You’ll remember a few weeks ago that I posted about how honoured and surprised I was to be nominated for a Kent Mental Well-being award from the Mental Health charity, Mind. However, at the time I was unaware that I’d been nominated multiple times.
I’ve found out this week that I’ve not only been nominated twice, but I’ve also won twice. Two awards, two certificates, and two times that a panel of expert judges deemed the work that I do to be worthy of an accolade.
I am incredibly shocked, but still grappling with the other emotions involved. My partner is super proud, and my daughter is excited to see a trophy come home, but I remain perplexed that my little tidbits of advice have been deemed to be useful, and worthy of any praise. I guess that after working on all this for so long I hadn’t really thought for some time about where it might lead me.
Anyone with a mental illness will know that accepting any celebration or happiness, when you’ve believed for years that you’re nothing more than a let down, is incredibly difficult. Nonetheless this news proves that positivity still exists even in my indoor world.
There is an awards ceremony to attend where many fantastic people will receive recognition for their work in promoting mental health and preventing mental illness and suicide, and although I’d love to be in the room meeting so many inspiring humans, it’s not likely I’ll be able to get there. Still, because this is such and honour, we are looking at every possibility.
In the meantime I’d like to say thank you to the people who nominated me, including Cruse, who I’ve been volunteering with as a mental health advocate for over a year.
Let this be a lesson that good things happen even in the most ridiculous and painful circumstances. Hopefully it’ll sink in over time, but I’ll probably publish a post about my emotions in more detail at a later date.
Thanks for being part of this, and thanks (as always) for reading 💜
Creative Steph 