AN AMAZON UK BUNNY BIRTHDAY WISH LIST | THE ELDEST IS ALMOST FOUR!!

“The kindness one does for one animal may not change the world, but it will change the world of that one animal.”

Unknown

Now, you know that I like to try to disperse light-hearted content on my blog as a means of breaking up the very heavy and emotional posts I typically publish. Of course, this often feels like a waste of time because people likely aren’t coming to, I’m NOT Disordered for this kind of content, and I actually sometimes worry that I’ll lose readers, but from Day One my blog has been about what I benefit from writing about… My eldest pet (I have three – a second bunny and a cat too!) Luna will be FOUR YEARS OLD on October 1^st and so we sat down together (as you do!) and put together a wish list of treats and toys from Amazon UK. We thought we’d share it with you all for any fellow bunnies/bunny owners who are deserving of some lovely bits and pieces too! There are a few absolute bargains in it! Enjoy…

LOOKING BACK OVER THE TWO YEARS WITH MY FLUFFY SOULMATE | ALSO INCLUDING MY FAVOURITE CAT BITS FROM ETSY | HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY, MY LITTLE RUBY | IN COLLABORATION WITH ETSY UK

“Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.”

Richard Bach

Even though for my two mini-Lionhead bunnies (Luna and Gracie) I celebrate their ‘Gotcha Day’ as their Birthday, I know Ruby’s actual date of birth(!), and so her Birthday is marked on March 26^th. This year, for her second Birthday, I’ll be looking over the previous two years with her, realising she’s my fluffy soulmate, reminiscing over my favourite moments together, and reflecting on some of the things I’ve learnt from loving her. I’ll also pepper the post with some of my favourite cat items and products on Etsy UK right now…

TURNING 34!!! | EVERYTHING I THOUGHT I’D BE BY NOW

You shoot me down,

But I won’t fall,

I am titanium

David Guetta ft. Sia: Titanium

In a recent blog post for I’m NOT Disordered’s 12^th Birthday, I was going through my archives of old blog posts, and I happened across one from my 26^th Birthday (which you can read here) where I made a bit of a huge statement about where I’d like to be by the age of 33 and it’s something that I definitely haven’t achieved. It’s also something which I no longer even strive towards. So, it got me thinking about all the things I thought I’d be or have achieved by now and about how much life can change and develop and sometimes, rather than feel let-down and disappointed, we just have to grow and change too. We have to recognise that maybe it wasn’t meant to happen and that because something else has come along, it doesn’t at all mean that you’ve failed in some way. It’s about being accepting of change and recognising the potential opportunities and strength it can bring to you rather than zoning in and concentrating on any negatives and feelings of being unprepared or unwilling to take on something new and unexpected. I feel these are skills and mindsets which I’ve managed to gradually develop over the last decade, and I wanted to share with you how things around education and career have changed for me and how I’ve coped with these shifts in my life…

THE 12 BIGGEST MOMENTS IN MY BLOGGING CAREER & A WHOLE NEW LOOK | HAPPY 12th BIRTHDAY, I’M NOT DISORDERED!!!

I’m going to start in a very stereotypical way right now; I cannot believe I’m writing a blog post for I’m NOT Disordered’s TWELTH Birthday! Like, where did the years go?! How did they whiz by so fast that I feel like I barely even noticed them? Yet, at the same time, I remember how very hard I’ve worked and how many amazing opportunities I’ve had/done. Whilst this twelfth Birthday has me feeling quite old, I’m also very grateful for it being a chance to reflect on my blogging career and pick out twelve amazing moments that I feel have really contributed to my blog’s success and my own skills, talents, and experience. You might also notice; the blog has a whole new look and a brand-new logo! This has been in the planning for a while now and a lot of thought has gone into it, so I really hope you all like it…

DEAR LUNA, HAPPY THIRD BIRTHDAY

Dear Luna,

I feel like the way a pet comes into your life says so much about the bond and relationship you’re going to have. It’s like a hint or a sign of what’s to come. If you find a pet as a stray or if you adopt them from a shelter or buy them from a store… The difference in a beginning can hold a lot of importance for the journey you’re going to have together. And I believe that our beginning was no different…

AN OPEN LETTER TO RUBY IN THE RUN-UP TO HER FIRST BIRTHDAY!!! | PLUS HER BIRTHDAY WISHLIST!!!

Lying close to you, feeling your heart beating,

And I’m wondering what you’re dreaming,

Wondering if it’s me you’re seeing,

Then I kiss your eyes,

And thank God we’re together,

And I just wanna stay with you in this moment forever.

Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing – Aerosmith

In the almost automatic decision – which didn’t feel like a decision because it felt so predictable and natural(!) – to write a blog post celebrating my kitten’s first Birthday on March 26^th, I toyed between writing it as a little letter and writing a full-on, detailed piece about pets and mental health. In the end, I decided to do both! So, here’s Ruby’s letter and on the 26^th the other post will go up…

I’M TURNING 33!!!

*This post is a bit of a follow-in from my previous post where I picked apart some of my Birthday blog posts, you can read it here*

Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you look at it – there’s a huge mental health awareness date (Time To Talk Day) taking place on my actual Birthday of February 1^st, and since I have a really special piece of content already lined up to mark that date; I thought I’d post my Birthday blog posts beforehand. Now, a genuine ‘unfortunately,’ is that due to a new commitment (which I can’t quite talk about just yet) I’m unable to complete the thought behind my Birthday posts which was to split all my Birthday blog posts up and go through each of them talking about the bits that stand out, what has changed, what’s stayed the same… So, in addition to the previous blog post I’ve linked at the beginning of this one, I managed to write about my 26^th Birthday blog post and then I’ve put together a little reel at the end of the post…

PART ONE: PICKING APART MY BIRTHDAY BLOG POSTS | I’M TURNING 33!!!

*This post is part one to a series*

Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you look at it – there’s a huge mental health awareness date (Time To Talk Day) taking place on my actual Birthday of February 1^st, and since I have a really special piece of content already lined up to mark that date; I thought I’d post my Birthday blog post now. I kind of feel like it was a very grown-up decision to make – to prioritise a more career-appropriate post over my Birthday one! And I actually had a ton of ideas of angles for this blog post, but in tracking down the links for every blog post from all my previous Birthdays since creating I’m NOT Disordered, I decided to have a real look through each of them and pick out some bits and pieces that I wanted to reflect on…

HAPPY 11TH BIRTHDAY I'M NOT DISORDERED | A REEL OF BLOGGING CAREER MEMORIES & A HUGE BALLOON!!!

AND THE YEAR 2023 IS COMING TO AN END… | PART TWO

“She remembered who she was, and the game changed.”

Lalah Deliah

*YOU CAN READ PART ONE HERE* 

Pimkie Suede Knee High Boot: £51.00

Embellished Jumper: £40.00

Too Faced Better Than Sex Waterproof Mascara: £13.00

e.l.f Liquid Glitter Eyeshadow: £6.00

Brave Soul Cardigan: £42.00

THE TWO NEW ADDITIONS TO THE FAMILY: GRACIE & RUBY

With my calico rescue cat, Emmy, being put to sleep in October 2022, we started off the year as a family of two with just Luna (my black and white mini-Lionhead lop eared bunny) and I. But when Emmy was put to sleep, I asked the Vet what the best thing would be for Luna and almost without seeming to take the time to think about it, she replied with “get her a friend.” As the weeks went by without Emmy though, I found myself enjoying building a better bond with Luna who had always just spent the majority of her time following Emmy around and had never really been affectionate with me. Without Emmy though, she was now following me around the home (my bunnies are free-roam) and was always stretching up on her back feet to nudge me for a stroke or a cuddle. Then she started taking the cat tunnel in her mouth and running with it in circles; myself and everyone else who either saw when they visited the house or watched my videos of her doing it, laughed and thought it was really cute. But actually; it turned out to have been a form of repetitive behaviour that illustrated boredom and loneliness.

A FEW IMPORTANT BITS & PIECES FROM THE PAST YEAR | CELEBRATING MY 32nd BIRTHDAY!!

“Thirty two!”

“I know! How did I manage it?!”

“A lot of hard work!”

As if I’ve made it to thirty-two!! Having started to take a number of actions that could have very likely killed me when I was eighteen, a number of mental health professionals openly stated that they’d be surprised if I made it to my nineteenth Birthday. In all honesty, I also couldn’t imagine me ever getting to this age! And obviously, for a very long time, I didn’t even want to make it that far! I mean, I actually had this really intense belief for well over a year where I was convinced that I had been put on this earth purely to commit suicide and die at a young age so that it drew attention to the failures within psychiatric services. And it took A LOT of therapy to help me work through that and I think that the ultimate aid in this, was I’m NOT Disordered; because blogging truly feels like I have a purpose in life. Like, I believe this is what I was put here to do. This, is why I have gone through all that I have…

MY 32ND BIRTHDAY WISHLIST

Anyone who’s read I’m NOT Disordered for a little while or who know me, will definitely not be surprised by this post! I talked a lot about my enjoyment and the importance of creating gift guides and wishlists through Blogmas 2022, and with my Birthday coming up (February 1^st), it probably seemed like a no-brainer for me to produce content like this! I hope you like this and that it inspires ideas for gifts for someone you know too!

EVERYTHING ALL OF YOU MEAN TO ME | I’M NOT DISORDERED’S 10TH BIRTHDAY PARTY

For the third time in my blogging career, I hosted another party to celebrate a milestone I’m NOT Disordered and I have reached (the previous two were for reaching 100,000 readers and then reaching 1,000,000), and I have to admit, I think it was actually my favourite one of them all! With the previous two events being quite large and formal, I wanted to do something more informal and intimate. I mean, at the 100k party, I had 100 guests and a few were merely plus one’s for the people who I did know! And then not many people were able to come to my one million party because of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown. So, keeping in mind that nothing ever goes perfectly, I decided to host this party at a local café (Dolly Dimples) for nine of the most important people in my life and it’s that which has inspired this post about how much all of the party attendees, and you (as my readers) mean to me…

10 THOUGHTS, ADVICE, ‘PINCH-ME’ MOMENTS, RECOMMENDATIONS, & A SERIOUSLY MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT!!! | HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY, I’M NOT DISORDERED

“When you start living the life of your dreams, there will always be obstacles, doubters, mistakes, and setbacks along the way. But with hard work, perseverance, and self-belief, there is no limit to what you can achieve.”

Roy Bennette

 I feel like, there’s been a lot of instances – particularly recently – where I’ve made the comment “I can’t believe that this is happening…” and this blog post celebrating I’m NOT Disordered’s 10^th Birthday, is definitely one of those occasions…

I guess that the most obvious place to start is by talking about the creation of the blog way back in 2013…

In the summer of 2012 – after three years in and out of both psychiatric and medical hospitals – a psychiatrist recommended I be admitted to a hospital specialising in my diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. I had an assessment with one unit, and they conceded that they couldn’t accept my flight risk. On my second assessment with the hospital in Bradford (over 100 miles away from home) they were happy to admit me, but I refused to go after hearing of their very structured, intense, and rigid way of running things. The sound of a therapeutic timetable and wake-up/lights-off times, felt overwhelming and unappealing.

THE LITTLEST IS ONE!!! | HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUNA

“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone, whose weirdness is compatible with ours; we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness – and call it love…”

Robert Fulghum, True Love

It sounds a bit cliché, but right now – on the day my mini-Lionhead bunny turns one year old – I’m stuck between the notion that Luna has been part of our little family forever, and the feeling that I only just brought her home the other day...

THE JOURNEY OF ADDING LUNA TO THE FAMILY

If you’ve been reading, I’m NOT Disordered for a little while, you may know that one type of hallucinations I used to experience were visual, and of rabbits. In 2017, when they became the most constant and distressing, they had been in a long time, I asked a member of staff in Pets at Home if I could hold one of their bunnies. I had it in my head that maybe touching their soft fur and feeling their heartbeat whilst I held them, would better help me to recognise reality and separate that from the slightly blurred and vague notion I seemed to experience when I was hallucinating. And so, out of all the young rabbits, I picked a fluffy, brown Lionhead and I will never ever forget the serenity I felt when I held her against my chest in the middle of the store and started gently (so as not to scare her) crying. Fortunately, I had already asked my Mum to take photos, so she genuinely captured the tears rolling down my cheeks while I hugged the bunny who I had instantly determined to be mine. So, I returned to the store the following day to buy that exact bunny, her hutch, and all the other bits and pieces and I brought her home with the name ‘Pixie.’

BUNNY Q&A | LUNA'S ALMOST ONE!!! | IN COLLABORATION WITH AMAZON UK

Love you, I’ll be here

I will never disappear

Said forever, I swear

So I will be there

Tyler Shaw – Love You Still

Luna's Amazon Birthday Wishlist

It's Luna (my bunny)'s 1st Birthday next week, but I wanted to do something special now... So, I thought I’d turn over to you and asked you all to send in your bunny-related questions! I had vowed to answer all of them but having such a big audience now; I maybe shouldn’t have said that! So, I’ve had to pick my favourites – which was so difficult because I honestly loved them all…

Why a rabbit? And what made you pick Luna?

So, when I was little I had two rabbits – Happy and Thumper – and when they had babies myself and my family made the mistake of handling them so the Mum killed them (something which is quite well known in rabbits). This memory led professionals to believe that when I started to hallucinate rabbits years later, that was the influence.

After a lengthy (two and a half years) psychiatric hospital admission and medication, the hallucinations stopped for some time and when they came back in 2017, I was so terrified that if I told someone I’d be put back in hospital; but I knew that I needed to talk about it in order to get help. So, my Mum and I were in Pets At Home, and I had this unexpected and overwhelming idea to hold one of their rabbits. My thought behind it was that perhaps in feeling a very real bunny, in having their fur against my skin and feeling their heartbeat, maybe I’d feel some sort of courage and comfort that would leave me able to get help for the hallucinations return.

GROWING UP & MENTAL HEALTH | INSPIRED BY GREYLAN’S 1ST BIRTHDAY!!

“I’m not everything I want to be, but I’m more than I was, and I’m still learning”

Charlotte Eriksson

After the success of Mental Health Awareness Week (last week), I’m thinking there’s quite a few new readers… So, in case you’re one of them and you don’t already know, Lauren is one of my best friends who I’ve known for fifteen years now and on May 18^th, 2021, she gave birth to her beautiful baby boy; Greylan. Within days of his birth, I was obviously writing a blog post for him (DEAR GREYLAN | MY BEST-FRIEND HAD A BABY BOY!!! | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)) and now that it’s his First Birthday, I was inspired to write this piece about everything related to growing up and mental health…

MY CHILDHOOD – FROM RABBITS TO SINGLE-PARENTING

Having been a psychiatric hospital inpatient a number of times and for lengthy periods of time, I met a lot of inpatients whose childhood was incredibly sad, difficult, and traumatic. To be honest, I think that before I heard of such upsetting childhoods, I had thought that the happiness of mine, was completely normal and how it was ‘meant’ to be done. It’s meant that in knowing these people, I became so much more grateful for the fact that in my childhood, I was surrounded by love, encouragement, support, and kindness.

The largest notable part of my childhood that has affected my mental health journey, was when I had two black and white rabbits called Thumper and Happy and they had babies. We didn’t know that you shouldn’t handle the babies (kits, I think they’re called) and so the rabbits killed/ate them (something which is actually a well-founded fact: 6 Main Reasons Why Rabbits Eat Their Babies (Tips to Stop) (atshq.org)). So, professionals deemed this ‘trauma’ to be a direct influence on the fact that my visual hallucinations from the Transient Psychosis I began to experience when I was eighteen were rabbits. Horrible, dirty rabbits that left me either speechless and terrified or screaming and running away!

THE ULTIMATE BIRTHDAY GIFT GUIDE | IN COLLABORATION WITH ETSY

I like to promote that caring about gifts doesn’t make a person ‘superficial’ or ‘materialistic’ – it can actually mean the opposite and be about the pure thought that’s gone into the gift, or the benefits it will have on a person’s life/mental health. So, I’m very honoured to be collaborating with Etsy.co.uk again for this piece, which was inspired by my trawl through their site for gifts for my best-friends Birthday next week!

Personalised Couple Print: from £4.50 by The Design Parlour

Custom Necklace: £15.00 by J S Charm Jewellery

Personalised Hip Flask and Shot Glasses Set: from £20.49 by Vault Gifts

Gay Couple Print: from £4.50 by The Design Parlour

Personalised Bottle Opener: £6.99 by Bee Creative Online

Family Print: from £7.19 by The Design Parlour

Personalised Embroidered Hoodie: from £29.69 by Santina Embroidery

Personalised Pint Glass: £25.00 by Dust and Things

“YOU SAVED ME” | HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMA BEAR!!

So, in huge contrast to my openness and regular content online, my Mum is actually very private and rarely uses social media; and this has made wanting to write a blog post for her Birthday very challenging! After trying a few different angles and themes for this post, I finally came across inspiration for it whilst just watching an Instagram post that used Erica Padilla’s song ‘By the Way’ as background music. The lyrics were so perfect for my thoughts, feelings, and memories with my Mum that I thought I’d use them to influence this piece…

It’s too much that I can't explain, because you've done so much for me

The second biggest difficulty in writing this blog post, was the realisation that there are just not enough words with enough power, meaning, and importance, to really thank my Mum for everything that she’s done for me.

As a Blogger – with my huge passion being about writing – I find it frustrating when I feel as though I can’t explain things or get across my thoughts properly. I think that this stems from the struggle I faced when my mental health first deteriorated, and I began hearing voices before making my first suicide attempt in 2009. I mean, I had already had to stop writing when the abuse began because I was so afraid that my natural affinity for it would lead me to using it as an outlet; and for so many reasons, no one could know what was happening to me. So, without that as a coping strategy, and my fear of what would happen if I told someone – anyone – that I was hallucinating, I kept quiet about that too.

HOW I MADE IT TO MY THIRTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY

So, I’ve said before that when I began hallucinating and made my second suicide attempt in 2009, a number of professionals commented that ‘at this rate’ I wasn’t going to make it to my nineteenth Birthday (which was just a few months away!). At the time, my first was “thank goodness for that!” So now, to be celebrating my birthday and turning thirty-one? Well, it’s a pretty big deal! And I wanted to publish a post that was just as special and just as important…

WHY I’M CAREFUL WITH THIS SORT OF THING:

In my life, I’ve learnt a lot of things the hard way, and one of these lessons in my mental health recovery has been making me more aware of any advice I give around the topic. I learnt this through one of the other inpatients in the specialist psychiatric hospital I was in for two and a half years, asking me what my turning point had been.

In fairness, this girl had become very easily influenced. I mean, when she was admitted to the ward specialising in Personality Disorders, she was the only girl to have absolutely no self-harm scars anywhere on her body. At the time, her method of self-harm was to abuse the medication she was on for a medical condition she had. But, being hospitalised meant that this method was completely taken away from her (and I try to identify with this because my own method was made more difficult too) and so she almost naturally, desperately searched for an alternative coping skill. And I guess that being surrounded by girls who self-harmed in a same, particular way meant that she very quickly and somewhat easily came across the means for doing that. So, by the time my discharge was being discussed, this girl needed plastic surgery on her massively damaging self-harm wounds.