Yesterday, 9th Feb, my dad Mike and I were honoured to be interviewed by his friends of many years, Penny Power OBE and Thomas Power of Business is Personal- live on Linkedin, Youtube and Facebook.
They asked us to come on their weekly show to talk about our hereditary journey with bipolar disorder and anxiety and shed light on all things mental health.
It was a real pleasure to talk all about our lives and how my Dad was diagnosed with bipolar just 4 years before me. Trigger warning: discusses suicidal ideation and psychosis.
Trigger warning: discusses eating disorders and OCD
It has taken me almost thirty-five years to acknowledge that I have struggled with mental illness myself. I’ve spent a lifetime in denial. It wasn’t until writing my memoir Pushing Through The Cracksin 2021 that I observed my life objectively. I witnessed the experiences I’d gathered since childhood and how they had shaped me into the woman I am today. A woman of strength, but also one diagnosed with a mental health disorder – Binge eating disorder. A label I neither wanted nor could accept. Not until now.
This isn’t my first experience with mental illness. In my teens, my life was in turmoil. After my parents’ unexpected divorce, my mother remarried a gambler with a volatile temper within two years. My father moved to Australia, and with the upheaval of my home life and the onslaught of puberty, I felt lost. My body was changing, and I’d become uncomfortable with my new shape. What began as a diet to slim my blossoming body developed into anorexia. In the 1980s, treatment was non-existent, at least for me. Instead, my GP gave me a telling-off and threatened to put me in a hospital and force-feed me via a drip. His threats petrified me, and I gradually increased my food intake again. It took me two years to recover. Ultimately, my anorexia was untreated, so it left me with a legacy of disordered thoughts about my body and food throughout my adult life.
A few years after my father’s death in my mid-thirties, I became fixated on turning electrical items off – the cooker, iron, hair straighteners, television – anything that was plugged in. I would touch the switches whilst talking out loud to myself, repeatedly, trying to confirm they were in the ‘off’ position. I knew they were off, but somehow, I couldn’t accept that they were off. Additional obsessions snuck in gradually. I began checking the fridge door was closed, then every door and window in my home. What started as checking became an arduous set routine every night to ensure the doors and windows were locked multiple times. I was terrified someone was going to break in. Checking the doors eased that terror, temporarily.
It continued for several months, and I couldn’t stop the thoughts no matter how hard I tried. I moved back to the UK in 2010 and it appeared the huge disruption to my life interrupted the intrusive thoughts and checking behaviours, and they stopped. As the mother of a child with severe Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), I now recognise what I experienced back in my thirties may well have been OCD.
Fast forward to my late forties, a divorce behind me, and a period of depression to follow, I remarried and began a new life with a blended family. But within a couple of years, both of my sons and my new husband began struggling with their mental health. Mental illness filled our once happy home with depression, anxiety, alcoholism, OCD, and gambling, and it turned my entire world upside down whilst I tried to care for them all. I was under immense stress and turned to something to help me cope – food.
It began with me ‘rewarding’ myself with chocolate bars late at night when everyone else had settled. Over time, the ‘reward’ became a buffet of junk — mostly heavily processed carbs and sugar. All eaten quickly, in secret, and shrouded in shame. Within a few months, I was eating around 5000 calories during a night-time binge. In-between the binges were days of restricted food intake. I gained a large amount of weight, which I hated myself for. The self-loathing was overwhelming.
I realised I had a problem in late 2019 and went to my GP, who referred me to an eating disorder clinic. They diagnosed me with Binge eating disorder (BED), and I began a recovery programme, which I stuck to until the Covid pandemic interrupted my sessions, and I threw in the towel. As a result, I slipped back into bingeing again when life overwhelmed me.
In 2021, I self-referred myself back to the ED clinic. I’m still on a waiting list, however, I’ve taken steps to get support and am in recovery now. I am 24 days binge-free at the time of writing this, which feels like such a huge personal triumph after a long period of relapse.
I think the toughest part for me has been accepting that I had a mental health disorder. I also felt overwhelming guilt that I had perhaps somehow genetically gifted my son’s mental illness to each of them. It’s taken me a long time to accept my diagnosis and our family’s situation. But from that place of acceptance, I have finally found peace….and recovery.
Emily J. Johnson is the author of Pushing Through The Cracks, her memoir of her family’s struggles with mental health. She lives in the UK and this is her first blog on this subject!
Spending more time outdoors will do wonders for your mental health. While research has shown that being outdoors helps alleviate stress and the symptoms of emotional illnesses, you can easily discover these benefits by interacting with nature. You will benefit from being outdoors when you sit on your porch, but you’ll keep your leisure time more interesting when you engage in a variety of different outdoor activities and boost your mental health.
Take a Weekend Camping Trip
You can rough it in a tent or enjoy a glamping excursion by renting a fully equipped cabin for the weekend. As you search for available campgrounds in Mississippi (or the country you live in), look for a location that’s near the water or offers a variety of activities. You should try to plan a camping trip that offers plenty of amenities for you and your companions. Swimming, fishing, snorkelling, hiking, and bird watching are a few of the outdoor activities you can enjoy over the weekend.
Be sure to bring your phone or a camera. You will probably see plenty of wildlife that you’ll want to capture in pictures or on video. Even if you rent a comfortable cabin or take your RV, you’ll find enough activities to keep you outside and in nature throughout your camping excursion.
Go For a Walk
You can spend more time outdoors without leaving home when you plan to take a walk each day or evening. This is an opportunity for you to get outside and clear your head away from work, family, and other obligations. As you walk, let your mind wander. Many people find this to be an effective way of subconsciously working out stressful problems. By the time the walk is over, you might find that they have a solution to a particular problem.
You can keep your walks interesting and distracting by taking a different route each night. Find a different park, road or walk to a different convenience store each time. In addition to helping you explore different parts of your community, you will also have the opportunity to interact with different people, if you want to.
Rent a Boat
There’s no reason you should feel bound to land when you look for outdoor activities to enjoy. In fact, renting a boat and spending a few hours on the water can have a soothing effect on the mind. You may feel more tranquil as you’re surrounded by the sights, sounds, scents of the water. This is a great opportunity to get together with friends or bond with your family.
When you’re on the water, you’ll be removed from distractions and have the chance to enjoy deeper conversations. You’ll also have a chance to see your city from a different perspective. By the time you return to the dock or shore, you’ll feel more peaceful and less stressed.
Start a Garden
There are many hidden health benefits of starting a garden, and it will provide a way for you to improve the landscaping of your own property. Working with your hands as you plant and maintain a garden will help you strengthen your hands and fingers, reducing your risks for joint pain. As you tend to your garden, your mind will wander and you’ll enter into a type of meditative state. This will help you set aside your daily worries and concerns for a brief period. That will be enough to relieve stress and help you enjoy a lighter mood.
Climb a Mountain
If you live near a mountain range, consider taking up climbing as a means of getting more outdoor exercise. The act of climbing will help you strengthen a variety of muscle groups throughout your body. As you climb, you’ll see your community and the surrounding region from a different perspective. The air will be more exhilarating as you reach higher points on the mountain.
While you should start slowly and work with a guide, you may eventually find that mountain climbing can be a competitive sport that allows you to improve your performance over time. Achieving new climbing goals will cause a release of endorphins in the brain, helping you to enjoy a happier mood.
There are many more ways you can enjoy the outdoors and benefit your mental health. Look for things you like to do outside even if that just involves sitting under a tree and reading a good book. The fresh air will benefit your physical health as well as improve your wellbeing.
Pushing Through The Cracks: In the Darkness of Her Family’s Mental Illness She Found Light by Emily J. Johnson is an incredible book. It is a story that I don’t believe has ever been written about before in such a way in the mental health space, I have certainly never come across it. Its a true memoir that occurred here in the UK during lockdown.
Emily wrote to me and kindly sent me a free copy of her book. I was hooked from the first page- this is a story of survival against the odds, of how mental illness can rip a family apart but how healing and hope are possible. Of strength through immense difficulty. Of light winning over darkness.
Four years ago, in the UK, Emily, a divorced mother of two, was living her best life with a new partner and blended family of six. But then addiction and mental illness entered her home uninvited, threatening to tear the whole family apart.
With an alcoholic husband and two teenage sons – one a depressed gambler and the other with chronic obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)– Emily is left to cope alone. And when the Covid pandemic hits, Emily, a ‘serial people-pleaser, enabler and born rescuer’, almost breaks too.
This true story delves into the darkest sides of mental illness and addiction with raw, often harrowing honesty. It shines a light on taboo subjects including self-harm, suicidal feelings, gambling, alcoholism, depression, severe OCD and eating disorders, all exacerbated by an unprecedented global pandemic and dwindling support services.
This is a story of remarkable strength, self-realisation and reclamation of a lost identity. This is a story of finding hope, pushing through the cracks in the darkness. It is also a story that touches on the difficulties of accessing UK NHS mental health services at times, especially CAMHS.
I found Emily’s strength through such severe adversity – dealing with a husband and two sons with severe mental illness, whilst carrying on with her own life when mental illness permeated every part, to be so inspiring. Her marriage falls apart, her children are unable to attend work and education, the family embarks on several different recovery journeys- navigating NHS mental health care and all its difficulties. Her sons addictions and acute OCD worsen and add to the pressures for Emily. How does she as a mother fix it all? She realises.. she can’t fix anyone and its not her job too.
The front cover features a dandelion pushing through the cracks of the ground. Emily describes the moment she hits rock bottom but then saw a dandelion poking through- which symbolised hope and light for her,
‘(image: Emily J. Johnson)
‘I pick up my phone and call a crisis support line…I desperately want someone to listen to me, to ease my pain, to hear my stories…(of mental illness at home)
I throw my phone across the path in frustration… something catches my eye, a beautiful yellow dandelion is growing through a crack in the concrete. Its golden yellow petals cut through the greyness of the broken path and it overshadows the filth and discarded cigarette butts around it. Despite its surroundings, it has found ways to push up through that crack, to have life. it is. not complaining or giving up, it’s surviving and it will go on to finish flowering. One day soon, the wind will carry its dainty seeds somewhere else to carry on the cycle of its life.
Just like that dandelion, I have pushed through adversity and survived. …I close my eyes and raise my face to the sunshine… Even in the midst of all this chaos, this darkness, there is warmth and light. There is hope.” (from chapter Dandelion) (Emily J. Johnson)
This is also a book which exposes the difficulties and realities of living with mental illness. I will add a trigger warning- it doesn’t hold back on the reality of mental illness including self harm, addiction, alcoholism, suicidal thoughts etc- so please read with care.
Thank you Emily for letting me read and follow the journey of your family. I hope your husband and sons are able to fully battle their demons and recover or stay in remission. Pushing Through the Cracks by Emily J. Johnson can be bought from Amazon and good book shops.
Its 2022 and some of us are making New Years Resolutions so I thought it would be a good idea to do ones focused on mental health and wellbeing. I asked some of my lovely Twitter followers what their resolutions were to include in a blog, so here they are. Thanks to all who contributed! I would love to know yours too! Mine are get enough sleep, eat more healthily, lose weight and self care.
We can add:
Conversations Create Change LLC– My intentions are to nurture my inner child through healthy eating and fun activities.
Rabbi E. Poupko– Produce more video content for my YouTube channel!
Polly– Mine are to reduce my alcohol consumption, swim at least once a week, and learn to say No!
Erin Hallett– Saying no moreoften without an apology and continuing with daily yoga .
Ncediwe Solwandle– Try to take time out for myself from time to time, invest in boosting my confidence and self-esteem.
Guy Barton– I don’t do New Years resolutions but I aim to believe in myself more.
Stuart Rimmer MBE– Spend time in nature , heading for the mountains and living with more simplicity to counter the worlds complexity.
Robert Ashton– 1- Exercise, 2- sleep, 3- the outdoors, 4 – SAD lamp 5- 15 mins silent reflection at the start of the day.
What are your new years mental health resolutions?
Many people might tell you that admitting you have a problem is the first step to battling addiction. Their intentions might be good, but does your journey to sobriety and recovery really start until you decide you want to live better? Knowing where to start when battling addiction is crucial to improving your odds of success.
Your Doctor
Your personal physician probably already suspects or even knows about your addiction, even if you’ve never mentioned it to them. It’s their job to help you with your physical health, and they will have access to more tools you might use than nearly anyone. Your conversations with your doctor are totally confidential, so this is a very safe place to start when battling addiction.
Find a Facility
Not all forms of addiction require going into a rehab facility. However, some might. There are facilities available, such as Awakenings Health and Wellness Centre that are top-notch in helping people dig deeper than the obvious superficial issues. Also, the right rehab center can dramatically improve your odds of getting past any addiction and have a better fighting chance at living a clean life ahead of you.
Friends and Family
This one can be tricky. Friends and family might be some of the people most likely to support you through your addiction battle, but some of them might also be the most judgemental. In fact, some relatives might even be contributors to your addiction. Turn to those you think you can trust.
Employee Benefits
You probably don’t want to tell your actual supervisor that you are battling addiction, but your employee benefits might have a hotline you can call privately. If your health insurance or other benefits include rehab programs or counseling of any kind, it might be at low or even no cost to you.
Spiritual and Religious Advisors
Individuals such as these may not feel qualified to help you with your addiction and recovery, and yet they might also truly want to help you. They might be able to point you in the direction of people and programs who can help you. So, whether it’s a priest, rabbi, or even a yoga teacher you study under, see if they have any referrals or connections you might use.
Help Is Out There
Battling addiction is a journey that can leave you feeling very alone, and overcoming it can only happen if you personally do it. However, even though no one else can get you over your addiction, they can be of tremendous assistance to you while you try to get clean.
Window to the Womb, the UK leading provider of private Baby Scan Services for pregnant women, has partnered with BlueSkeye AI to launch Avocado.
Avocado is a brand new pregnancy App which uses cutting-edge AI technology to support effective mood management. Window to the Womb is rolling out the use of the Avocado App across all 44 clinics nationwide enabling women who attend for early and later pregnancy ultrasound services to access their scan images and scan reports digitally. In their drive to support women in early stages and throughout pregnancy, Window to the Womb has worked with BlueSkeye AI to provide a range of additional services within the App including the ability to log a pregnancy diary, access mindfulness or exercise material and order personalised baby scan photos.
(image: avocadoapp.co.uk)
Managing Emotional Wellbeing and Moods
Avocado provides women with the ability to understand and manage their mood and emotional wellbeing throughout pregnancy. Recognising that pregnancy and preparing to have a baby is such a big life event it is well understood that pregnancy can be an emotive time and a trigger for mental ill health. Pregnancy hormones can be a likely contributor to changes in mood, as well as other triggers including fatigue and sleep deprivation.
The Maternity Mental Health Alliance, a UK charity that is focussed on addressing the needs of women during pregnancy reported that 1 in 10 women experience perinatal mental problems and more needs to be done to support women during pregnancy. The lived experiences of women, as documented and made available to listen to by MIND, who have experienced perinatal mental illness indicate there is more to be done to help raise awareness in society about the prevalence of anxiety and depression (and other mental illness) during pregnancy.
Avocado enables women to track their mood alongside other key pregnancy metrics whilst managing their private scan appointments and much more. The app directs women to useful resources including the NHS’ Every Mind Matters mental health and wellbeing resource.
”At Window to the Womb, we are privileged to meet and provide services to thousands of women at different stages of their pregnancies. We are committed to ensuring that women are well supported as they access our services and we are keen to ensure that women are empowered to self-manage their mental and emotional wellbeing during this time” said Managing Director of Window to the Womb, Tony Harrison.
BlueSkeye AI is a fast growth tech company based in Nottingham creating AI you can trust, and is on a mission to improve wellbeing and patient health outcomes by delivering accessible and objective services and products that help patients understand and manage their mental health and wellbeing. The ethical AI company’s technology is underpinned by Behaviomedics, pioneered by BlueSkeye AI’s CEO, Professor Michel Valstar.
“Our core technology automatically analyses and synthesises the face and voice to monitor mood and other medically relevant expressed behaviour. We are delighted to work in partnership with Window to the Womb to apply our technology to help perinatal women understand and manage their mental wellbeing” said Professor Valstar, CEO of BlueSkeye.
The App is available to download on Apple and Android devices. A premium version is now available for subscription and includes additional features that promote wellbeing during pregnancy.
You sabotage your relationships when things feel too calm.
You panic when your partner goes on a family vacation, believing that they’re leaving you forever.
Perhaps you can’t stand hugs or gentle touch.
Maybe you’ve wondered to yourself: “What in the world is wrong with me?! Am I just not cut out to have close friends or a romantic relationship?”
Actually, that’s not the case! You deserve close relationships– everyone does. If you resonate with these scenarios, though, you may have some unprocessed trauma– and that trauma may be making your relationships feel like a rusty, ungreased wheel.
You’re not alone. Here’s how trauma can blow our relationships off-course, and also, how self-compassion can help to ease that struggle.
Trauma Creates Hypervigilance
Trauma is any incident that overwhelms your ability to cope (abuse, neglect, or surviving a natural disaster, just to name a few examples). These abhorrent experiences cause our brains and bodies to swirl with cortisol, also known as the stress hormone.
After a seriously traumatic event (or relationship or childhood), our cortisol levels don’t always return to baseline. Often, the nervous system creates a new baseline of heightened stress response. In short: you don’t go back to being as calm as you were before the storm. Now, you’re hypervigilant all the time. You’re always stressed, always scanning for the next attack.
Unfortunately, relationships can’t be created without vulnerability, and vulnerability can’t happen if you’re constantly scanning for attack.
You might be hypervigilant in your relationships if:
You feel uncomfortable, fidgety, and unsafe during social situations
You constantly micro-analyse everything other people say to make sure they’re not going to hurt you
You constantly micro-analyse everything you say to make sure you don’t say anything “wrong”
Aversion to Intimacy
Trauma, and the excess cortisol it triggers, also creates an aversion to physical closeness. When we’re stressed (i.e., when our cortisol is on full blast), our nervous systems naturally resist being touched.
Do you find yourself shrinking away from hugs? Do you feel an urge to run away when someone gently touches your arm? That’s likely a trauma response.
Of course, if you’ve experienced assault or physical or sexual abuse, this is a double whammy. Since your trauma came from physical touch, your brain has registered any physical touch as dangerous– on top of your increased baseline level of cortisol. Of course you’d feel sick at the thought of a hug! If this sounds like you, go extra easy on yourself if you struggle with relationships; this struggle isn’t your fault.
So, This Sucks… How in the World Do I Heal?
Yes, it sounds bleak. If this is you, you may feel hopeless. I’m with you; I’ve been there. It’s not hopeless, though. This is healable.
Therapy: Do I Even Have to Say It?
Yes, healing this will probably require trauma-informed therapy. You’ll be surprised at how fast you can begin to shift once you see a therapist who validates your traumatic experiences.
Here’s a hint: Psychology Today’s find-a-therapist tool can help you easily find a trauma-informed therapist. (Make sure to select “trauma focused” under the “types of therapy” menu.)
Now That That’s Out of the Way: Self-Compassion Comes Next
I’m 100% serious when I tell you: you deserve to go easy on yourself.
I say this with firmness, and yet, I forget to go easy on myself most days. Regardless, it helps immensely to stop comparing your relationships to other people’s relationships (both friendships and romantic relationships!).
Yes, it may likely take you longer to learn how to develop lasting relationships, both friendly and intimate. It may seem unfair that making and keeping tons of friends, as well as a life partner, comes so easily to some, while you’re struggling to simply text one person back.
Know what? It is unfair. You shouldn’t have gone through the trauma that you went through. What this means, though, is that you can recognize that you face more relational setbacks than someone who didn’t suffer the same trauma as you did. You’re starting further behind with a ball and chain tied to both feet.
Thus: you can stop comparing, and you can stop feeling like you’re “behind” somehow. Always try to recognize even your tiniest victories, even and especially the challenges which seem “easy” to other people.
Wrapping Up
Relationships make our lives juicy and sparkly, and so, if trauma has impacted your ability to form relationships (I’m with you!), then you’re probably struggling.
Try your best to go easy on yourself. You’ve been through a slog of painful experiences that, unfortunately, can make life on Earth feel like walking straight uphill all the time. Therapy helps. Self-compassion helps.
And yes, I know it’s tiring, but there is help for you out there. Just keep going.
Taylor Blanchard is a freelance mental health and wellness writer for hire. Her lived experience and extensive knowledge on mental health, emotional wellness, and spirituality guide her to create deep, compassionate blog posts, which she hopes will help people to feel less alone in the world. Self-care for Taylor looks like staring at the sky, drinking cacao while listening to metal, or cuddling with her rescue Pitbull mix.
Its nearly here everyone! Just 4 days until our country (the UK) stops and celebrates Christmas (or uses the day as a chance to see family because they’re off work, like we do!).
The pressure is taken off for me during this period because its just a chance for relaxation for us as we’re Jewish, we don’t have the same expectations for the day as others. However, I know for many people Christmas is a stressful time where they see family they don’t normally see and may feel they have to hide how they are truly feeling with their mental health. The pressures are also on for the cost of food and gifts during this time and many people get into debt too.
We already have less daylight during this time and with the Covid pandemic a lot of people are feeling lower and more anxious . This has been the new normal for us all for over a year and particularly here in England where we have record numbers of Omicron Covid cases- but aren’t yet in lockdown.
I know I have been feeling a bit more anxious lately to do with Covid and other things… but I am also going to be kind to myself and give myself a break and time off work to relax also! I love sitting eating Quality street or a Terrys chocolate orange (yum) with loved ones and watching a good film like The Holiday… thats my favourite. Second is the Muppets Christmas Carol. Third Love Actually. Whats yours?
(image: lilartsy: Pexels)
I am lucky my bipolar is in remission and I am stable on medication. So I don’t have to worry about severe depressive or manic episodes right now. But, I still need to look after myself or practise self care- lots of sleep, not too much sugar, and check in with myself or my therapist if needed if my anxiety flares.
Obviously, over Christmas lots of NHS mental health professionals aren’t available but you can reach out to helplines such as Samaritans 116 123 (UK) if you need someone to talk to who will just listen.
You can also text SHOUT to 85258 if you’re in crisis and need support.
In an emergency, if you have a phone line to a hospital outpatient crisis team that are working over Christmas, call that and if not in an emergency you may have to go to Accident and Emergency (but there could be long waits).
Wishing you all a very happy holidays, a peaceful festive season. This time can also be hard for people with alcohol or drug addictions or eating disorders, as Christmas is often a time with plenty of alcohol and triggering things.
Remember that its OK to be struggling but tell people you trust and reach for support. May your Christmas/ holiday season be merry and bright- and if it isn’t, remember things can get better from here, you can recover and you can be helped. Always tell someone you trust if you feel suicidal or want to harm yourself, so you can be protected and helped through these feelings.
I am absolutely delighted to read and review this incredible childrens book from the Sophie Says series by author and award winning campaigner Esther Marshall (with illustrator Buzz Burry).
Esther’s story is close to my heart as not only is she from my own community but her late sister Rebecca z’l was a doctor who had bipolar disorder and sadly passed away a few years ago, while Esther was writing her second book. Esther has shared that it was her sister who encouraged and inspired her idea to write the childrens books that she couldn’t see for her own child (in terms of positive messages, inspiring rolemodels and diverse characters in terms of both race and gender). Through her sister’s struggles, Esther also began to include positive mental health messages on talking and sharing emotions, self belief and self esteem too.
Esther has said,
“I knew from the second my son was born I wanted to teach him that girls were just as strong and powerful as boys, that people from different backgrounds to him could teach him things and he should listen and be kind to everyone. The problem was, all the books I could find to read to him had:
Mostly male characters (even the animals)
Little to no diversity or representation
No female role models he could look up to
So I decided that if I couldn’t find the book I wanted to read to my son, I’d better write my own.
I want all children to know and believe that they can achieve their dreams regardless of gender, race, religion or class”,
Esther at Sophie Says has not only thought about what stories she wants to tell through the books, but what messages children reading them will take and absorb. She has partnered with illustrator Buzz Burry and comments, ‘we are helping children bypass harmful stereotypes before they set in by changing the face of children’s literature. Our mission is to enable all children to grow up feeling equipped and empowered to face their futures. To learn more about themselves, others and the world around them. We are helping parents to teach their children positive messages and providing a toolkit to navigate some of the trickier conversations.‘
Esther very kindly gifted me copies of her first two books- Sophie Says I Can I will– which is about a little girl Sophie with big dreams and no limits. and Sophie Says It’s Okay Not To Be Okay which focuses on Sophie, Jordyn and Jamie on their journey as they learn that it’s okay to talk about their feelings and it’s okay not to be okay. The books are for children in the early years, ages 3-7 years and reading the books with either parents, carers or teachers is recommended. Esther told me she has ‘tried to create books which cater to both home and school so that it can be embedded in both parts of a child’s life and become the foundation of them building resilience at an early age.’
Sophie Says It’s Okay not to be Okay is a very special book- and one of the first I have seen to address children’s mental health in an age appropriate way, to teach children about their emotions and that it’s OK to feel sad, scared or worried. The book follows Jamie who is looking down and feeling sad but whose best friends Sophie and Jordyn help him through and Sophie tells him ‘its okay not to be okay’. They take him to the zoo to help him feel better and speak to Sophie’s older sister Meghan who is wise and will give good advice. Esther named the character after Meghan, Duchess of Sussex who she met with Prince Harry and other young leaders and was inspired by (she gave them a copy of the book too!)
Meghan (the character) says this important message,
”It’s okay to be sad and okay to feel down. Just make sure you have good friends around. There may be days when you feel you’re alone but around us, you’ll always be at home. Its Okay not to be okay”
The book also reinforces self belief and esteem , reiterating that ‘YOU are enough!’ and encourages children to talk about their feelings because it can help. Jamie then says he will speak about his feelings in a place he feels safe in the zoo,
‘I don’t really know how to describe how I feel As I can’t work out what’s in my head and what’s real.
He said ‘ a smile may be what you see, but that’s not what I feel inside me
There are times I feel quite alone because these feelings are unknown
Some days I’m happy and some days I’m sad and other days I just feel so bad’
(image: Esther Marshall/Buzz Burry/Sophie Says)
His friends then show him support and love, take him to the funfair, all while reinforcing positive kindness and support- ‘Yes we can!” . The book talks positively about the kindness of friendships always being a safe space to talk. This is so important for children particularly in the early years who are learning to understand their feelings.
Esthers writing is beautiful- on one of the last pages of the book she says ‘Whatever you do, be kind, you never know what’s going on in someone’s mind’.
The book was informed by her sister Rebecca’s struggle with mental illness (bipolar disorder). Esther has said, ‘I had always planned to write another book all around mental health to help children understand their feelings and talk about them more openly, and I sadly lost my sister, Rebecca, to mental illness as I was writing it. So the second book Sophie Says It’s Okay not to be Okay is dedicated to her memory’.
Esther wanted to amplify the message and so it was released on World Mental Health Day. The book provides a toolkit for parents who want to help their children to express their own emotions.
She has been visiting schools and doing zoom readings of her book to share the messages for her. Esther told me, I would love that as a result of children reading the Sophie Says books that children understand these vitally important lessons through a fun way of learning and it helps them build resilience and confidence to go out and achieve their full potential whilst being able to understand and manage both their physical and mental health. .’.
Esther is a true force of nature and someone who inspires me so much. She has just released a third book in the series Sophie Says Be Proud of Who You Are which is about Sophie and the rest of the Sophie Says crew on their exciting seaside adventure as they help their friend Priya build her confidence, as they guide her through believing in herself and being proud of who she is. The perfect book to help your child build their confidence and self esteem!
I would recommend the Sophie Says books to all parents, teachers and carers of young children. I can’t wait to see how this brand grows and what Esther achieves (she has achieved so much already!). She should be rightly proud of her work and all she has created.
To learn more about Sophie Says and buy the books click here
Hi, I’m the founder of Sophie Says and the author of the books within the series. The idea for the first book (Sophie Says I Can, I Will) came to me after having my son, Asher (who is the first and most important reader of all the books!).
I knew I wanted him to grow up understanding that both girls and boys could achieve anything that they set their minds to, but I couldn’t find any books that featured a female lead character (a human one, not an animal one!) that really represented the message I wanted to teach him. So I thought, if I can’t find the story I want to tell, I’d better write it myself.
I was gifted two books in exchange for an honest review. Any links are unpaid. These books are incredible.
beurownlight.com 