Bad Plant Mama

My colleagues got me a fancy Magma sketchbook for my birthday, and I've been filling its pages with some speed. It's a revelation to me how quick sketching is compared to the labour of love that is embroidery.

I've been feeling a little glum this past week. First and foremost, I hold the weather responsible; it has been grey and drizzly most of the time.

A symptom of depression which I didn't expect and which I didn't experience before I entered the world of work was feeling constantly tired. It is increasingly difficult to get up in the morning; the thought that gets me through the day is the possibility of sleep soon.

There are other side effects; over the last few weeks my bedroom became what I can only describe as a "depression pit". It got to the stage where I knew there were things I needed to use in there somewhere, but where they were was another question, as was summoning the energy to find out. I didn't want to see friends (especially of an evening, when doing so would take me away from the bed base camp), yet felt intensely lonely.

This was by no means a very serious depression, only impinging slightly on my life, but I thought it was best to be mindful and act. I took a duvet day on Thursday, went back to bed for an hour or so, then tackled the detritus of my room, and felt considerably better.

My plants don't seem to be enjoying the dark days either; several are rather droopy. To turn this on its head and avoid depression-exacerbated feelings of guilt and inadequacy as a #plantmama, I did a little drawing in my sketchbook.

I might do a series of related drawings; this one could be a good fit for several zines in the works. For now though, it's back to embroidery.

Strength and Weakness

Yesterday was my twenty sixth birthday.

Birthdays can be difficult.

Not because I fear growing old, but because I have a tendency to look back. I consider the previous year and see how very little I have achieved, and, because I am a human and we tend to zero in on pain, how unhappy I was for parts of it.

I also had a slightly stressful week, combined with feeling quite burnt out.

However.

Yesterday evening we had a little soiree of sorts in the new studio I am sharing with three artist friends. We invited attendees to stitch "talking pillows", watched "The Pillow Book", and drank sake with cherry juice. We ate Japanese snacks and I wore my faded and threadbare kimono. We chatted and giggled.

And it was lovely.

It was perhaps the most unusual birthday party I've had, and will stay in my memory for quite some time.

Last year I was descending into a horrible depression around the time of my birthday, which wouldn't lift 'til early March.

Mid-late January can be a very bleak time. Post-Christmas, cash and energy is low, waistbands have expanded, it's the coldest it's likely to be all year, and, though the days are getting longer, it's not by very much at all. I think I, like many others, may suffer from a touch of the Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I've made a deal with myself, though; I'm tough. A lot of people might smirk at that, knowing, as I do, that I'm a bit of a doormat, I'm timid, insecure, needy (the catalogue of failings goes on and on...), but I am tough. I've got grit. I wouldn't still be here otherwise. I'm tenacious, and when I want something, I dig my heels in and get to work. I'm the little engine that could, and I laugh in the face of the spectre of mental illness.

Self-mythologising aside, I had a point here; I made a deal with myself that I wouldn't fall into a depression, I wouldn't have what seems to be an almost-annual late February/early March melt down (it always seems to be around the time of my father's birthday, poor man) and need to take time off work to recover.

I struck a bargain with myself that I was allowed to feel sad (I've had some disappointments lately) and I was allowed to express this, but I wasn't allowed to beat myself up about it too much. I still find myself beating myself up on a daily basis; that's just the way my wonky little mind works.

I have, however, been taking the time to congratulate myself too. Keeping an "achievements" journal coupled with daily tasks which I do not berate myself about not ticking off. Coupled with this is more girly forms of self care (read: lots of Lush from my bath bombs dealer best mate), and just chilling out a bit more about my limitations, or at the very least attempting to. Learning to enjoy my own company and not relying on others for my happiness so much, which is an achievement in itself.

When you've lived with mental illness for almost half your life, you get quite adept at taking care of yourself. Let's face it; the health care system won't (I can't help but smirk at the government's self-congratulatory move to pump a little money into mental health care when it has been cut disproportionately to even the NHS at large).

In two weeks I will have the fourth of six half an hour Cognitive Behavioural Therapy sessions in which I am only allowed to focus on one aspect of my illness, and in which I have been shown and told things I am already familiar with, having spent my entire adult life and most of my teens in contact with therapists. And this is the best a struggling NHS can offer; it's fast track, a (supposedly) six week waiting list as opposed to waiting up to eighteen months for the traditional route to NHS therapy. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is cost effective; it has fast-acting results. It's the best a bullied NHS can offer.

So you can see why those experiencing mental distress need to take matters into their own hands.

Telling myself I'm not allowed to be ill may sound counter-intuitive. I am trying to dupe myself. I am also trying to re-contextualise myself away from an ill person, which is a light which, wrongly or rightly, I have been cast in by mental health professionals, friends, family members, boyfriends, school, university, colleagues and employers, and myself.

It's akin to a practice suggested by therapists to patients who experience voice hearing; only allowing the voices to visit for a short period of time each day. It's also akin to some practices of (whisper the dreaded word) mindfulness, for example allowing experiences, feelings, thoughts and anxieties to wash over you like gentle whale song waves.

It makes me feel in control, and by making this decision, I feel I am able to make other decisions about my life.

I haven't "beaten" mental illness; I don't like the way in which illnesses, from madness to cancer, are characterised as video game bosses which need to be eliminated in order to win the game and ascend to a higher level in which illness does not touch one's life. Illness is a part of every person's life, and a part of life's rich tapestry.

At about nineteen or twenty a mental health professional asked me if I thought I'd be so creative if I wasn't mentally ill (quite a preposterous and infuriating hypothesis, but that's by the by). I said I'd rather be well; I would rather not live through hell and have to rebuild myself piece by piece and in an entirely new pattern.

I don't feel that way any more.

If I'd never been ill, if I'd never been a door away from death, I don't think I would have such an appreciation for, such a hunger for, such a love of life.

I would not be able to empathise with people who have struggled, coming from a comfortably white middle class background of immense privilege; even with people who were a little bit different, who were outsiders.

I am creative; I am not quite right in the head; I am sad; I am anxious. I am also impulsive and mature, messy and a perfectionist, a friend and a daughter and a sister and a worker and, and, and...

We are all many things to many different people, and most of all to ourselves. We are always learning and growing.

I now look on my long and illustrious history as a mental health patient through the lens of a Louise Bourgeois embroidery:

Most people have to take hallucinogens to experience some of the intense beauty I have experienced; I got it for free. As for the intense horror of some of the other experiences, once you have lived through them, nothing else can really touch you.

The wonderful thing about having to rebuild yourself piece by piece is that you can be whatever you want to be once you've forgiven yourself, once you've got over your shame. You are human Lego, and you realise that you can take many shapes and sizes over the course of your life, and from situation to situation.

This is not to say that you are a chameleon, a master of reinvention; you are not a Madonna or a David Bowie, fickle or characterless.

You merely do not have to be what was expected of you. You do not have to be what you expected of yourself. You can peel off the labels that were assigned to you; "shy child"; "unstable"; "uptight"; "high strung".

Once you let go of what is expected of you, you are free to live truly, and simply, and honestly.

I think I have very recently gotten over my shame. I am still yet to forgive myself; I know this because I take the blame even for things which have nothing to do with me. But I am getting there. I am beginning to accept my anxiety, my clingyness, my impossibly high standards for everyone and everything, my emotionality, my introspection and over-analysing as parts of me, and perhaps in some small way as strengths as well as weaknesses.

As an artist I have always been fascinated with notions of strength and weakness; the dichotomy of hard and soft. I want to prove that the two are not mutually exclusive, to myself and for my own peace of mind as much as to anyone else.

I am planning and hope to soon make a start on my first art quilt. I have some flying geese batik fat quarters, and I want to arrange them in a flying geese formation. The gaps I will fill with squares exploring a different derogatory phrase around softness/weakness; "She wouldn't say boo to a goose"; "Yella bellied"; "Big girl's blouse", with the last square featuring the embroidery below, proving, as in the film Amélie, that shy people would have the last laugh.

I'm sure these ideas will keep percolating and developing. I look forward to sharing the results with you as they appear.

Letting In The Light

I very much wanted to write a post for International Women's Day, but was at a bit of a loss until I was mentioned in a lovely tweet by my friends over at Daily Life Ltd.

This decided it for me; my International Women's Day blog post will be dedicated to the women I share the stage with at Daily Life Ltd's light box installation in the square outside Stratford Library, Letting In The Light, which is on until the end of the month if you fancy taking it in (it's worth it; these photographs don't do the scale or the luminance anywhere near justice).

I have to start with Bobby Baker, of course. Several of her diary drawings, completed between 1997 - 2008 and began while she was a day patient at a mental health centre.

This illuminated illustration particularly spoke to me. It's called The Daily Stream of Life, and features Bobby's mind as a river through which life flows, and she in life, sometimes in a rowing boat, sometimes in a canoe, sometimes in a fancier vessel altogether.

After a brief blip in my mental health due to an unfortunate series of circumstances, I feel I am bouncing back to a place where I can leisurely row along on the river of life, enjoying taking in the scenery and getting fresh air as I go.

Liz Atkin is an artist, advocate and speaker who raises awareness of, and promotes recovery from, compulsive skin picking through her art. The work featured in Letting In The Light, Lavish, transforms an illness which dominated Liz's life for more than twenty years into something really quite beautiful.

My favourite piece in the exhibition involved one of my very favourite things; word play.

By Jane McCormick, the piece has a back story that is well worth reading.

An honorary mention goes to male artist (gasp!) Anthony Woods who created a joyous ode to fashion icon Iris Apfel:

My piece is in great company:

I couldn't resist a quick selfie with my work. It was rather wind and rain swept as you may be able to tell; apologies for the quality of all the photos.

Letting In The Light is well worth the trip to a slightly unassuming corner of East London; brighten up your evening, and discover the truth behind Groucho Marx's quip, "Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light".

Abnormal Feeling of Wellbeing

I have a huge backlog of blog posts to get through, and so I thought I would begin with a new project I am undertaking. Abnormal Feeling of Wellbeing is a lighthearted body of work about serious mental illness. Consisting of lists and mantras, illustrated infamous quotations on and historical allusions to the mind and observations on the absurdity of everyday life, it takes its title from a listed possible side effect of the antipsychotic drug Olanzapine. Reading this, it struck me that an abnormal feeling of wellbeing was precisely what I was aiming for, giving that I had been feeling abnormally unwell for half my life by that point.

The resulting works expand the notion of side effects and are hand embroidered on to vintage linens, overbearingly florid, so lovely as to be abject, naive and intricate. They are comprised of skewed self portraits and acrobatic word play, always looking at the power implicit in language; how language signifies sickness without spelling it out and can at other times imprison, but ultimately, when put into the hands of the marginalised rather than decreed to them, liberates.  

The piece below is a playful allusion to the phrase "she wouldn't say boo to a goose". 

This piece, List of Possible Side Effects, explores the other, less discussed, unusual side effects of Olanzapine; the sensation of "Walking through treacle", "Reduced dreaming" and "Unexpectedly finding oneself near cake", rounded off with the very bizarre side effect I read on that Olanzapine pamphlet. I "cheated" somewhat with this piece, as a very talented embroiderer of yesteryear has worked some incredible stem and satin stitch on to the cotton. All that was left for me to do was embroider the text in variegated blue thread, and bullet point each side effect with red gems anchored with pink beads, to pick up the tones in the roses.

Freudian Slipstitch is the third in the series, and is currently under construction, ready for its protagonist to be placed in the scene. After that, perhaps a series of handkerchiefs. Onwards and upwards!

Pantone 4545

Apologies for the radio silence. I'm in a bit of a slump; too worn out to write. Too worn out to do much of anything; I have lots of ideas but no energy to put them into practice.

Luckily it's only thirteen days until I'm off to Scandinavia for what feels like a very necessary holiday (the number of days to count down feels most portentous!)

I have been able to do a little cutting and sticking in my visual diary, however; the cheat's route to creativity. There are some old drawings of mine (the first two pages) and some new ones by my friend Kat which she illustrated my birthday present wrappings with (the last two pages).

"Broken but happy" was the result I was given from one of those silly Facebook analyser/fortune teller apps which supposedly compromise your online security. It feels apt; I am a relentlessly optimistic depressive, at least, if an exhausted one. The Pantone postcard which is its neighbour, with its fetching shade of vomit blancmange, encapsulates depression for me; all is acrid and beige, the tumble weeds roll past your window, we're in Kansas forever more Toto, and there will never be any colour.

That being said, as an optimist, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am seeing a very kind and incisive CBT therapist and trying to get on with things as best I can. I think I need a big yet reachable goal to work towards to give me a sense of purpose/calling. My big goal for 2016 was to have a solo exhibition, but that feels almost unimaginable at present. Perhaps a few months down the line things will be looking a bit brighter. Here's hoping!

Pining Potion

I must admit, with the end of 2015 rapidly approaching, I am looking forward to having my Sundays back. Not because I have better things to do with them than create #secretsofselfpreservation potions, but because I'm itching to get started with a new project (or projects). More on that later, but in that spirit (sort of), this week's potion is named Pining Potion; that is, if you can pine for something which will occur in the future?

The diary element this week is a sprig of needles from our obliging Christmas tree which has not yet been brought in from the garden; I helped decorate Pip's yesterday whilst we listened to Carols from King's. 

Different types of strength have come up in conversation a few times this week; in the context of brains Vs brawn, stereotypical gender roles, youthful machismo Vs mature responsibility. So this week's #secretsofselfpreservation potion reads "Strength and softness are not mutually exclusive." Something I think very much applies to me, and all of us.

Remember you can get involved too, via the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation, by writing about a simple way you plan to, or already do, take care of yourself. Alternatively, you can create your own embroidered (or written on paper) potion - just remember to include the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation along with your snaps of it.

Owning Your Okness Potion

Perhaps my biggest flaw is my lack of willingness to compromise. I like things the way I like them, and I have a tendency to be all or nothing; if things are almost perfect, but not quite, I'm prone to pack it all in. At my worst I remind myself of the titular character from Kissing Jessica Stein; so terrified of things not being Perfect that she misses out on things being Quite Good.

I have particularly been feeling this way lately, but if I think about it I must concede that things actually are Quite Good. "Perfection is unattainable", as I embroidered on to ribbon for this week's #secretsofselfpreservation potion. I really want to remember that, and not judge myself so harshly, or at all, for not reaching the impossible.

As the ingredients to go alongside this mantra, I have included 25p, simply because after our date yesterday my lovely boyfriend treated me to a rabbit themed mug for that price when we wandered into the local Sally Army. I'm nuts for bunnies, my favourite mug he got me some years ago tragically broke, and it was the kind of tiny gesture which makes me very happy.

Our date was a trip to the Bob and Roberta Smith exhibition at the William Morris Gallery followed by coffee and cake. I have borrowed from Bob and Roberta's visual vocabulary, using a colour combination and font for the mantra which he frequently uses in his signs and placards.

The potion's title is Owning Your Okness Potion, a reference to a Simpsons episode in which Homer reads a pamphlet by that name.

 Remember you can get involved too, via the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation, by writing about a simple way you plan to, or already do, take care of yourself. Alternatively, you can create your own embroidered (or written on paper) potion - just remember to include the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation along with your snaps of it.

O.K. O.J. Potion

I'm not very good at living in the moment. I have a very noisy and often unhelpful mind that, when I am trying to concentrate on doing the task at hand to the best of my ability, has a tendency to say "Remember when you were doing [completely unrelated thing] and failed utterly at it?" or agonise over whether I will be up to doing the task at hand next week, or fixate on the seeming improbability of ever moving out of my parents' house. Welcome, my friends, to pervasive anxiety.

So, I would like to live in the moment a little more, and in the rare instances when I am able to, it is sheer bliss. It was that way during the two sessions of paper-making I led with young people at work over the past couple of weeks. I was completely invested and engrossed in introducing the young people to a new and creative experience, and buoyed up by their enthusiasm. Fingers crossed there will be similar results next time I lead a creative activity with them!

That's why this week's #secretsofselfpreservation potion reads "Be present." Not letting it all pass me by in a tangle of worry.

Some of the paper I made is included too, embedded with sequins and sparkling thread.

The potion's title is "O.K. O.J. Potion" as the bottle is a relic from the Sixties when orange drink was delivered in glass bottles direct to door alongside pints of milk. From the way it is described, I would guess this "orange drink" was full of E numbers rather than being a more wholesome orange juice, but it still has a perkiness about it that speaks of hope and fresh beginnings. The drink was marketed under the name SuKie SunKap, with a little cartoon orange lady, which is about as perky as you can get. It reminds me to savour the moment and the little things, such as simply really enjoying a glass of juice first thing in the morning.

Remember you can get involved too, via the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation, by writing about a simple way you plan to, or already do, take care of yourself. Alternatively, you can create your own embroidered (or written on paper) potion - just remember to include the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation along with your snaps of it.

Graft Draught Potion

I am beginning to feel more hopeful about my future. It seems that whenever I'm beginning to feel a lull in my freelance arts work, I get contacted about a fantastic opportunity, and that's without seeking them out myself, which I am beginning to do more of. My "night job" may not be paying the bills yet, but I feel immensely privileged to be able to earn some money doing what I love.

The lull also allowed me some time to work on personal projects, which has been great fun. However industrious the week has been, though, I always round it off with a #secretsofselfpreservation potion. Last week, prompted by fortune cookies handed out at the end of my aunt's 50th birthday celebrations on Sunday, I was reminded of my favourite cookie fortune; "The harder you work, the luckier you will get".

So Week Forty Four's #secretsofselfpreservation potion reads "Spit, polish and elbow grease gets things done." A reminder to work hard, accompanied by a feather from my Halloween costume (I was Tippi Hedren in The Birds) as a reminder to also let my hair down from time to time.

Remember you can get involved too, via the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation, by writing about a simple way you plan to, or already do, take care of yourself. Alternatively, you can create your own embroidered (or written on paper) potion - just remember to include the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation along with your snaps of it.

Drawing Strength Potion

 This week's #secretsofselfpreservation potion follows on from thoughts last week. I am still drawing, sketching every other day, and finding I am not as hopeless at it as I thought (although perhaps still slightly hopeless... practise makes better!)

I am doubting myself ever so slightly less than I have done of late. So, the stitching this week reads "Have more faith in your abilities". This applies to every area of life; work; friendships; juggling swords. My dyspraxia aside, I feel more comfortable in my own skin, more sure of myself, and more ready to try doing the things I feel trepidatious about, but I know either must be done or I desperately want to do. The peachy pencil represents conquering my fears and proving myself to the only person I need to prove myself to; me.

Remember you can get involved too, via the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation, by writing about a simple way you plan to, or already do, take care of yourself. Alternatively, you can create your own embroidered (or written on paper) potion - just remember to include the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation along with your snaps of it.

Dumpling Days Potion

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that food looms large in my life. This time of year heralds plentiful supply of my favourite food group; stodge. Realising this always reminds me of an idyllic autumn afternoon I spent with my Mum in Epping Forest, hunting for fungus and crunching the fallen leaves. I mentioned that the change of the seasons augured the cooking of my favourite stodge, stew and dumplings (mentioned in the previous post). "Yes" my mother said; "It definitely feels like a dumpling day."

It is now that time of year once more; dumpling days are here again. Hence this week's potion is named Dumpling Days Potion; my particular brand of salad days.

This week's diaristic element is a scrap from one of Daily Life Ltd's illustrated coasters (don't worry, I have several) which succinctly expresses my views on dumplings. The embroidered words on the autumnal ribbon may seem unrelated, but as I mentioned in last week's potion post, I am feeling much brighter than I have of late over the past few weeks. So the embroidery reads "Yes you can", which is not particularly meant as an Obama reference, more a simple and impactful affirmation for me to always bear in mind, and a reminder for you, too, should you need it.

Remember you can get involved too, via the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation, by writing about a simple way you plan to, or already do, take care of yourself. Alternatively, you can create your own embroidered (or written on paper) potion - just remember to include the hashtag #secretsofselfpreservation along with your snaps of it.

World Mental Health Day: Thoughts on the Dragon Cafe and Bobby Baker's Diary Drawings

In the run up to World Mental Health Day, I have been reflecting on my visit on Monday to the most extraordinary place. The Dragon Cafe is the UK's first mental health cafe, "a relaxing cafe and imaginative space, open to all." They certainly got the relaxing part right. It immediately put me on a level playing field, where I could be open about myself without judgement, and have a laugh with the like-minded. Perhaps surprisingly to the uninitiated, the Cafe was a hive of activity; Tai-Chi, gardening, filming of conversations about "re-covered" chairs, dance, and a workshop with the wonderful Daily Life Ltd (and more) featured in the few hours I was there. The food was delicious and the volunteers big-hearted. I spent my time drawing a big bowl of stew and dumplings, to explore cultural identity and heritage through sharing an illustrated feast on a white paper tablecloth with many others at Daily Life's workshop. The conversations were as warming as the satisfying stodge I drew on the paper.

My rather paltry (and unfinished) offerings to the table, alongside more delectable dishes

I spent several blissed out hours nattering away with Daily Life, until it was time for a "one-man play" which gave voice to one of the re-upholstered chairs. Referencing everyone from Blake to Bob Marley, the wordsmith's generous spirit was infectious, and he received riotous applause and laughter.

Bobby Baker of Daily Life Ltd, who I am beginning to think of as a punk rock fairy godmother, gave an illuminating talk on the Diary Drawings she drew first daily, then weekly, whilst a patient at a mental health day hospital. 

I had more than one moment of something more than empathy whilst listening to Bobby and looking at her drawings. Recognition; realisation that I wasn't the only one, that I perhaps wasn't as singularly and hopelessly mad as I had previously thought.

Two of Bobby's Diary Drawings; one portraying her time of weeping tidal waves of tears (another thing we have in common) and another asking how many hats can one woman wear?

Two drawings in particular led to this realisation; the first a drawing of Bobby's skin lifting away from her face like a mask, to reveal a demonic skull beneath. Bobby had shown this drawing to a mental health professional to try to explain her desperation; to seek help. It had not had the expected effect. The mental health professional asked for a copy. "I know a lot of people who feel like this" he said.

The second was perhaps more distressing. A distraught Bobby wept blood from her eyes, mouth and nose. Blood was something she had hallucinated frequently during her illness, she told us.

Aside from my immediate family and medical professionals, I have never (up 'til now) told anyone that I hallucinated blood when I was ill. Buckets of the stuff. Everywhere. I won't go into particularly grisly details, but suffice to say, it was not unlike the lift scene in The Shining. For someone who faints during blood tests and once had to go and lie down in a darkened room after reading a passage in The Bell Jar about self harm, it wasn't the most pleasant experience.

Bobby may feel she had her public "outing" via her Diary Drawings thrust upon her, but she could have said no. And as her son gruffly said when she consulted him about the matter, "It's got to be done, Mum." Showing the world at large how monstrous you feel beneath your exterior, exposing that vulnerability, is an act of extreme bravery. But we are not in fact monstrous. We have had monstrous things happen to us.

That's why I wanted to write about my psychotic symptoms (the hallucinations, the delusions) today. Because, aside from the occasional slight whiff of stiff-upper-lip-pull-up-your-bootstraps-ism when I am open about anxiety and depression, I do feel that society at large is beginning to understand and accept these illnesses. But mention that you have heard or seen things that others don't, or have had, as the mental health literature politely puts it, "unusual beliefs", and be prepared to brace yourself for the reaction.

If you have these symptoms, you have crossed over from being "run-down", from "having a lot on", from being "sensitive" or "over-tired" or "angsty". Congratulations, you are 100% genuine, prime cut bonkers. Even up to the middle of the last century, schizophrenia was classed as a degenerative illness, and this stigma still looms spectrally in the background. What comes into your mind when you read the word schizophrenic or psychotic? An unkempt vagrant moving erratically and mumbling to themselves? I would hope by this point we have moved beyond the facile stereotypes of mad axe murderers, although as recently as 2013 supermarkets were peddling "mental patient Halloween costumes" at this time of year.

How about a young woman with a first class honours degree, holding down a job, taking on self employed work, in a committed relationship and surrounded by friends, family, and love? Or an artist with a thirty year career, director of an Arts Council national portfolio organisation, who tours and exhibits internationally is one of the most patient and generous souls you could ever meet, and similarly has a whole host of family and friends who cherish her?

I'll admit, as Bobby said of herself, I am incredibly, incredibly lucky. Not everyone has back-up; people who love them and will fight for them. Which is why it is so important that we all fight for them. For all of us who have been touched by mental illness. Because there is no them and us; there's only us.

Please allow me, if it won't ring the alarm bells that I'm having one of my "funny turns", the liberty to see into the future. I can see a day, and it's not too far off, when the stigma is gone. When we have killed the most insidious and inextricably woven in part of mental illness; stigma, the real monster.