Yesterday I spent some time shadowing a Coach with the Mayday Trust in Oxford.  I was so inspired by the work they are doing, and how they are doing it, that it made me think about the approach to my own life and a motto emerged that I might start to take into my daily rituals. It is not a new one, but something I have started to practice and that is to “gather your people”.

John Dunne said that ” no man is an Island” and he was quite correct, but sometimes we isolate ourselves through fear. I did the same and have always done the same through periods of depression. The times when I need people the most I don’t have the confidence or energy to be around the very people that will give me courage to keep going and believe in my own ability to survive the temporary fall into a darker space.  I started to believe that if I wanted to help myself, and climb out of the mental torture of repetitive negative thoughts, I need a plan and mine was a simple one.  Then a good friend of mine, and my family gave me permission to stop and do nothing, take care of me, eat well, sleep all day, cry, rant, work things out, hide and just be miserable. It paid off and slowly I felt the old person I used to be, but definitely a better, stronger version, emerging, but it took months and it was hard work. As I said, I needed a plan and the one that worked for me was to focus on looking at my strengths and abilities and using them to help other people. I also started to practice noticing and encouraging acts of  kindness. I gave up my job, which to be really honest made me really sad, my relationship had slid into a destructive hole and we had decided to part ways, I was sharing custody of my son and the pain of missing him was tangible and raw, and put simply I was lost.

I think the thing that started it all off was a wonderful course of acupuncture from the brilliant and wonderful James Thirwell @ the Oxford Acupuncture Clinic and it was something very simple I will never forget. He held my hand during one of the sessions and listened to me and what I was saying, he didn’t tell me what to do, or ask me to make sense of anything, but his warm hand plus a completely authentic interest in helping me was enough to reset myself and restore my confidence in people and the world I live in slowly became and warm and compassionate place again, not a scary and isolating nightmarish place it had become. I will never forget that experience and I am very grateful to him as it was exactly what I needed.

Slowly at first I started to notice the kindness around me, the warm words of encouragement from friends, the hugs, the people in my community that wanted to connect with each other and help out and once I started to surround myself with people that behaved the way I would like everyone to behave, the world started to be a wonderful, liberating, interesting, welcoming and exciting place to be again.

My people were a tribe in my community, people that talked about helping others, what kindness can do, how to help each other. The person that carried the table I had just bought from them to my car, as they noticed I had come by myself, the barista that offered to take my coffee to the table as I had my busy 4 year old and a load of shopping, the neighbour who smiled and waved at me every morning and made me feel positive, the taxi driver who told me all about his struggles with Mental Health and how his wife had saved his life on many occasions, the coach at Restore who noticed I needed to talk, pulled up a chair and gave me her full attention.

So in gathering “my people” I have found strength, wisdom, belief, confidence, enlightenment, laughter and new friendships and I have also been able to give, support, encouragement, hugs, humour, everything and anything I have to offer. I urge everyone to do the same. Give yourself permission to be sad, it is a road to enlightenment, the pursuit of happiness is an abstract and fleeting concept. Be comfortable, warm, loved, encouraged, look for light and kindness and you will definitely find it, those people are out there and to be honest are the majority as you have it inside you too.

I will now carry this into my parenting toolkit. Oscar will benefit from all these acts of kindness because I will do the same for him, I will stop and listen to him, I will take the time to read him the three stories he wants at bedtime, I will notice when he does something well, I will not push him into situations because it suits me better and I will definitely be a better parent for it.