Support my swim for youth mental health!

Support my swim for youth mental health

I'm taking part in the LAP it UP swim challenge to raise awareness and funds for Live4Life’s mental health education and youth suicide prevention model.

Mental health is an issue that I feel can never be talked about enough. as a student myself I've sat through what feels like hundreds of basic seminars outlining mental health - what depression looks like and general, vague points.

When I was 14 I deteriorated but it wasn't like anything i had ever been taught. i understood and recognized some key words - tired, fatigue and irritable - but i was never taught the magnitude of how depression, anxiety, mood disorders etc can truly impact lives.

I could try to explain myself to my peers, adults and other teens but unless they had experienced it themselves they never understood - being written off as lazy or told to get over it and try harder.

I'd think if we were better at teaching our children how mental health can present - showing them the nitty gritty, hard to explain stuff - then our future would be better for people like myself.

Taking the pressure of my 14 - year old hands to over explain and put myself in a vulnerable position to explain concepts that should be taught in a realistic and educational way.

For some, mental health is an ever-looming constant in our lives unable to escape from its path, and for some its something we've learnt to adjust to and work with - days are rough and shit gets difficult but in the end the good days, the family and friends alongside you and the pride for yourself for how far you've come from the days where you were stuck in the rain make it worth it.

Not sure if anyone will ever read this, or donate - but if you do I'm doing this fundraiser to remind you of hope and asking you to carry it close to you.

For myself, hope now looks like planning for my future, to reconnect my relationship with God, to get back into sport.

For myself, Hope once looked like finally being able to get out of bed for the first time in 3 days, to go to school and make it through the day, to eat a full meal and feel good about it.

Hope is what keeps us going. Hope is not uniform for everyone - Hope changes and adapts to situations. But hope is universal, once you loose hope you loose yourself - and you should do everything you can to find it again.

This campaign - for me - is a sign of hope. I aim to raise awareness towards mental health and advocate for the better education regarding mental health in schools - particularly for high school students, and how it can greatly impact lives - but also that the now isn't forever. Recovery is always in reach - even if you have to stand up to get to it.