or "Beating Depression One Badge At a Time"
In a Bun Dance is holding a blog carnival on Mental Health. I know that I've covered some of my struggles with Depression before when I needed a week or two off from blogging and when I wondered whether I was Good Enough as a mum.
I talked about how sewing and crafting helped ease the symptoms of my depression, that the repetition of stitches helped me find time to calm the negative thoughts and emotions that were swirling around my head. I learned that despite the lack of hoovering and my collection of barely alive houseplants that I am still a good mum.
What I haven't talked about but I have alluded to is that one of the main supports in my recovery turned out to be volunteering with GirlGuiding. I might be stretching it slightly to say that they saved my life but they certainly saved my sanity. I don't know what possessed me to start volunteering when I was struggling to get out of bed some mornings, when I hated the sight of myself in the mirror and when I could rarely focus for more than an hour or two at a time on anything.
Life was overwhelming me as it was. I could barely manage an entire day with my children and the intense guilt that went with that made the problem spiral further. I would be exhausted and completely uncommunicative by the time Christopher came in from work meaning that despite his understanding and desire to help I couldn't explain or let him help. Housework, reading, socialising, shopping all held no interest for me and required me to steel myself. They took so much out of my that I could barely stay awake, yet when it came time to sleep I would lie awake with thoughts of how useless I was, how I should be able to do all of the things I saw everyone around me doing. I was so low that all I could think of was that my family, my friends and my life would be better off without me in it.
Despite all of this I somehow convinced Kateri that I should volunteer with her as a leader with her unit. I'm not sure what on earth I was thinking but somehow on some of the days of my good days I could see that I would enjoy it. I know that part of the appeal was that the actual contact with people was limited, at least at first the only person I would need to talk to was Kateri.
But slowly, slowly as the months passed and I went through the CRB checks, I went to meetings, I talked to people on the phone and wrote emails. And before I knew it one of the things I could focus on for long periods of time was the work I was doing for Guiding. But more than that, the things I was doing actually interested me, they inspired me and I found that I could focus on things in my own life that mattered- my children, my husband, my work.
It wasn't simply a flick of a switch but something inside my head slowly changed as I spent time thinking about how I could bring the essentials of Guiding to these brilliant, inspiring young women- it was as if the part of my brain that had spent so many hours telling me I was no good, that I was worthless was doing this other task and I could see the way out of the dark hole I had been in. I was doing something for me and no one was looking at me as a mum of three who wasn't doing a very good job (at least in my head), I was being judged on what I did for Guiding.
Lastly, for whatever it did for my mental health when I was at my lowest is only a small part of what it does for me now. It has given me a new extended circle of friends, it's given me experiences and ideas that I take as part of my everyday life. GirlGuiding didn't ask for much from me- I simply had to promise that I would do my best.
Maybe, just maybe, it did save my life.
As part of a Guide's Own I learned that every year three lives will be saved by someone using something they learned at Girl Guides, and one girl will save her own life because of something she learned as a Girl Guide. Guiding is not all about triangular bandages and carrying a safety pin. One of the first badges I worked on with the unit was a wonderful resource produced by GirlGuiding on emotional well being called "Me in Mind". GirlGuiding with it's open attitude to mental health and it's programme that uses the safe environment of Unit meetings and camps to show girls how important it is to believe in themselves, to have healthy relationships, to ask for help and facilitating peer education on almost any subject might well go on to save several lives, or even prevent girls from developing that very female Mental Health problem of Post Natal Depression.
