Who’d of thought it? A few years ago I had a pipe dream of building a website that could be used as a legacy for our daughter. A place to document my life with her and her dad, talk about my mental illness and physical pain and all alongside my creative exploits.
I didn’t think I’d get to a point where it self-propelled, that I’d find a moment to stop and realise that my tiny idea has now morphed into something that’s actually useful for others.
My ramblings aren’t just ramblings. When I write I try to think about solutions. I update the pages of this site every month amending emergency helpline numbers and providing recent statistics, and I write for the blog several times a week, some of it’s good and, as you know, some of it’s crap.
But as anyone who’s been joining me for the ride will have seen, it probably looks like a simpler thing to do than the reality of it all. Post covid has truly battered my brain and body and, even today, I’m having to rest, think carefully about my movement and sleep more than ever. When I started Creative Steph things were nowhere near this bad, and I naively thought nothing could get worse.
I’ve spoken often about the sense of self worth I get from looking after this site, writing articles and contributing as a volunteer to other organisations. When you’ve been indoors for over 800 days you forget the person you were before ‘life inside’ and start to feel pretty redundant. My existing mental illness was already showing signs of strain when I got my first covid infection in 2021, but despite things going downhill I knew helping others remained a priority because it made me feel useful. That’s why my posts have been less frequent but continued none the less.
I can’t tell you how proud I felt waking up this afternoon (mid-flare) to being nominated for a Kent Mental Well-being Award, and how incredibly humbling it is to see my work being mentioned by such an organisation. My writing over recent months has been hard to engage, but offering solutions through the COPE campaign and coming up with weird and wonderful ways we can all distract ourselves from the harsh realities of life is something I’ll always believe in.
Who knows what will happen next, but seeing my graft from many an insomnia riddled night is worthy of this organisation feels pretty great.
Thanks for being here with me 💜
Creative Steph 