Lets talk........ Mental Health This article was originally going to take a very different direction. The subject was supposed to be Covid, lockdown and the inevitable rising crisis in mental health, but no matter how I tried to put it together, it just wasn’t happening. I have always prided myself on being able to write about most things, even stuff I am not very knowledgeable on. Google is most definitely my friend and has proven invaluable when it comes to researching unfamiliar subjects. For some unknown reason though, I was uninspired, flat and unable to focus on what I wanted to put on paper. That is, until this morning. This morning, I was lying in bed with a caramel macchiato, (thank goodness for Tassimo!), with Grace and Frankie on the telly in the background whilst I scrolled through facebook. As with most facebook scrolling, I wasn’t really paying any attention to what I was looking at. It was the usual adverts, pointless memes and photos of peoples’ breakfasts, (I am ashamed to say I was one of those who put a photo of my breakfast on there on Saturday), when suddenly, I was stopped in my tracks by a terrifying statement. ‘It is projected that by 2030, mental health problems, (particularly depression), will be the leading cause of mortality and morbidity globally.’(www.mentalhealth.org.uk) It was like a slap in the face. The sudden realisation that I could throw facts, figures and anything else I liked at you, but it wouldn’t really make any difference was staggering. You see, I know this intimately. I have spent most of my adult life struggling with mental health and what I know is that all the facts and figures and attempts at help make no difference when you are in the throes of an anxiety attack or desperately trying to drag yourself out of bed and all you want to do is pull the cover over your head and shut the world out. The rising crisis is incredibly personal to everyone who suffers, and even with all the changes that have been made around the subject of mental health, it is an incredibly lonely and debilitating way of living. We still don’t talk about it enough, so today, I want to start a conversation that really matters. To do that, I am going to share a little bit about me, and how mental health issues have impacted my life. I’m Rebecca and I have lived most of my adult life with chronic anxiety, exhausting periods of depression and more recently, PTSD related anxiety. I’m learning with each day that passes that it's important that we talk openly about our mental health not just for ourselves, but so others know that they can talk too. This is my story...... My mental health issues began at around 14 years old. As with most teens, puberty kicks in, creating immense mood swings and an inability to cope with even the most basic of situations without turning them into a huge drama. For a long time, I assumed that the issues I experienced were just part and parcel of the atypical teenage angst we all deal with, but as I headed towards my early twenties and the birth of my first child, I began to realise that those feelings of despair, anxiety, panic and low mood were no longer just caused by me being overly hormonal, but were actually symptoms of something deeper. At that time, as many people in their 40’s and older will remember, mental health was something that generally wasn’t talked about. It was considered inappropriate and would leave people quite uncomfortable. We were at the cusp of change in how openly people discussed their mental health, but we were still part of the generation of the stiff upper lip - keep calm, keep stum and bury it because nobody really wants you to talk about it. I had an amazing family but was never in a position where I wanted to bring them in, not because I didn’t think they would listen but because like most of us who suffer with these issues, we don’t want to burden anyone else with them. We believe we can hide them and that maybe, if we do, they’ll go away on their own and even if they don’t, we can manage them better if we don’t say the words out loud. They are our cross to bear and the longer we hold them tight to our chests, the more difficult it becomes to open your mouth and say those three little words – I need help. Mine took its first really serious tumble after the birth of my first child. I had lost a baby at 23 weeks and within 8 weeks, was pregnant again. I hadn’t processed the loss of the first baby and was unprepared for the emotional toll carrying another child would take. I went from exquisite highs of ecstatic happiness to devastating lows that impacted every step of my pregnancy. The ensuing anxiety and fear that was a direct result of the loss took its toll, and I developed postnatal depression after his birth which left me heavily medicated and unable to bond initially with my new baby. This encapsulated already serious doubts about my abilities as a new mother, and still has a direct effect on my confidence as a parent today, albeit nowhere near as seriously as it did then. I went on to have another child 9 years later, and whilst this pregnancy was a very different one emotionally, due to concerns around his growth and then the introduction of an ICU crib during his birth, I once again developed postnatal depression and found myself medicated, but this time with a doctor who took the situation a little more seriously and put me forward for counselling. Counselling is a very personal thing. If the individual in question isn’t right, it's unlikely to work, and unfortunately for me, my first experience of counselling was not a positive one in the sense that I struggled to connect with my counsellor. She was a lovely woman, and I believe a very competent counsellor, but we just didn’t connect in the way that I needed. I shut back down again, put my walls back up and continued to pretend that everything was fine whilst I was in front of people. Unless you have suffered with depression or anxiety, it's difficult to really explain how it feels. For me, it was and still can be debilitating. For those who have never experienced anxiety, when an anxiety attack hits, the ensuing panic is horrific. I would feel pain shooting through my chest, experience palpitations and spent several occasions in my twenties hooked up to a heart monitor at the hospital before it was formally diagnosed as anxiety related. My skin crawls as if it's covered with thousands of tiny creatures and I can feel heat emanating from underneath it, as if my insides are on fire. I hear my heart beating in my ear like a drum, the vibrations as intrusive as the sound and my head begins to pound not with pain but with the beat of my heart. The desperation is manic and completely disabling and the need to get away from wherever I am at that moment is immediate and all consuming. Anxiety also manifests itself as an uncontrollable anger at times for me, again based in complete and total fear. It's difficult to recognise immediately, but when you have lived with it as long as I have, you begin to recognise the beginning of it, and you put coping mechanisms in place to help you manage it as best you can. Depression hits me completely differently. Whilst anxiety was an almost temporarily manic state of being, depression was completely the opposite. It would start with low mood, and over a period of a few weeks I would sink until I hit the point where something as simple as cooking a meal became almost impossible. I am unmotivated, physically and emotionally exhausted, and couldn’t be bothered to do anything. Dishes can sit for several days, my hair will be scraped back into a bobble, and I come in from work, turn the telly on and don’t move to do anything other than go to the bathroom. Even then, I hold it as long as I can because the energy to move is almost too much. At my lowest point, I didn’t leave bed for a week. I couldn’t see the point. Other than drinking water, I lay and looked at my bedroom wall, not even having the energy to cry. I don’t say this for sympathy but because for those who haven’t experienced mental illness, it's very difficult to comprehend the depths of its hold and just how hard it is to pull yourself away from it. It becomes an almost comforting space in its familiarity. The pain is like an old friend and it's easier to embrace it and disappear into the darkness than it is to fight it. The overwhelming urge to lay down and let it completely envelop you in its entirety is paralyzing. The energy required to fight it is beyond anything you can imagine and takes time to develop. I have had more occasions than I care to count where I have finally had to give myself a metaphorical kick up the ass and drag myself up or I knew I would never leave my bed. I sometimes wonder if I didn’t have my kids around if I would have just succumbed to it. Having my children has been a lifesaver for me because I have had to get on with it even when all I could think about was giving up. They have saved my life more times than I can say. For years, I have bounced between doing okay and then spiralling, usually as a direct result of external influences that I have not been able to control. Moving forward to today, I spent the last 18 months controlling my anxiety and depression with meditation, exercise, healthy eating and focussing on the right things. Unfortunately, those coping mechanisms stopped working and around 8 weeks ago, I found myself in the doctor's office again, shaking and crying and telling him I desperately didn’t want to go back onto medication but that I couldn’t manage it anymore. I had lost control. The thing is, we don’t like to talk about the need for medication. I am the first one to avoid medication. I believe that a lot of things can be cured by exercise, diet, focus and lifestyle changes, but there is always a point at which you have to look seriously at the situation and say – ‘I cannot do this alone.’ The right thing for me at that moment was medication. It has allowed me to get everything back to a more balanced state and gives me the support that I need to get through each day whilst I work through the rest of the issues. Even now, with everything we know and understand, there is a degree of ridicule attached to people who take medication for mental health issues. An aura of shame is still attached to admitting that you cannot cope on your own. For all that we have come forward leaps and bounds in the way we approach mental health, we are still almost prehistoric in the way we talk about it day to day. This makes asking for help when you are suffering extremely difficult. The first issue is admitting that there is a problem because in today's world, why should there be? We have more than we have ever had and yet we are more disconnected from each other and society than we have ever been. We are on the cusp of the biggest mental health crisis the world has ever seen and we still refuse to deal with it in the right way. We refuse to open up and share our stories and yet, 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health disorder in their lifetime, and 1 in 6 reports to the Doctor with a mental health disorder every week in the UK. In 2022, over 703,000 people worldwide were recorded as having taken their own life. In the UK, around 115 people die by their own hand every week and 75% of those are male. Even before the effects on mental health of lockdown and covid, we were seeing an almost apocalyptic rise in mental health issues impacting on every aspect of life for those who were suffering. The most debilitating element of this is the feeling that you cannot and should not talk about it and the worst feeling comes from knowing that someone that you care about is suffering in silence. Just think, how would you feeling losing a family member because you suspected they were struggling, but you didn’t ask because you were worried about embarrassing them or yourself? It's time to start those conversations, however uncomfortable or difficult they might be because you being uncomfortable is nothing compared to how difficult and desperately lonely your loved one's life may actually be. Even if you don’t suspect there’s a problem, creating an environment that is open to the conversation is a huge step forward and can be the difference between someone surviving, and someone giving up. My name is Rebecca and I have mental health issues. I live with them every day and finally have begun to accept that that’s okay. They are part of who I am, and they always will be but with every day, I get stronger and more able to cope with what life throws at me. It can make things tough, but it's also gives me an empathy and heart that many people lack. I am me and I am enough just the way I am. I would love to hear your story. Until next time.........

On Wednesday night we had our first full moon of the Spring, formally known as the Pink Moon. From a purely astrological point of view, the first full moon of the spring takes place during the cardinal air sign of Libra and as my fellow Librans will tell you, that means it's all about balance, harmony and interdependence. Its appearance during Libra means that April brings a greater need for socialisation and connection with others which, if you think about it, is quite in keeping with what naturally happens at the beginning of the season. Warmer, lighter nights bring us yawning and stretching out of hibernation and give us a gentle nudge towards peopling! (I have no idea if that is a real word but it sure as hell is now!) The pink moon also represents the beginning of blossoming flowers everywhere. For me, this years pink moon brought something completely different, totally new and pretty bloody fantastic! (insert excited face emoji here!) I had my very first pink moon dip in the North Sea at Blyth. Some refer to it as wild swimming, although I didn’t really manage much swimming, but it was one of the most incredible experiences of my adult life! There is a plethora of research that shouts about the health benefits of this practice, and it's getting more and more popular as time goes on. I’ve always been a paddler but the thought of setting foot in the freezing cold North Sea at 8pm on a rainy April evening was not something that I had ever considered. As much as I never say no to a challenge, this just seemed like utter craziness to me. What I have noticed over the last few months though was just how many people are doing this. I was at the beach in January watching people 30 years older than me wandering into the sea to wild swim. It was –2 degrees on the shore and yet they were coming out with smiles on their faces. The more I saw this, the more I realised that there had to be something to it. Throw my crazy Blyth Bluetit’s friend Katie into the mix, and it was always going to happen. It was just a matter of when! So, as I stood on the darkening shore listening to the roar of the waves, trying to get changed into my swimming costume and questioning every one of the life choices that had brought me to this specific moment, I realised I had two options. I could bail and probably regret it, or I could woman up, (yes, you read that right), and just walk my tush into that freezing cold water, hope to high heaven that there wasn’t some random hungry great white shark that had gotten lost on its way to somewhere else, and suck up the experience. After all, you only live once so you gotta go big, or you gotta go home! As the six of us crazy ladies began to head towards the crashing waves, my heart was pounding in my chest. The beach has always been my spiritual home - somewhere I go to ground myself and figure things out when problems hit, but I never go in the sea now other than to paddle. As kids, we were in all the time until I watched Jaws. Since then, I have never gone deeper than my ankles, so this was not just me fighting the urge to avoid hypothermia, but also a fight against a fear that has crippled me for years. Stephen Spielberg has a lot to answer for! That first step into the waves was excruciatingly cold but by that point, I was committed and there was no way I was going to be the only one not to go right in! I have a reputation as a bad ass to keep up you know 😉 The strange thing was, the further in we went, the less I began to feel the cold. By the time we had gotten to our waists, I was feeling incredible. We spent around 20 minutes in there before we finally decided it was probably about time to get out. Physically, I felt fantastic but what I hadn’t expected was the mental lift. As I mentioned before, there is a plethora of research now that confirms the benefits of wild swimming and cold-water therapies for both physical and mental health, but in the space of 20 minutes, I went from having had a difficult week to not caring because I felt ecstatic. I had the most incredible buzz, and I couldn’t stop smiling to the point that my jaw hurt when I got up the next morning. I haven’t felt that happy in a while! Not only was I grinning like the village idiot, but I had movement in my right side without pain. I have arthritis that affects me quite badly at times, but for the first time in a while, there was no pain and no stiffness at all for a good while after. It allowed me a range of movement that I regularly struggle with, and my body felt 20 years younger. On top of that, I officially became a bluetit with a badge and everything! If I’m honest, if there’s a badge involved, you can pretty much get me to agree to anything! 😛 In all seriousness though, I cannot recommend this enough. It was a spiritual, meditative experience that allows you to disconnect from whatever is going on because in the water, you have to focus on the now. You’re focused on breathing, the temperature, the feel of the sea. It takes away the worries and the stress of what is going on outside and allows you to just be in the moment. This is something that in today's world we all need more of, and its right there, free to whoever wants to take advantage of it. Until next time........ #wildswim #wildswimming #outdoorswimming #coldwaterswimming #outdoorswimmingsociety #wildswimminguk #sharetheswimlove #swimwildandfree #openwaterswimming #coldwater #seaswimming #swimwild #swimming #wildswimmer #outdoorswimmer #swim #getoutside #openwaterswim #nature #coldwatertherapy #seaswim #openwater #adventure #coldwaterswim #wonderfulwildwomen #vitaminsea #loveswimming #outdoorswim #openwaterswimmer #thestoics

Not one of us will get out of here alive so DO YOU!!! Write what you know. Feel what you write. Be your authentic self, embrace courage and risk not blending in. Find your individual voice and shout it from the rooftops. Shall I keep going? After all, there are so many more where they came from! The truth is, one of the hardest things you can ever do is write from your heart. As a reader, I have lived a thousand different lives. I have loved, laughed and cried. Within the pages of a good book, I have experienced every possible emotion and then some, but guess what - as a writer - true fear appears the moment that I sit down and try to put something on paper. Thats when I begin to realise just how vulnerable writing my truth can make me. I have always loved to write, and as the people I love will attest to - I have always had a lot to say! You don't get to your mid 40's without developing an opinion on many things, and one thing I have learnt is that whilst those opinions are not always welcomed with open arms, they are generally respected. We are all entitled to our opinions on life as we perceive it, and in my forty something years as a resident of this beautiful planet, I have absorbed a modicum of wisdom that I believe is relevant to us all. One thing I have learnt, and probably one of the hardest lessons for me, is to be unapologetically myself. I am by no means an expert, but trust me when I tell you this - true authenticity is essential to a happy life. Not one of us will get out of here alive. Death is a prerequisite, but in reality, isn't that what makes life so special? So many of us fear being who we are because we worry that we won't fit in. We worry that what makes us unique is exactly what will drive people away. Lets be honest though - if you being unapologetically you is enough to push people away, then are these folks really your 'tribe?' Are they going to allow you the life you want to live or are you going to spend your precious days fighting against your instincts so that you can blend in? Will you lay on your death bed, your heart heavy with regret because you didn't 'DO YOU'? I have to be honest - this is fast becoming one of my favourite phrases. As a little bit of a wordsmith, its really easy to overcompensate and use way more words than necessary to express what is in essence, a universal truth and can be said with just two simple words. DO YOU! Of course, the question then becomes, do you know you? If I was to sit you down and say to you, who are you - could you tell me? Its a question I am asking myself more and more as I get older and in reality, its damn hard to answer. Maybe its an age thing, or maybe I was just unfashionably late to the party! I don't know but in reality, that is part of my journey and the question was mine to embrace when I was ready to. Age thing or not, I can absolutely confirm, the confidence to allow yourself to be who you are is definitely something that comes to you as you get older. There is something about hitting your late 30's that changes your whole outlook on your life. I began to realise that everything I thought was important actually wasn't, and that many of the things I hadn't considered important really needed to become central to who I was becoming. Life is a myriad of experiences, some good, some bad, but all of them relevant. I began to learn that every experience played a part in who I wanted to be and I could use it to my advantage or I could let it it negatively impact me. Unfortunately, that is something I think I will still be trying to grasp right up until the day I die. Choice is the only constant in life, and every choice we make is on us - even the ones we don't make. Not making or refusing to make a choice is in fact, still a choice! Read that statement again. Let it sink in. Every choice we make is on us - even the choices we choose not to make. That is a sobering thought, but trust me, when you begin to get your head around it, your whole outlook on life changes. It requires immense courage to accept that you live how you choose to live, and being angry at external things doesn't change anything. All it does is cloud your ability to make the changes you need to live the life you want. We are all so set on the destination, especially in todays world of instant gratification, that we have almost lost the ability to embrace the journey. The journey is what makes us who we are. Its what teaches us about what we really want, and it gives us the tools to become the best versions of ourselves. In my mind, the journey is the most important part of life because when done right, it encourages immense growth. I guarantee you, your destination will regularly change because every step forward forces small changes in what is important, and that will always force deviations to your original route. If it doesn't, then I suspect you may be missing out on some amazing things. Your journey should encourage you to embrace new ways of thinking, of doing and of being, and change your perspective not only on the big things, but on the little things. We all take those little things for granted and its not until they are gone that we realise just how important they are. For me, its things like seeing a smile on my son's face or getting a hug before he goes to bed. Its a steaming cup of hot coffee on a morning, or the sun on my face when I step out the door to go to work. Its being able to walk into a gallery and devour every aspect of the creativity that I am surrounded by, or switch on some music and feel the melodies pulsating through into the depths of my soul. Its the feel of wet sand or grass underfoot, connecting me to mother nature and calming my energies, allowing me to relax and 'just be' in the moment. Hippy dippy I know, but actually, just being is a skill we seem to have lost, and its so incredibly important to our mental health. My little things aren't money or possessions or status. They are all free, and that for me is the most exciting thing about my personal journey. What is truly important should not cost you. You just have to understand what feeds your soul and throw every ounce of your being into embracing it. The rest of it is just white noise and will only distract you from what truly matters. The big things, well thats a whole different kettle of fish! For me, its my hopes and dreams and the direction I want my life to take. My principles, my morals and the expectations I have not just of myself, but of the people around me. The behaviours I expect to see and want to emulate, and the legacy that I want to leave when my time comes to move on to whatever comes after this. These are the things that terrify me almost into staying where I'm comfortable, but lets be honest, comfort is a double edged sword. Whilst its easier, less painful, and requires little work, its filled with regret for everything you did not achieve because fear stopped you. In twenty years from now, I won't regret the things I did, only the things I chose not to do. How long has a blog/page been in planning now? In all honesty, its longer than I care to admit, but after a couple of years of stepping on and then stepping back off, 6 months of writing a book and 3 months of writing articles for work, I have finally bitten the bullet and sat down to make a start. This page is my journey, my experiences and my musings as a 40 something. I don't pretend to know it all, but I do know that life is always going to be what you make it. You have to grab it by the balls and refuse to let go because in all honesty, what scares me more than not doing the things I want to, is lying on my death bed regretting the fact that I didn't try. Go hard or go home. Until next time.......... #musingsofa40something #thebusinessoflife #rebeccareecephotography #merakicreative #doyou #selfcare #beyourself #motivation #selfcare #unapologeticallyme #selflove #beyou #beyourself #loveyourself #love #motivation #instagood #life #instagram #happy #smile #positivevibes #behappy #happiness #beautiful #photography #inspiration #beauty #lifestyle #yourself #me #believeinyourself #like #believe #goodvibes #myself