Awareness Days....

I sat down at my desk, cup of tea in hand ready to start the day when I opened Twitter and noticed my ‘news feed’ was covered in; #MentalHealthAwareness. Before I knew it, I had spent 10 minutes reading through the various struggles, courage and universal support of complete strangers. I had a sudden admiration for every single one of these people that I had never met.

I found myself thinking of people in my life that had suffered a loss, an illness or simply had bad luck (don’t we all at times?) – I wanted to reach out to them all and tell them, it’s ok, to not be ok.

On Wednesday 10th October was World Mental Health Day. The stats from Mind.org are heart-breaking – one in four people will be affected by mental health problems in any given year. Mental Health Problems can affect anyone – so be kind, to everyone, always – you never know what someone else is going through.

After working through my to-do list throughout the morning, I once again opened Twitter to see my ‘news feed’ now had the hashtag; #ComingOutDay

Today, Thursday 11th October is National Coming Out Day. This day was ‘created’ in 1988 in the feminist and gay liberation spirit. It is said that once people know that they have loved ones who are lesbian or gay, they are far less likely to maintain homophobic or oppressive views. In the LGBT Community, ‘coming out’ means the voluntary self-disclosure of one’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity. The creater of RUComingOut summed up this day perfectly here.

So why am I telling you about these National Days? Well, as someone who feels I have to defend my sexual orientation on a regular basis to family, friends, colleagues and more so, strangers, it is fitting that ‘National Coming Out Day’ is next to ‘World Mental Health Day’ – after all mental health is caused by many different areas of someone’s life – one of them, being the consistent judgement and fear of being different from others, and/or disliked because of who you are!

Being gay, bi-sexual, straight or even asexual does NOT determine who you are as a person, it does not determine whether you are a kind, hard-working and loyal person – do not let your sexual orientation status define who you are – more importantly, do not let other people define who are, and who you will become to be.