"THE LIGHT THAT IS YOU IS HOPE"..

Today is #WorldMentalHealthDay. It has already been the most toughest, worrying and upsetting of years and by the looks of it, it’s not done with upsetting and worrying us yet. Please remember that "The Light that is You is Hope".......praying for everyone affected by mental health difficulties including myself at times today and always. Never has it been more appropriate that we should think about and pray for all the people who are suffering with their mental health and ourselves included. This year more than others we need to watch out for each other, for signs of stress or worry and they are there in all of us as all make our journey through life. Even people who have all things in the right places and seem to have it all together are feeling underlying anxieties, worries and fears. Some are even feeling much more. I know plenty of family, friends, colleagues and neighbours who are suffering in silence and are overwhelmed by the enormity of what has happened to them since the Coronavirus arrived on our shores and knocked on our doors in terms of their businesses, their employment, family loss, illness, health problems, financial difficulties and many more. Let's keep them all in our prayers today and including ourselves. It’s important to look out for each other but don’t forget to look out for yourself. So let’s all take a moment today to reach out & check in with our family, friends & neighbours. We must all remember that in a world where we can be anything-let's be kind. But we also need to be kind to our own minds and selves too.

The Light that is You is Hope...

I love this prayer poem I pray, “Have you ever entered a room from darkness into a space where there was light, And noticed how quickly your eyes and minds adjusted to the wonderful sight. It was amazing how you saw things that you forgot was even there. You could easily accomplish your assignments without even a moment of despair. Then suddenly you transposed your direction and you moved from the light into the darkness. The adjustment was much more difficult then, so you paused before you embarked. Your walk with Our Lord is a comparison as you journeyed with him by your side. You can never reverse your direction as long as Jesus is your shepard and guide. The road will not always be easy and sometimes the light seems dim. But if you can only keep your focus on “The Light” you are assured to be led by him and know the light that is You is Hope.”

The month of October and the 10th of October is Mental Health Awareness month and day and it is important that we learn to love ourselves, accept ourselves, forgive ourselves and be good to ourselves, because without you or me the rest of us, our family, friends and colleagues are without a source of many wonderful and amazing things. Suicide is claiming the lives of at least 700 or more people each year in Ireland. Also a recent Europe-wide report found that Ireland has the highest rate of suicide in young females in Europe with the second highest rate of suicide in young males. It’s important for everyone of us to know that "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem". It’s important for all of us to know that there is help out there with various Charities, Churches and HSE programmes. It's important for all of us to know that we can go to our GP for appropriate assessment and treatment or to trained counsellors and professionals provided by the many schools, universities and various charities and churches if we are in need of help and support. People and I mean me and you, all of us need to have a chat, to have a conversation, to have a walk and talk with ourselves and with each other!!!!

Be Open

Let me be honest with you as I write this opinion piece, I have lit a candle and said a prayer for all who will read it. Life is awful tough at times and trust me although you might not think it at times, i definitely truly know it is!! I am definitely not okay at times. At times I need help. I need support. I need care. I need love. I need forgiveness. I need mercy. I need counseling. I need prayers. I need guidance. I need protection. I need care. At times I have felt and feel wrecked, lost, lonely, hurt, guilty, abused, bullied and abandoned. There I said it!! We should all say it and have a good honest to god chat about how we feel at times. At times I am not okay. I do get stressed, and I am a total worrier. I worry about my family. I worry about my friends. I worry about my work colleagues. At times I am sad and sometimes confused. I can be distant. At times I worry that I may not have the resources or wisdom to help my family and friends through the journey of life or do the work I need to do to help the poor especially in Africa. Indeed there are times when I feel alone albeit that I am surrounded by loving, caring and the most amazing, brilliant people. I get upset about things in life, in the past and in our world, particularly injustice and inequality in society. So at times I am not okay. At times we are all not okay. And you know what. That’s okay. Because I know I won’t always feel this way. As my good friend David says to me regularly during our weekly get together's, "This too shall pass." Giving myself time, I will figure things out and I will pray for guidance and protection not to hurt myself or others. I will discover or rediscover my purpose or focus in life. I will be okay. I am lucky because feeling sad or down is temporary for me, and while I am regularly stressed and worried, I know I will be okay. What I have found out as I approach my 54th year, is that sometimes society isn’t too keen on shows of weakness. We are expected to be the picture of health, fitness, beauty and knowledge and in my case to raise loads of funding for charity. There is a lot of pressure on each of us. We must be strong and determined. We put pressure on ourselves to be perfect all the time although that pressure may come from others, a family member, a friend, a colleague, although they might not even know they are doing it, but you know it and you feel it. I personally find it exhausting trying to live up to that expectation. At times I don’t know why I keep trying. As well as that, I have always been self-critical. I beat myself up over tiny things, the smallest mistakes. I have a large blackthorn stick as my friend David would say to me, that although it's imaginary I beat myself up with it daily. I’ll over analyze conversations and events, wondering if I said the wrong thing and what the other person thinks of me now. I lose sleep over decisions even the one's I made years ago, wondering what I could have done differently or said differently. I have let people down especially those closest to me at times. I often get wrapped up in trying to be perfect, in trying to please everyone around me except those who mean the world to me, my wife, my family and close friends. I have to regularly remind myself that it’s a fruitless cause. Perfection doesn’t exist although at times you try to convince yourself it does. I keep doing the bad I don’t want to do rather than doing the good I always want to do and try so hard each day to do. You can’t make everyone happy all the time. And I’m learning that that’s okay even if I have already spent more than 53 years in this world of ours on this journey called Life trying to do exactly that!! I am learning to forgive myself for not being perfect. And I’m learning to forgive myself for not always being okay and for not always being a good friend to the people who are good friends to me. Because right now as I write this piece, I’m not. But I also know that I have the ability to change that and that who I am makes a difference for good

Be Honest

I have found out over time that it is so important to acknowledge to yourself how you are truly feelin. Also, to check how your family, friends and colleagues are feeling at times. It is so important to not only identify, but also to verify our feelings. Be honest about how you feel even if you don’t think people will understand or relate or care. I can’t count the number of times someone has asked me how I am and I respond with “I am good” or "I am the finest" when I’m really not. It’s my automatic response to that type of question. And it doesn’t do me any good. It doesn’t make me feel better, sometimes I feel worse for not being honest. I try to go to my local church mass every evening, and it is there that I have my chat with God!!! I learn to acknowledge the negative feelings and offer them up. I have learned not to be afraid to admit that I am having a bad day or a rough week, or a hard month or that I was hurt or abused in the past. It’s okay. We all have them at some point. That's life as they say. What I’m still learning to do though, is not sink into the feeling. That’s when it becomes difficult for me to get out of the situation or rut or dark place that I might find myself in either from present day issues or past issues. I remind myself that I will feel better at some point and my personal faith in God through prayer helps me get myself back out of the dark place that I might be in and out into the light again. A few other things that help me is, a good night sleep usually does the trick. Or going for a walk. Or writing things out on paper or doing what I am doing now, writing an opinion piece. Sometimes I call one of my closest friend's Paul, because I know he will tell me jokes and lift my spirits. It's important, I think, well in my case anyway to find something that works for you so you don’t get stuck in the “not okayness” for too long. The motto for the "Cycle against Suicide" Charity which is in motion around Ireland says, "It’s okay to not be okay". I have found during this journey of life that it's alright to reach out to people and say, "hey I’m kind of in a bad way here right now and I was wondering if you could say an extra prayer for me or light a candle for me or give me one of your great hug's or I need your ear for a few hours can you listen?" It’s okay for us to answer the question, "How are things?" to say “not so good, can you help me out?”. It’s okay to let people see you cry, it doesn’t mean you are weak, it means you have enough courage to not hide who you are. It’s okay to need someone to sit with you in silence for a while just because you can’t be alone. It’s okay to have those days where you don’t accomplish anything because you just don’t want to go out the front door. What’s not okay is not wanting it to change. What's not okay is not asking for help and support. So please reach out for help like I try to do, say a prayer, light a candle, sing out loud to your favourite song, enjoy some coffee or tea with a good and close friend, read one of your favourite book's, call a friend and don't be afraid to get help from a charity or from a professional body. I really believe the saying, “a problem shared can be a problem halved” and when we share our problems with someone who truly cares, or with a qualified professional we can get help and support. Mental health refers to the state of our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It impacts the way we feel, think and act, making it important in all areas of our lives. Mental health plays an important role in the way we deal with stress, how we relate to others, and the decisions we make in our daily lives. Without positive mental health, it will be almost impossible to realize your full potential, work productively, make a meaningful contribution to your community, or handle the stress that comes with life.

What Can You Do

So what can you do to ensure you have a healthy mental state? Well, there are various ways to maintain positive mental health and live a more fulfilling and enjoyable life. Besides seeking professional help if you need it, you should make time to connect with others, think positively about yourself and get physically and spiritually active. Also, make sure you get enough rest, you’re mindful of your present moment, and be helpful to others. A healthy mental state will help you leverage your energy to achieve the success you seek and live a purposeful life. Self- esteem is so important to our well-being . It is essential for physical, spiritual, emotional and mental health and for happiness. Mental health is often missing from public health debates even though it’s critical to wellbeing and our way of life. It’s up to you today to start making healthy choices. Not choices that are just healthy for your body, but healthy for your mind, heart and soul. Don’t let your struggle become your identity. Also children’s mental health is just as important as their physical health and deserves the same quality of support. There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t. While taking care of your mental health might mean getting professional support, you should also consider making the right changes for you. Hopefully, this thought for the week has inspired you in some way to always maintain positive mental health for success, peace and happiness. We become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves. There is nothing so disobedient as an undisciplined mind, and there is nothing so obedient as a disciplined mind. Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts. Remember to always love yourself, accept yourself, forgive yourself and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful and amazing things.

As a final thought, remember, everything will be okay if we love and believe in ourselves, and understand that hope floats around us and when we can we should always spread that hope and love with others especially those who mean the most to us. I don’t know how it goes down for People who have died by suicide but if I am honest I at times really do!! I remember vividly recently trying to save a young girls life in the river corrib and how it breaks my heart daily that I and the amazing emergency workers and first responders couldn’t. It seems people who do die by suicide get hit by a heavy downpour or cyclone of worry and then everything becomes dark and it’s winter all the time. Maybe they were keeping up with their positive techniques to make things better and maybe then they weren’t. Sometimes, positive techniques and pushing forward isn’t enough anyway. It’s hard to tell from the outside, but it’s important to understand what it’s like from the inside and that’s what I am trying to explain from my Life respectively with all its ups and downs and good things and abusive things happening to me. I firmly believe that understanding, love, mercy and compassion have to be the base of effective action. It’s important to understand what depression and suffering from mental health illness is, how it feels, what it’s like to live with it, so you can help people both on an individual basis and a policy basis. I’m not putting heavy philosophy out there to make you’re reading this opinion piece make you sad. I know it feels sad and worrying to read it, and realistically it can be unpleasant to be around it, that’s why people pull away. I don’t have a message for people with depression like “keep pushing on” or “it will be alright tomorrow”. Of course you’re going to keep pushing on as I try to do the best you can and hoping it will be alright tomorrow until you physically or emotionally or spiritually can’t, because who wants it all to end? I know what the stakes are. My message to everyone else is let’s start helping one another rather than judging one another, let’s care for one another and hopefully leave no one behind or lost. Let’s petition all county and city councilors and TD’s to strive to change and do more for people affected by mental health problems especially now during these strange and awful times of the Coronavirus. Depression and Mental Health illnesses are in some way like it’s raining all the time and sometimes extremely heavy. And like the weather, it is a mindless process, powerful and unpredictable with great potential for harm. But like climate change, that doesn’t mean we are helpless. If we want to stop losing so many people and especially young people to this disease, it will require action at every level and especially at government and policy level. As I said this month is as good a month to pick a good place to start your "walk and talk" journey through life as the month of October is Mental Health month!! Get out there if you can and be well and take care of one another!!! Also know that the best of help can be got from contacting some of Ireland's best charities and organisations in the Samaritans, Pieta House, Aware, Jigsaw, St. Vincent de Paul, your local GP's, your local religious, Chaplain's, HSE groups and various qualified counsellors. Keep as well as you can everyone!

So today maybe do one small thing to brighten up a family members, a friends, a colleague, a neighbours day.

Get out in the fresh air for yourself if you can but do check in how you’re feeling and be gentle and kind with yourself too.

#Pieta 24-hour Freephone Crisis Helpline now on 1800 247 247 or text HELP to 51444

#samaritans call 116123

You’re not alone, there is always hope and remember that "The Light that is You is Hope" xx