working with me but that the promise of future ££ will not be the reason you want to embark on this unknown adventure. In the first instance I might be paying you in art / ideas / poetry / stories but that would hopefully be a short-term measure while we find our feet and wait for the music to start happening.<br />
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I'm particularly interested in hearing from anyone who wants to disruptively explore pay-what-you-wish, copyleft and self-publishing as methods of creative expression. If you have any questions then plonk them in the comments box below or give me a holler on twitter and I'll try to give a sensible answer :)<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1784682831882179882.post-88794351833039929182011-09-26T14:27:00.000-07:002011-09-26T14:46:23.483-07:00The Pay It Forward Art FandangoThe lovely <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/Corr_">Corinna Spencer</a> recently gifted me a small, but perfectly formed, piece of artwork as part of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward">pay it forward</a> art fandango that she was participating in. Here is the piece she sent me ... it was hard to take a photo of it without capturing anything too revealing < blushes ><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/6169442218/" title="Pay it Forward art by creating in the dark, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6173/6169442218_a2ee062df4.jpg" width="374" height="500" alt="Pay it Forward art"></a><br /><br />So now it's my turn to pay it forward. If you'd like me to send you a piece of artwork then leave a comment below or give me a shout on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/iamcreative">that there twitter</a>. The first five people to holler will get a small something sent to them, completely gratis. The only catch is that you then have to send five people a piece of art/doodle/scrawl/whatever.<br /><br />If you like the idea of getting art from me for free but feel lightheaded at the thought of having to send out some art yourself then there is another way ... ... ... < wait for it > .... ... ... yes, that's right, you can <a href="http://givebloodgetart.blogspot.com/">Give Blood, Get Art</a> instead. Let the art rush commence!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2