I had the privilege of joining the Left Side Up Podcast this week to chat about Faith and Mental Health, my personal experience of Maternal Mental Illness and where Have you seen that girl? came from!
Mental Illness stripped my life back to the bear bones, including my faith. I feared God was angry, disappointed or had abandoned me.
I battled with suicidal thoughts and wanted to give up on life altogether.
I almost lost all hope. I almost lost all faith.
It’s taken time during recovery to begin to really process my own theology around faith and mental health and also that of the Church, which is unfortunately sometimes unhelpful or destructive.
I firmly belief that the Church and Faith Communities should be a voice and place of comfort, encouragement, hope and healing for mental illness and a source of general wellbeing for everyone’s mental health.
In the Podcast, we chat about some of unhelpful beliefs that I’ve heard personally (or believed personally) and heard from others, who have been hurt/damaged by them.
We also talk about what Churches and Faith Communities can and should do.
I accept that there are those who do them well. But we can all do more. And we can all do better.
At this point of my journey, I’m keen to be a voice, supporter and challenger where Faith and Mental Health is concernced and I’m so thankful to Left Side Up (Andrew and Michael) for partnering with me in this. I hope we’ll do more together!
You can listen to the whole thing at the links below.
I’d love you to because there’s a whole conversation we need to have, in order to together move this forward.