BLOGMAS 2019 – POST TWENTY : BRINGING LIGHT TO MY LIFE | CHRISTMAS AT CRAGSIDE | NATIONAL TRUST | AD

Thanks to a poll on my Twitter back in November, my wonderful followers decided that I should publish a blog post and film a vlog every day for the entirety of December! 

So welcome to December 20th…

I really struggled to come up with content for this post with me never doing the basic ‘today we went here, and we did that’ kind of posts so I enlisted the help of fellow Blogger; Martin Baker!

Cragside, a National Trust site in Northumberland, was the first home to be lit by hydroelectricity which made the Victorian House years ahead of its time with its ingenious gadgets and modern conveniences. This has inspired my post – featuring photos from my visit there – to be about what brings light to my life when things get dark! I won’t lie, I struggled to avoid saying the same things as in post nineteen about what makes me happy, so I’ve been a bit more general…



Love

When my mental health was poorly, I didn’t - for one minute - think that I had the capability to love someone the way I knew that my Mum loved me; I’ve always been very lucky in that way - that I’ve always felt loved by someone special. My Mum has always said that she’d walk over hot coals for me, and I’d always nodded and smiled and felt all warm inside, but I’d never really understood that feeling or felt it towards another person. Of course, I love my Mum and my family but when I was poorly it felt as though I couldn’t love them properly. It was as if there was a range of 0 to 10 but my love could only reach 7 and not because I chose to, but because that’s the most I was capable of. And it wasn’t just love, it was happiness, excitement… all of the positive emotions; as though my mental health had deteriorated so much that I could only experience negative feelings to such an overwhelming degree as a ‘10’.

BLOGMAS 2019 – POST NINETEEN : LALEELAND LDN | ETSY COLLABORATION | AD

Thanks to a poll on my Twitter back in November, my wonderful followers decided that I should publish a blog post and film a vlog every day for the entirety of December! 

So welcome to December 19th…

Today is all about my collaboration with one very special brand on Etsy, in this post I’ll be reviewing the products they sent to me and on December 23rd you can enter a competition to win these products and the remaining one that I’ll be reviewing in two days’ time!



This post is in collaboration with the incredible London-based Etsy store; Laleeland LDN who kindly gifted me a few products; namely the Serotonin and the ‘keep going, be brave, be strong’ bracelets but also some other bits that will be a surprise for the lucky competition winner!

For this post, I thought I’d concentrate on taking inspiration from the Serotonin bracelet which has a purple band and is made up of the chemical symbol for Serotonin (which I think is such a genius idea!). So, I’ll be talking about the top five things to make me happy…

1.    My Mum

Of course, Mum come first! For my entire life it has been Mum and I as a little team but boy, do we make a strong team! Hopefully, just saying that will help you to understand the magnitude of being admitted to a psychiatric hospital over 100 miles away from home for two and a half years. To be honest, in the beginning, I think that I was so mentally unwell that it really didn’t hit me being so far away from Mum until a few months into my admission.


Getting leave to go home every so often wasn’t enough and it was so incredibly hard to then leave Mum all over again and go back to the hospital where I didn’t know when I’d next be allowed to leave (I was sectioned under the Mental Health Act).

BLOGMAS 2019 – POST EIGHTEEN : A QUICK GUIDE TO CHRISTMAS DÉCOR | CHRISTMAS AT WALLINGTON HALL | NATIONAL TRUST | AD

Thanks to a poll on my Twitter back in November, my wonderful followers decided that I should publish a blog post and film a vlog every day for the entirety of December! 

So welcome to December 18th…

Once again, it took me so long to come up with content for this post; especially since I have a ton of pictures for it because that made me think that I needed to write something quite lengthy… but it was when I was looking through the pictures that I came up with the inspiration for this post… ‘A Quick Guide to Christmas Décor!’ You see, I’ve been to Wallington Hall before so going there this time was literally just about seeing how they decorate the National Trust site for Christmas time!


I find that Christmas décor can be very controversial and even competitive! Some stores will sell a few different ranges/styles of decorations whilst others retail one main design; all competing against one another for the value of their products through quality and price. But it isn’t just about retailers competing; I don’t about anywhere else but - it seems that in my estate – each house wants to have the most garden lights or the biggest ‘Santa Stop Here!’ signs and the bushiest Christmas trees peeking through their curtains!


I grew up having a massive Christmas tree with my Mum and each year we’d buy a new, special decoration for it. In my later teenage years, I got my own tree for my bedroom; a little neon pink one with built-in lights from W H Smith and mini decorations from Paperchase. I think that even though it was an incredibly youthful one, I still felt grown-up having my own Christmas tree!

BLOGMAS 2019 – POST SEVENTEEN : A BAND OF HOPE | ETSY COLLABORATION | AD

Thanks to a poll on my Twitter back in November, my wonderful followers decided that I should publish a blog post and film a vlog every day for the entirety of December!

So welcome to December 17th…

Today is all about my collaboration with one very special brand on Etsy, in this post I’ll be reviewing the products they sent to me and on December 23rd you can enter a competition to win these products and the remaining two that I’ll be reviewing every other day this month!



Ok, so I won’t lie; I’ve annoyed myself a bit with this post so I thought maybe I’d just bluff my way through it but you know how I pride myself on being honest with you guys… So, I received A LOT of goodies from A Band of Hope but have only taken pics of some of them so to see more, you’ll just have to enter the competition!



In the meantime, though, here’s three of the various badges and what they mean to me:



‘More Than My Illness’ 

 


I absolutely love this badge because it pretty much sums up the method behind the blog’s name. ‘I’m NOT Disordered’ came from my determination to show others that I may have a diagnosis but that is not who I am. It’s a part of me, yes; but it isn’t the only part of me.


A little while ago, the powers that be changed the name Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) to Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD) and when I first heard this, I actually laughed out loud! I mean, personally? My problem (and others have agreed) with the label is the ‘Personality’ part of it and not the part that they changed!

BLOGMAS 2019 – POST SIXTEEN : LEAPS CHRISTMAS DINNER | LISTENING EAR AND POSITIVE SUPPORT | AD

Thanks to a poll on my Twitter back in November, my wonderful followers decided that I should publish a blog post and film a vlog every day for the entirety of December! 

So welcome to December 16th…

“How can you write an entire blog post about a Christmas dinner?” I hear you ask. Well I’m going to talk a bit about the organization I had the Christmas meal with; LEAPS (otherwise known as Listening Ear And Positive Support).

I still remember my interview with the previous Chair and the Founder of LEAPS in 2017; I’d found the vacancy for Advertising Assistant on Do-it.org  and wanting more experience in the marketing industry, decided to apply. Having my blog for four years (at that time) had really taught me a lot about marketing, advertising, and communications and I enjoyed that side of it so much that I decided I’d like to go into that industry as a career. I wasn’t (and still aren’t) ready to do full-time work so I thought that having a voluntary job one day a week would be a good start to gaining experience to ensure it’s definitely the right career path for me.


I was obviously successful with my interview and started working with LEAPS in April 2017. I was a bit unsure after the first meeting because whilst I felt completely welcome, I was very aware that everyone had been going there and had known one another for around eight years (the group was founded in 2009). It wasn’t long before I felt fully part of the team though and two years later, LEAPS are like a second family for me!