‘Nothing prepares you for motherhood!’ I hear the wise woman say. ‘You’re never really ready for birth and beyond.’ I get the picture, that the magnificence of childbearing and motherhood is a learn-on-the-job experience. I’m the first to admit, nothing could have prepared me for drawing the short-straw of 8 months of ‘morning sickness’. But […]
Creative and expressive arts therapies have emerged from strength to strength throughout the mental health spectrum. This is a welcome emergence! Some may be familiar with the cathartic nature of transforming emotions through art – you would have to be reading from under a rock to not see how The BFA creative endeavour has facilitated my own evolution through suffering – […]
I was interviewed by Kate Milan from Melbourne’s 3CR 855am Community Radio, about my work as a mental health activist engaging with the community about prominent mental health issues. It was such a relief to speak to someone who shares the same vision for a mental health care system that honours the individual’s right to chose their […]
I was invited to speak at the gorgeous Sisters For Sisters fundraising event about current news from the Australian Suicide Prevention sector, storytelling from recent conversations, fact-finding and progressive perspectives that have inspired me since the National Suicide Prevention Conference, Perth 2014. This particular episode, Brothers in Our Arms, was hosted to show support for men in […]
You’ve got to move past the ‘fluffiness’ of heart and soul to recognise that social change occurs through love in action! My favouritism for Social Workers among all mental health professionals lends itself to their day-in-day-out, tireless work supporting the recovery journey of people experiencing mental health issues. Like mama’s milk to our society and rarely praised enough, […]
I’ve got a new perspective on suicide. I nabbed it from the National Suicide Prevention Conference. I reckon you’ll like it too. So the reality is that for some people suicide becomes a solution. It becomes a ‘way out’, an escape and end to intolerable pain. It holds a kind of morbid promise when our dreams reduce to […]
It’s a little known fact that I spend 25 hours a week in a Store Room – that’s half my full-time job, and it dawned on me today that I never talk to anyone about me and my special Store Room, yet in the last 12 months of inhabiting this space it’s become a lesser […]
So we all know suffering breeds in silence, right? And we know that one of the most silent forms of suffering is suicidality. Well, more so throughout history, because today there is a world out there of research, programs, support groups, direct care services, conferences, helplines and people with a lived experience of suicide, who are pooling together to […]
Dr Somé’s disconcerted face from under his little hat has looked my way everyday this week through Facebook messaging from on-the-pulse friends. How could I ignore a title: ‘What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital’? I didn’t know we still called them ‘mental hospitals’! And yet it seems our all-over-the-pulse friends from ‘Earth. We are one.‘ who publish a plethora […]
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama has a model of intimacy based on a willingness to open ourselves to many others, to family, friends and even strangers forming genuine deep bonds based on our common humanity. I doubt you need to be a Buddhist to understand this. In His Holiness’ book, ‘The Art of Happiness’, He […]
