A TRUE INSPIRATION FOR ORGANISATIONS: EVERYTHING WAYTHROUGH COMMS & MARKETING DO TO KEEP CO-PROUDUCTION AT THE HEART OF THEIR WORK | THE COMING TOGETHER MAGAZINE RE-LAUNCH

“There are people who make things happen, there are people who
watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what
happened. To be successful, you need to be the person who makes
things happen.”

Jim Lovell

I’m incredibly proud and very honoured to announce the re-launch of the completely refreshed Waythrough magazine; Coming Together (which you don’t have to be a service user or staff of the organisation to subscribe to, you can subscribe here: Sign up to newsletter - External or learn more about it here: Coming Together - our community magazine - Waythrough and if you have a story to submit: coming.together@waythrough.org.uk). I’m also very privileged and I feel incredibly fortunate to say that I’m now the Volunteer Lead Content Creator with the Waythrough Communications and Marketing team! In around 2023, I was given the opportunity to work with a local NHS Trust (Newcastle Hospitals) to create their Mental Health Strategy and in that partnership, I created a piece of content around why organisations should be following in their footsteps (you can read it: WHY NHS TRUSTS NEED TO BE FOLLOWING IN NEWCASTLE’S FOOTSTEPS!! | IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | I'm NOT Disordered). The blog post proved to be fairly popular and so I wanted to take that sort of angle for this too and discuss the qualities that the Waythrough Communications and Marketing Department exhibit and use to ensure that co-production is at the heart of everything they do – a massive achievement for a ‘behind-the-scenes’ team to accomplish in mental health services…

MY ULTIMATE GUIDE TO STARTING OFF IN THE COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING INDUSTRY | MARKING 2.7 MILLION READERS!!!

“It is better to do little things with love than big things without love.”
Lailah Gifty Akita

When my mental health was really terrible (2009 – 2013) a huge mindset which exacerbated my suicidal thoughts and feelings – which led to very genuine attempts – was around the idea that my purpose in life was to kill myself young so as to bring attention to the failures in mental health services. For at least four years, I honestly believed that’s why I’d been put on this earth. And it made me feel hopeless, uninspired, and unmotivated to try to do anything different with my life. Finally, as a sectioned psychiatric hospital inpatient, I had therapy around the mindset (I blogged about it at the time too, you can read it here) and having started blogging just over one year earlier, I found myself able to overcome the mindset and replace it with the notion I’d slowly developed; that my blogging career – and all the good I was achieving with it – was why I’d survived everything. Communications and marketing, that was my passion and my purpose and having that opinion of the industry has led to me being passionate, dedicated, and determined to do well in it. So, as I’m NOT Disordered reaches the 2.7 million readers mark, I thought I’d finally share some of my knowledge and experience in the form of advice about starting off in this industry…

EVERYTHING BLOGGING HAS DONE TO ME | CELEBRATING TWO AND A HALF MILLION READERS!!!

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."

Zig Ziglar

In a recent career opportunity, I found myself having a lot of moments where I was thinking ‘I know that because of my blogging’ or ‘I learnt how to do that through blogging!’ And it is these moments and in celebration of I’m NOT Disordered reaching two and a half million readers, which have inspired this blog post where I’m going to chat through all the influences and the ways in which blogging has impacted me and changed my life…

RELATING TO: A LITTLE BOOK OF LEADERSHIP LESSONS BY STEPH EDUSEI

*This book and its PDF were gifted to me by the Author*

BUY THE BOOK ON AMAZON HERE!

“Not ‘little’ in that it was diminished or insignificant, but ‘little’ in that it is, I believe, short and snappy. I want it to be the type of book that people will pick up and think, ‘this doesn’t look too overwhelming to read.’ I want it to be the type of book you can dip in and out of and get something out of every chapter individually, without having to read the whole thing.”

‘Introduction’ of A Little of Leadership Lessons by Steph Edusei

Noticing this book on Steph’s Facebook page (which you can follow here), I was immediately taken by the title and the thought of learning something so profound and professional from someone who I have known for a number of years and have met (I used to volunteer for the Communications and Marketing department of the Hospice Steph is CEO of: St Oswald’s Hospice). I was pleasantly surprised to read in the Introduction of the book that there was going to be ‘key learning points’ and ‘suggestions for further learning’ at the end of every Chapter. As Steph writes though: ‘if you don’t feel it’s important to dig into theories and read around a subject right now then just ignore that bit, I completely understand…’I however, love elements like this! So, I seriously couldn’t wait to get started…

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO BUILD A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY | WORLD SOCIAL MEDIA DAY 2025

“Social media is the ultimate equaliser. It gives a voice and a platform to anyone willing to engage.”

Amy Jo Martin

Having now been blogging for over twelve years (it’ll actually be thirteen in January!) I have developed a huge passion and interest in the communications and marketing industry. This is why I’ve now had a number of voluntary roles in that sector – with my new one being announced on my start date of July 8^th – as well as having also completed a number of online courses relevant to it too. Over the years, my career experience, and education, I’ve learned how to create Strategies in this industry: particularly around marketing and branding, but I’ve also picked up how to create a Social Media Strategy and I thought with today being National Social Media Day, it was the perfect opportunity to share this knowledge and understanding…

THE MOST TRANSPARENT BLOG POST I’VE EVER WRITTEN

“Transparency fosters a sense of trust and provides serious motivation.”

Billy Boughey

Now, I’m very uncomfortable referring to myself as an Influencer but having the number of readers that my blog has (there’s over 2.3 million of you lovely people!), the fact others have labelled me it, and that I’ve been working with the Celebrity and Influencers Relationship Manager of Cats Protection – and I’m certainly not a Celebrity! – I think it’s perhaps time I try to accept it and own it! So, in a conversation I was in recently, there was talk about the fact that so many people can form opinions of an Influencer’s life, without recognising or realising that the content they see, is what the Influencer has chosen to let you see. It’s not their entire life. Their entire story. I’d like to think my mental health blog and the content I produce on social media (particularly I’m NOT Disordered’s brand-new Instagram: @imnotdisordered) is more balanced, transparent, and honest. So, in this post, I’m going to chat through more about that conversation and the thoughts and opinions within it, my thoughts on being deemed an Influencer, why I think my content is different, a ton of transparent insight into blogging and social media. As a sort of sidenote: I’ll be creating another ‘most transparent blog post…’ about mental health soon…

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…

RELATING TO DEFYING GRAVITY LYRICS FROM THE MUSICAL: WICKED

“Happy is what happens when all your dreams come true.”

Stephen Schwartz, Thank Goodness, Wicked: The Musical

If you have a social media account, you’ll likely agree with me when I say that Wicked is everywhere right now! The release of the new movie, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, is based on the original musical and it seems to be really trending right now – especially their skit for Jimmy Fallon (which you can watch here). And so, I decided to jump on the bandwagon with this blog post where I’ll be picking out some lyrics (you can read all of them here) from the Wicked song; Defying Gravity and illustrating how I relate to each bit…

THE FIRST THREE MONTHS OF THE SHAKE MY HAND CAMPAIGN

You might remember, I wrote a blog post launching my brand-new media campaign; Shake My Hand on the date of its website reveal; June 17^th (if you missed it, you can read it here), and now – over two months later – I thought I’d give you all an update. I actually really enjoyed myself when I was going through all the social media posts, website articles, emails, and documents that have evolved and been created in the time since that blog post on the 17^th! It was pretty amazing to see just how much has been done and accomplished in that space of time, so this feels like a nice little post to hopefully highlight the power of hard work, passion, dedication, and determination…

AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK AT ALL MY CURRENT PROJECTS & COMMITMENTS

Almost everyone I’ve spoken to these past few weeks – but particularly mental health professionals like the Crisis Team and my support workers from Richmond Fellowship – have made some sort of comment on the fact that I’ve been keeping myself very busy recently. And as is typically the way with someone who has a psychiatric diagnosis and is doing lots of things at once, two concerns have been raised on numerous occasions… First, that I’m doing too much and I’m going to ‘crack’, and second; that I’m doing so much as a means of burying my head in the sand and ignoring the fact my mental health is actually still quite poorly. With these comments in mind, I wanted to write this blog post to address them, to provide advice for anyone struggling with these things, but mainly, to bring some excitement for all the things that are currently ‘in the works…’

WHEN DO YOU NEED TO ‘GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER’?

The other day, at my Digital Marketing internship with Docere and SS Healthfoods, I was talking to one of the Marketing Executives about my long-term goals and all things Universities and careers. It made me think about how long it has taken for me to finally have those dreams/goals, and then I started to consider why I felt there should have been an age for me to have all these things decided. 


I don’t remember even thinking about a ‘dream job’ when I was younger until Middle School when a teacher told my Mum that she thought I’d end up being a Journalist (do you think ‘Blogger’ is close?) but I never really held onto that so much. When I came to the point of choosing my GCSE subjects, I didn’t really have a career in mind then either; I just chose the ones I was interested in – History, Media Studies, and Textiles. Then, when I was excluded from High School, I met a Lawyer specializing in Education and that became my goal – to be like her. I wanted to help children avoid experiencing everything that I had, when I was at School. 


So, at A Level, I took Law, Philosophy, and History, and with the abuse having ‘finished’ months before Sixth Form started, I threw myself into my schoolwork in a desperate bid to block out the memories of it. I also started working at my local Primark store in Newcastle city center but in the end, my mental health deteriorated to the point where there was no blocking anything out and I missed all of my final exams and quit my job because I attempted suicide. Even though I had an offer to study Law at Newcastle University, being sectioned under the Mental Health Act, I instantly didn’t want to work in anything to do with the law and after two weeks in a psychiatric hospital I decided to pursue my other interest; fashion and enrolled on a Summer course. Before I had a chance to attend the induction session, I was sectioned again. After my second longest admission in October 2009 to February 2010, I became interested in the notion of helping others and attempted to enroll on a childcare course but when my DBS came back with notes of my interactions with Police (occasions when I’d been sectioned or had ran away from Hospital), I was denied access to the course. In the end, I developed the belief that if I couldn’t look after myself then I shouldn’t attempt to look after anyone else.

GETTING AN UPDATE ON MY ABUSER | HOW I COPED & WHAT I DID

So, yesterday I found out that the person who hurt me, now has a new role in his job that potentially gives him an even higher chance for him to do it all again to someone else!

I had some very confusing and contradictory emotions and thoughts about it all last night and now that I’ve powered through them and come out the other side feeling much safer, I thought I’d blog about what those were, in the hope that it'll show people just what you can make it through.

At first, I think I was in shock but then the contradictory feeling was that I also wasn’t surprised. His job title is an absolute joke in light of what he’s been accused of and arrested for; but at the same time, there was no evidence so how can anyone deny him of such an opportunity in his career? Then it’s like the Crisis Team said when I called them, although he’s been granted those new responsibilities, it could purely be so that the organization he works for can’t be sued for unfair treatment because he was never found guilty! The Crisis Team also pointed out that his colleagues will be aware of the allegation because he was arrested in his place of work and they may be keeping a closer eye on him because of it.

HOW TO LAND A COLLABORATION | FOUR TOP TIPS

After attending the Richmond Fellowship Working Together Committee meeting on January 24^th, it got me thinking a lot about all of the collaborations I’ve had with organizations. And now that I’m NOT Disordered has almost half a million readers, I feel like maybe now is the right time to share some advice for new Bloggers and current Bloggers who aren’t as established as they’d like to be. I won’t pretend to be an expert though; there are so many Bloggers out there who are doing some incredible work with huge organizations, but I think that in the Blogging industry, there’s a lot around competition and tearing one another down in order to climb the ladder and I don’t want to be one of those Bloggers. Instead, I want to promote the positive impact Blogging can have on your mental health and encourage others to ‘give it a go.’ I’d love to see more mental health Blogs out there so that we can spread the word about the topic in an aim to diminish the stigma around it. Collaborating with Organizations also provides this opportunity and it has played a huge part in the success/popularity of I’m NOT Disordered.

FINDING A PURPOSE IN BLOGGING

Something I rarely talk about – and I’m sure it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything I’ve held back from this blog – is that one of the key feelings I experienced while I was suicidal was inadequacy. I struggled a lot with the belief that I had no purpose in life because I wasn’t good enough to have any sort of impact on the world. I wasn’t important enough. I spent months of Psychology sessions in Hospital working on my conviction that I was destined to commit suicide at a young age. I think that this belief worried professionals because it was almost a comfort blanket for me and a big reason not to even try and get better. I saw it as rationale for all the overdoses, and thought it justified the number of tablets I’d swallowed.

When I first began I’m NOT Disordered in January 2013, it was about feeling on the cusp of recovery and wanting to document every step of it. I thought it’d be nothing more than an outlet; a place to discuss the dramas on the hospital ward and a sounding off board for all the new trials and tribulations I would face as I began to get better. I think that viewing blogging as a purpose in life has come with the building of popularity. I’ve always described those first few years of I’m NOT Disordered as a snowball; it’s like I don’t remember a point when its popularity began to grow. It’s just that one day I was celebrating 100 readers and then I was throwing a party to mark reaching 100,000! With popularity came feedback and by that, I mean an abundance of praise, compliments and positivity. 

SO YOU WANT TO BE A MENTAL HEALTH BLOGGER?

Are you ready to…

feel like a failure?

There are times where I’ve felt like a failure to my readers. When I’ve had hard days – particularly during my relapse - I felt that I’d let everyone down by being poorly again. I thought I’d been the poster child for mental health recovery and now, here I was, illustrating that even the strongest of recovery’s doesn’t last. No matter how long you go without self-harming or hearing voices, you can still be just as vulnerable as you were when those things were happening.  But feeling like that, made me realize that others might experience that too and might find – just as I would – the knowledge that they aren’t alone, reassuring. 

24HRS WITH... MY AUNT: ANGELA WILSON

24 hours with... ANGELA WILSON – HR/CONTRACTS MANAGER

Date: 08/10/18

Why have you chosen to write about today? Why Not LOL

Good morning! 


What time did you wake up?

I was woken up at 3.00am by my Husband, then again at 5.45 am 


Why did you wake up at that time?

Alarm 

24HRS WITH... EMMA THOMAS, GENERAL MANAGER OF NATIONAL TRUST SITE: SEATON DELAVAL HALL | NATIONAL TRUST

24 hours with... Emma Thomas, General Manager, Seaton Delaval Hall

Date: 7 August

Why have you chosen to write about today?

It’s the Seaton Delaval Hall staff and volunteer Bake Off today and hopefully a busy day with lots of visitors enjoying the hall and gardens and taking part in our illusion themed week of family activities.



The Bake Off today is the return match, when staff bake, and volunteers judge. At the start of the summer, volunteers baked and staff judged. It’s organised by 1 of our volunteers and always good fun.


Good morning!

24HRS WITH... NORTH EAST AMBULANCE SERVICE CEO; YVONNE ORMSTON

24 hours with... North East Ambulance Service CEO; Yvonne Ormston

Why have you chosen to write about today?

_{Ok here goes. This is the day that I have chosen to blog about after being asked to by Aimee. Why me? I can’t think people would be particularly interested in the day in the life of an NHS CEO, especially this one, but who knows? If there is something useful then hopefully it will inspire someone, somewhere about something!!}


Good morning!



What time did you wake up?

_{Alarm goes off at 5.45 am}


Why did you wake up at that time?

_{A little earlier than my usual 6.30. Today I’m off to London}

24HRS WITH... 'COLITIS COP' - CUSTODY SERGEANT ED ROWLAND

_{24 hours with... Ed Rowland, Custody Sergeant, living & working with an Ileostomy}

_{Date: A Thursday in July}

_{Why have you chosen to write about today? It’s random and combines both my personal and work life.}

_{Good morning!}

_{What time did you wake up?}

_{7am - I was on lates last night so late to bed, my wife, Kate, who is also in the Police is on earlies, so she wakes me before she leaves so I can look after our 2yr old, Maggie....daddy daughter days are some of the best days now.} 

24HRS WITH... CHIEF INSPECTOR STEVE HAILS | NORTHUMBRIA POLICE

.

24 hours with... Chief Inspector Steve Hails, Northumbria Police

Date: Monday 30th July 2018

Why have you chosen to write about today? Today is my first day back to work following a week on leave.

Good morning!

What time did you wake up? 

05:00

Why did you wake up at that time? 

I always wake up early but at the moment seem to be waking up earlier.