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This Mental Health Awareness Week, I wanted to share some of my recent experiences of navigating both the ordinary and the significantly less ordinary situations in which I have found myself in day to day life. 2022 was a very hard year for me. Mental health crisis aside, I spent two and a half months…

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Tempest

When simple words don’t seem to serve justice to the depth of darkness that depression brings, perhaps a metaphor will better suffice, will give a better picture of how it really feels. Like a storm, a hurricane, like being lost out at sea, surrounded by a flood of apathy and despondency, or caught in a…

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Weary

‘How are you?’ I hear, The question with which most conversations begin. ‘I’m tired’ I say, A whole thesaurus of words ready for when I’m feeling more creative. Exhuasted, run down, burnt out ‘Knackered’ as we say up north Spent, drained, shattered, weary. Weary is the one that seems to encompass it all. Weary of…

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Chasing Joy in the Midst of Depression

Whilst we can’t meet together as churches right now, that hasn’t stopped us coming together virtually. At The Globe Church one of the main ways we do this is through weekly Bible studies. And during lockdown we’ve been looking at something the Apostle Paul talks about in his letter to the church in Galatia: the…

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Forgetting Me, Remembering Him

Diary Entry – Tuesday 8th August: We were walking by the river in Ho Chi Minh City. It was a hot and humid day, but down by the water I didn’t feel so exhausted. The morning had been hard for me. We had been walking the busy streets of District 3, stopping at intervals to…

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Carry Me

A thousand noises, sights and smells surrounded us. The roads flowed with scooters, mopeds and motorbikes, the streets full with early risers. After the struggle of the past few months it felt amazing be here, with the team, in Vietnam, at the centre of Ho Chi Minh City. Yet there was still anxiety within me.…

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The Darkest Valley

Depression has cast a shadow on my life for about five years now. It hit its worst when I was sixteen. I thought that it would never change, that I would never get better. But then I did. And yet it stayed lurking nearby, and I could feel it coming back again last Christmas, sneaking back…

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