52 Tools Available For Your Own Kit
This week I’m celebrating 52 weeks - an entire year - of writing this mental well-being blog. I am above excited.
This means that there are fifty-two tools for you to choose from to create your own mental health tool kit. They’re all available on the blog pages of my website. Choose what works for you.
I’d love to hear which ones are your favourites and how they’ve helped you in staying afloat.
Lots of people now read my blog and inform me of the valuable support my tips have given them. To sustain my own recovery and live with my mood fluctuations, I’ve developed my own well-being tool kit over the years, which I share in my weekly blogs.
I’m sure that some of my newer followers wonder who exactly I am to be offering these well-being tools.
So, I’ve decided to use my 52nd blog to tell/remind you about myself. Hopefully, to reaffirm your faith in my credentials to be offering myself as a guide to staying afloat mentally and emotionally.
I’m Eva Melissa Roshan, a red-headed writer, poet and author of my first published book, ‘Wearing Red- One Woman’s Journey to Sanity.’
Let’s start with four qualities which illuminate who I am as a person:
1. I am a courageous survivor of childhood sexual abuse, addiction and extreme mood swings, who has transcended my past, regardless of the odds stacked against me, reclaiming my sanity in the process.
2. I have literally chosen my own identity by re-naming myself in a deeply empowering and self-honouring way.
3. I am a powerful and capable woman - a professional in my own right - who has refused to be defined by the things that happened to me in my past.
4. I am passionate about changing mental health attitudes and reducing the stigma associated with sexual abuse and addiction.
As a child I was sexually abused by my father for many years. As an adult I experienced alcohol and debt addiction, living with bi-polar mood swings.
And most important of all, I found the courage and wisdom to overcome all of this and forge a new, thriving life for myself.
The highest honour I gave myself was to re-assign my own identity in an empowering, uplifting way by changing all my names by deed poll. I re-invented myself to cut the ties with my past, saying goodbye to ‘Carol Ann Temple-Smith,’ as I’d been named at birth.
My Chippewa ancestors would have been proud of me, as they had a tradition of re-naming themselves at important transitional life stages. My great, great grandmother was the daughter of a Chippewa Chief, who married an English trader who ran salt boats to America.
I took time choosing my new name ‘Eva Melissa Roshan.’ This was to be a significant transition in my life and deserved careful thought. Each name holds a special significance for me.
I celebrated the significance of this change in my life, by having a special ritual naming ceremony at Midsummer, 20th June 2004, to let go of being Carol and all that she had been through, welcoming in the birth of Eva, with a selection of special women friends and husband Jonny.
I gifted myself a new identity in a powerful way, claiming all the parts of myself and owning the parts that aren’t shiny. I have become a whole person and writing my book has been an integral part of this process.
I wrote my book, ‘Wearing Red’ to give a candid account of my own experiences, in order to support others, to show that it is possible to survive tragic circumstances, to come out the other side, and create a life of integrity, dignity and self-respect.
As a person who loves wearing brightly coloured clothes, I find that wearing red helps me walk tall and feel ok in my own skin. The colour fuels my energy and vitality, lifting my spirits. Hence the title of my book.
Today I have become fully defined by who I am, not by my past experiences.
The obstacles I have overcome have provided me with intuitive awareness as to what helps maintain mental health balance and well-being.
My aim is to become an ambassador working with others to change mental health discrimination and help shift attitudes towards sexual abuse.
My story is about the possibility for change. An act of hope and empowerment. If this helps others find a way through their darkness, then I have achieved a goal.
Eva Melissa Roshan, Author
My book ‘Wearing Red, One Woman’s Journey to Sanity’ is available from