After being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in 2012 the first thing I did after getting out of the hospital and having some time to reflect on what was happening was to reach out to the world of books. My mission was to learn as much about this mental health issue as possible and I consumed endless words from fiction to non-fiction, internet articles and online support groups. Some were really helpful and others not so much! Shortly after the BPD diagnosis Is was blind-sided with the news that I had relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis and my life fell apart. The only thing that really remained was the fact I always had my nose in a book.
For those of you who don’t know much about MS, it is a condition of the central nervous system where the immune system mistakes the cells that insulate nerve cells – the myelin as bad and attacks it. Resulting in problems with coordination, eyesight, balance, pain, fatigue, numbness, heat sensitivity to name a few. Once again, my life was turned upside down and for someone who had no clear idea of who they were and the need of changing countries (I was about to apply for citizenship in Australia) I ended up back in the UK struggling.
I meandered around for two years feeling lost and alone and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. In summer 2017 after my husband introducing me to the world of podcasts I started to feel excited again. The wealth of information available was immense but yet no one was talking about books with mental health issues and so for some crazy reason I thought maybe I could do that!
So once again I turned to one of my favourite past times – books, blogs and now podcasts to find out how to start a podcast. I jumped in purchased a microphone and learnt how to use Audacity for editing and jumped straight in.
I twisted Becky’s arm and thankfully she agreed to join me as a co-host and we are now up to Episode 41 and closing in on our one-year anniversary.
Yet, I felt there was still something missing and then came up with the idea of this blog. Whilst I am not an expert on writing or mental health, I still felt that for people who want to write about those with mental illness they should do so in a way that doesn’t aid the stigma that people like me have to face as a result of their mental illness.