Gum on My Shoe

I’m not sad anymore, I’m just tired of this place The weight of the world would be okay If it would pick a shoulder to lean on So I could stand up straight — The Wonder Years , “My Last Semester” This post was inspired by an impromptu conversation in a pub. One rainy morning in July I found myself talking at the bar of the Wateredge Inn with a guy called John. You can read about our meeting in One Must Imagine Marty and John Happy: Two Strangers Discuss the Absurd in an Ambleside Pub . I mentioned it was one of my happy places and that I’ve blogged about it previously. [...] John commented that as I’d written about happy places I could write about miserable places too. It’s taken me this long to think of anywhere I’d refer to in those terms. I tend not to dwell on things that didn’t work out for me, still less on where I was at the time. I kept coming back to the topic, though. Where’s somewhere I’d never want to revisit? Where do I struggle to talk or even think ab...

I finally was able to relax into the warmth that is Greece. I spent seven hours on sun-beds. Three at one bay and four at another. This is not normal for me. I’m not a beach person. — Fran Houston Sometimes, being a supportive friend means sitting with them through their darkest moments. And sometimes, it means sitting with them on a beach helping them relax. This blog post was inspired by a recent conversation with Fran on the Greek island of Poros. She was visiting a dear friend of ours, Laurel Seaborn, who is a captain and instructor on a women’s sailing programme based in Athens. You can read about Laurel’s amazing journey in this article for American Sailing. Over the fourteen years we’ve been friends I’ve been Fran’s virtual travel buddy on a number of trips within the US and abroad. In 2018 she spent a month in Ajijic in Mexico. It was the longest she’d been away from home since the three months she spent touring Europe with her parents in 2013. The challenges of th...

There are places you haven’t been where you already belong. (Unknown) This article was inspired by a recent Instagram post by Rachel Kelly. Rachel is the author of five books on mental health and wellbeing. She’s also a respected public speaker, and official ambassador for mental health charities including Rethink Mental Illness and SANE. Her post included photographs of the English Lake District. “Being there,” she said, “never fails to put a smile on my face.” Rachel was in the Lake District when she wrote the foreword for our book High Tide Low Tide . I love thinking that she was in her happy place when she did so. Where are my happy places, though? Where is my heart most at ease? Where do I feel most at home? I settled on four places: Memory Lane, Langrigg; Wateredge Inn, Ambleside; Stack Newcastle; and Costa Coffee, Kingston Park. This selection will come as no surprise to close friends and attentive readers, because I’ve talked about them on several previous occas...

I don’t take vacations away from my friends. I take them with me! If not for coronavirus this would be the final day of my week away at the cottage in Langrigg, Cumbria. I’d be having lunch somewhere, quite possibly the Beehive Inn at Eamont Bridge. Veggie lasagne and chips, and a half-pint of something. Instead, I’m sitting in my garden at home. The cottage booking was cancelled, of course. Hire car too. Instead of a week visiting places up and down the east coast — Holy Island, Bamburgh, Alnwick Garden, Morpeth, Belsay, Blyth — and a week in the Lake District, I’ve spent the fortnight at home in lockdown. No car. No trips out. No visiting friends and family. A weekly walk to the supermarket for groceries. Occasional visits to the local corner shop. My daily walk for exercise. The house. The garden. Before the holiday I’d had three weeks working from home. That wasn’t easy and I’m not looking forward to getting back to it. It was all so new, strange, and scary. The country — in...

By Julie A. Fast I love Christmas. I like the music and the colors. I’m listening to the Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack as I write this! I love the food and the snow and the lights on the houses. It is not a religious holiday for me, but one that I associate with really good childhood memories and a lot of family events. And yet, there is also the bipolar disorder side of Christmas. Bipolar is an illness triggered by change, even if the change is positive. I write about triggers in my book Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder . For all of my adult life I’ve loved Christmas, but once my bipolar started in my late teens, I kept getting sick at this time of year. It took me years to figure out why. My bipolar diagnosis at age 31 helped, but I still wasn’t able to handle the up and down emotions during the holiday season here in the States. (Please feel free to substitute the holiday you choose to celebrate.) Even after my diagnosis and creating my management system I lived with ver...

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.” ― Rumi I’m on holiday this week at a cottage in the English Lake District I’ve been visiting for decades. Each evening rain or shine I walk to the village. It’s a mile each way, give or take, but I can be out a couple of hours. I amble. I stop to watch the sheep, rabbits, and birds. And I think. Over the years I’ve had many folk with me in my thoughts as I’ve walked the single track road to Great Musgrave. So many that long ago I named it Memory Lane. A very few have joined me on phone or video calls. It’s a joy to share special places with those close in heart if not always in miles. Not all the memories are easy, but they all get to be here. Memory Lane can be a place of healing too. And there’s always room for more. As a friend said to me the other day, it’s good to make new memories. It can help cleanse us, move us forward. Sometimes it’s just nice to layer new memories on old. S...

Monday July 9, 2018 Dear Fran It is 7:10 p.m. here in the UK. 2:10 p.m. with you in Maine. This hour is our hour. Usually we would be on Skype, catching up on our news and our plans. Just hanging out together, as friends do the world over no matter where they live or how far apart in miles those places might be. This isn’t a normal week, though, is it? I am on vacation here at Ambleside in the English Lake District. Travel – on either my part or yours – inevitably means some disruption to our routine. One Skype call per day instead of two, for example. Or shorter calls. Occasionally none. That used to hurt. These days not. Or not so much. We have learned to trust. We are doing okay so far this week! We had video calls on Saturday and Sunday evenings, down by the jetty opposite the fish and chip shop. It is always fun to be on with you when I am “out and about,” able to not merely tell you what’s going on for me but show you. The lake here at Ambleside (technically, where we...

Back in January I posted a list of six things I’d quite like to do in 2017 . So how did I get on? 1. Volunteer with Time to Change ACHIEVED Following on from previous volunteering experiences with mental health charity Time to Change, I had a fantastic time at Newcastle Pride in July. You can read how I got on, as well as the thoughts of others who took part, in my post What Is It Like to Volunteer with Time to Change? If you’d like to get involved with Time to Change yourself in any capacity, check out their Champions page . 2. Visit a Pub ACHIEVED This might not seem a particularly challenging objective but I rarely visit pubs, apart from when my wife Pam and I are on holiday. I specifically wanted to visit Wylam Brewery at the Palace of Arts in Newcastle upon Tyne. I achieved this goal in May , finding that the place fully lived up to my hopes. I visited two other pubs of note this year. The 15th-century Kirkstone Pass Inn on the A592 Kirkstone Pass road ...

By Tricia I believe there are a great many expectations that we put on our children during the holidays. We expect them to help decorate the tree with the family, go shopping with us, maybe wrap presents, and the worst part of all is having to spend time with extended family, oftentimes crammed into too tight of quarters. And we expect all of this to be done with a smile on their face. They must be polite to Aunt Rita and Uncle Joe who are always making jokes at their expense. They have to accept hugs and “Merry Christmas!” from people they only see once a year, again all with a smile. Maybe we could let them off the hook at least a little this year? If you have never suffered from any sort of mental illness, you likely do not realize the extra stress that this puts on those who do. Most kids enjoy decorating the Christmas tree, but if your child doesn’t want to this year, why would you want to force him? Nobody enjoys being made to do things, but kids who suffer from bipol...

As I mentioned in my speech at a recent mental health event , I have occasionally been called upon to act as a personal SatNav (GPS) service for Fran when she’s traveling. When Fran’s away from home it’s often easier for me to look stuff up online than it is for her on her cell phone. I’ve booked hotels on her behalf and checked out restaurants and places to visit. I’ve even acted as an emergency SatNav, using a combination of Facebook chat, Google maps and an app called Glympse which lets you share your location with someone. It’s never boring with Frannie! I had opportunity to reprise this role last weekend, as Fran travelled with a friend from Portland, Maine, to Charleston in South Carolina—a journey of 1,100 miles (around 19 hours on the road). We’d planned the trip well in advance. Jim would rent the car and do the driving. Fran would navigate, a challenge she was keen to take on even if she doubted her abilities. I would be on hand if needed. We explored a number of nav...

Last week I returned from a three week holiday in Italy. Because of my mental illness (grandiosely delusional psychosis and anxiety, more easily described as being ‘Crazy’—a phrase I am comfortable with) I haven’t been away from my hometown much since about 2004. These days I am so much better though, hence the bold move to leave my hometown for three weeks. I have put in a lot of work towards getting better, especially in my anxiety, and with some good luck as well, I have considered myself to be pretty much recovered since about 2016. In 2016 I flew to Ireland for my niece’s christening and in 2017 I flew to Holland for my cousin’s wedding, despite being afraid of flying, an endeavour that has the power to shake me to the core. These two trips were successful and enjoyable though, the flying was bearable, and they made me confident that I could safely enjoy three weeks in Italy, without my fading mental health issues getting in the way. I had a good time in Italy, we stayed a...