Letting go to move forward

Shauna, staff member

My story with depression started when my 1st child was born but if I were honest it started further back than that. If anybody told me that I would feel indifferent or distant from my beautiful and vulnerable little baby I would have told them they were crazy to say such a thing, but unfortunately that is exactly what happened, I could feel nothing but absolute sadness and helplessness and resentment as to why I had to take care of my baby. I didn’t dare tell anyone how I felt as I thought that I would lose my husband and lose my baby. I knew about post natal depression but I didn’t think for once that I was suffering with it. I thought that I was a horrible person for thinking such selfish thoughts never thinking for once that there could be something wrong with my mental state.

Depression olympics

Mark Laherty, Student Leader

There was this music building in my old boarding school. It was the one place where nobody was likely to find you, where the pace of the day didn’t feel so tightly wound. It was two years ago, give or take a few days, when I ducked in there and curled up in the corner for half an hour.

On the rare occasion that mainstream media decides to show mental illness, it does so through some major attention-grabbing demonstration, like bursting into tears, or a big long self-loathing monologue. Hell, most of the time, all we have are Batman villains written to have funny stares and no empathy. All this is, of course, hardly a reflection of reality. By all means, people do break down and burst into tears, but it’s not the only way that someone can break.