Purpose Of My Blog

I’ve been posting my mental well-being blogs for 6 months now, and new readers have joined along the way. So, this week, I thought I’d give you a reminder of the purpose of my blog. To give you a better idea of where my ideas have come from.

For most of my adult life, I have lived with debilitating mood swings. In order to maintain my own recovery and live with my mood fluctuations, I’ve developed my own well-being kit over the years.

This is what I call my manual of self-care, which consists of tools to help me stay well on a daily basis, create some level of balance in my life, and make healthy choices.

Daily nurture for what I call my three ‘S’s - my sanity, sobriety and serenity. A commitment to my own mental health and well-being.

For those of you who have read my book - ‘Wearing Red - One Woman’s Journey to Sanity’, you will know that my healing journey over the past 33 years (the length of my sobriety) has been recovering from the damage of childhood sexual abuse, alcohol addiction, compulsive overspending, and chronic self-doubt.

I now consider myself to be a reasonably balanced and sane person having recovered from the damage I experienced as a child and the damage I have inflicted upon myself as an adult.

Yet I still need the reminders in my mental well-being tool kit, on a regular basis to keep on an even keel. I experience strong emotions which are capable of knocking me off balance.

I know today that these feelings in themselves cannot harm me. It’s what I choose to do with these feelings, how I deal with them, that makes the difference. Sometimes I just have to get through the day knowing that tomorrow or the next day, the world will look different.

As Aldous Huxley said:

“Experience is not what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you”

We all have our individual journeys and different experiences – yet I know how much comfort I’ve found from writing and using the daily tools and

reminders that I’ve put together.  So, I hope that you too will find some comfort and courage from using them as a guide on your path.

In a nutshell, I write these weekly blog posts, as a practical resource, containing reflections, insights and tools on self-care. A way of offering support for those of you who, like me, want to:

·      stay afloat and well in these ever-changing times

·      manage mood swings

·      maintain your mental health and well-being

·      enrich the times when you are on an even keel

·      own the parts that aren’t shiny.

By following my posts you’ll be able to compile your own kit of everyday tools to help make the most of your mental health and well-being. My mantra for living well is ‘Do more of what works rather than what hurts’. 

Some of the posts that I use in my blog are contained in a briefer form in my book, ‘Wearing Red - One Woman’s Journey to Sanity’’, and some come from a book that I’m currently writing, working title: ‘Staying Afloat’, which will contain 365 days of reflections, insight and tools on self-care. You are the first to read them and as such, you become part of my writing journey.

The tools I share with you each week are those I’ve found to work best for me. When I use these daily prompts on a regular basis, they make a difference, and that’s the biggest recommendation I can give.

Pathway

Standing at the junction,
so many ways to tread.
The ultimate question
confronts me ahead…

‘Which one?’
I ask quietly,
eyes upward in hope.

The stars whisper
‘This one’
as they light up one path.

‘Shall I go then?’
I murmur
uncertain and scared.

They wink and remind me,
My heart knows the way,
As I step out in faith
without further delay.