Welcome to my blog / mental wellness project :)
I think of 'home' as a place where I feel comfortable and at ease.
And it seems that 'feeling at home with ourselves' is the most reliable path to happiness. No matter what is happening in our lives, life changes or unresolved issues can challenge our idea of who we are and whether we feel a sense of meaning in our lives.
If we are lucky the changes happen at a pace that we can move with.
But sometimes life throws up bigger obstacles. In the right frame of mind, we can see that these obstacles are simply a problem waiting for a solution. And at other times, problems can build to become overwhelming. A solution becomes much harder to imagine.
Many people feel this way about the world, right now.
Even on a relatively stable, smaller scale, a sense of wanting one's life to be different, wishing that a partner relationship was closer, for a job that provides some enjoyment and better rewards, or that family relations were easier - these are all places of tension that often seem to have no easy answers, but can affect our mental well being and sense of enjoyment for many years.
A couple of years ago, a series of events happened in my life which left me unable to see any solution at all. For anyone who has reached that darkest place, or any of the many places that lie between there and happiness, you'll know what it means to feel distanced from yourself, and distanced from a sense of 'future'.
This is a place that is far from 'home'.
Getting back from that place can be a very slow process. Our brains have a healing process of their own to go through. I think I'm most, if not all of the way there. I've come to accept that as I come to the start of something else, I feel like I'm a different person to who I was before. Ideally I'll have learnt a little more about life, but most of all, I just want to enjoy the feeling of being 'at home' again.
Amongst all the ways I've sought help, I have found nothing better than listening to other people's stories about what they've been through, with mental health and wellness specifically, and with the work I did in my job for nearly twenty years - documenting conversations in interviews on thousands of topics, across social strata, cultures, countries, and continents.
I started writing about consciousness and the subconcious when I was a teenager, and now at the age of forty-one a different way of looking at mental health has crystallised into this theory. I initially wanted to write down some thoughts about my own experiences of negotiating my own mental health while I can freshly remember what it has been like, but it's turned into something applicable on a much larger scale.
When I applied the theory to myself the changes were not just apparent - they have been life-changing.
My 'disability' has also become a 'difference', and a 'gift', and I'm the happiest I've ever been.
This is what I learnt about what happened to me.
To me, this is the way home.
