Yesterday’s post was largely a result of my need to process the chaos and challenges of the last few weeks. It was about finding reflection, searching out the meaning, the lesson, the something that can explain or make sense of what’s going on.

Of course, in life we know that there’s rarely meaning in everything that happens. There may be lessons and we may even be able to apply the things we learn to things that crop up in the future, but meaning is something we can spend a lifetime searching for and still never find.

That’s not meant to sound defeatist. What I’ve learned is that when I stop looking for meaning and instead simply reflect on events I’m able to work through things much more effectively.

Writing is my reflection. Whether it’s here, in a paper journal or hurriedly typed into a notes app on my phone, writing is how I use my mind to process everything that’s going on. That’s what I miss (and have missed) when I don’t write here. Because something about the public-facing space here forces me to think about things differently and to get out of my own head. Don’t ask me why, but it does.

Not everyone is big on writing. You may hate it. That’s fine. You do you. But while you’re doing you, find the right place and way to reflect for yourself.

Finding reflection in our lives may only take moments in a day, but it’s worth every single one of them.

When the smiles come slowly it can be easy to miss them.

When things are hard, when we struggle, when we feel like we’re fighting against a strong wind or a raging current or a tsunami with a terrible temper, smiles feel like they’re something that belong to other people.

But they’re not. We still smile, but slowly. We smile inwardly, perhaps, rather than outwardly. But we still smile.

Sometimes it feels as if the tiniest chink of light only serves to remind us of the darkness we’re encased in. And it’s in those moments that we have to remember that we’ve seen the chink of light at all.

Smile Through It was created with the belief that every day, no matter how bad, if we can find one small thing to smile about, it’s not a wasted day. What I’ve discovered over the last 15 years since I first posted is even when things seem utterly humourless there are almost always smiles there.

What we have to do is notice them. Because when they don’t burst into bloom to brighten our faces we often don’t count them as smiles. But the little smiles, the semi-hidden smiles, the smiles that don’t want to declare themselves?

Those are the most precious smiles and the ones we need to hold on to the tightest.

Share your work, even when it scares you. Pick up the phone, even when it scares you. Tell someone what they mean to you, even when it scares you. Apply for that job, even when it scares you. Be honest with someone, even when it scares you.

Yesterday I sent the first draft of the first three chapters of my first ever novel to my wife and my brother. I’ve never written anything like this before and I’m not ready to share it yet. I’m not ready for other people to read it. I’m scared of what they’re going to say.

Which is why I had to share it.

Fear holds me back more often than I’d like to admit. It holds me back even in those times I refuse to admit to myself that I’m scared. In those times, fear manifests itself as perfectionism, it surfaces in excuses. Those are the times I need to share my art.

Not despite the fact that it scares me, because of the fact it scares me.

Doing things, even when they scare you, is a mantra I’ve had for myself for a long time. It’s also one I rarely listen to. So I’m trying harder.

Sometimes things just pop into my head. Unprompted, unwanted and not always helpful. But sometimes things pop into my head unprompted, unwanted and very, very helpful. Like yesterday when I started thinking about learning vs. teaching.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I wanted to move this site and these posts further towards the original intention of this blog. While mulling it over after I posted it I realised what wasn’t working.

Every time I’ve tried to restart this blog I’ve focused on what I can teach. What lessons from my life I can shape to apply universally. How I can benefit other people (like you, Dear Reader) with my knowledge.

And that’s bullshit.

If I sit here every morning1 and try to think about what I can teach today, I’m going to tie myself up in knots. But – more importantly – I’m going to create inauthentic, disingenuous posts.

The reason my blog resonated with people when I first started writing was because I was focused on learning. I was trying to make sense of my world as it was. Horrible, scary, intimidating but also funny, bright and full of excitement.

That’s precisely what I need now. Not a place where I can come to preach my wonderful wisdom, but a place I can put down what I’m learning every day.

If that’s something you can also learn from, fantastic. Have at it. Take away what you want to take away. But this place is for me. For my lessons. For my knowledge. For my experience. This place is where everything starts to make sense. I hope.

1. or afternoon, or evening, whenever I managed to plonk myself down [↩]

I’ve been reflecting overnight and this morning about why I suddenly feel the urge to start creating again. Why I want to be seen to be putting things out in the world again. Why I suddenly feel an ability to overcome the Resistance that’s been holding me back. It turns out it doesn’t matter why.

I’m sure a part of it is down to mental and physical energy levels1 . But a huge part of it is down to Tim Ferriss and his conversations with Seth Godin. I’ve gone back and listened to all three now2 and they fill me with the urge to sit at my desk, in front of my screen and that flashing cursor on the blank display and begin to fill it with words.

For some reason, though, I found myself not wanting to say that out loud. I didn’t want to tell people that it’s all just one person (or two people, I suppose) that’s given me the final kick to start doing things again. I was embarrassed by it. Of all the things to be embarrassed about, I don’t know why that particular one stuck.

Then it hit me. Well, two things hit me. Both of them with the resounding, clanging echo of a frying pan to the face.

Firstly, it doesn’t matter why I’m motivated to write, create and share my art with people. What matters is that I’m doing it. What matters is that I see the blinking cursor on an empty page and start to hit the keys to form the words to write the piece to share my art.

Secondly, if I want this to be an honest place to write and share my stories–something I’ve always tried to ensure–then admitting the things I’m embarrassed to admit is the first step to reestablishing the things that made this blog the place I wanted it to be when I first began.

Step by step, post by post, as frequently or infrequently as they come, I want to recreate and evolve what this site used to be: a place to capture positivity even in the dark days and a place to celebrate the bright days when they are here.

That’s what I need right now. It doesn’t matter why I’m inspired or motivated to do it. It doesn’t matter why I do it at all. It doesn’t even matter whether or not anyone wants to come back and read any of it But, you know, please come back and read it.

1. About which there will doubtless be more to come on this blog [↩]
2. You can listen to them via his website: Chat One (Episode 138), Chat Two (Episode 343), Chat Three (Episode 476) [↩]

When I’m pottering around the house, making tea, washing up, vacuuming or any of the other household tasks I don’t do often enough, I listen to podcasts. Yesterday while doing some extended kitchen cleaning after a messier-than-necessary roast chicken dinner, I was listening to Tim Ferris’s latest podcast with Seth Godin and it helped me to realise that I need to move on from my current state of fear, confusion or just plain laziness and start doing the work.

I frequently battle with Seth’s work. Some of it is inspired, inspirational and intrinsically motivational. Other books and posts seem more polemical, more dictatorial, more out-and-out instructional – the kind of thing that I bump up against. But it always makes me think, which is why I’m so addicted to listening to him talk.

What stuck in my mind listening to this conversation was the same thing that stuck with me in the first conversation Tim had with Seth on his podcast, the same thing that stuck with me the second time Tim had him on the podcast and the same thing that stuck with me reading Do The Work 1 , which seems like the least imaginative and best book title of just about any book you’ll find on the virtual shelves of the Kindle store (if, like me, visiting physical book stores it out of the question at the moment). The idea of showing up every day, doing the work and not making excuses for failing to do something every day has always, always resonated with me even as I’ve consistently failed to do it.

“Just do it” may be one of the best-known and most cited inspirational instructions in the world, but it’s also an inappropriate attitude, Seth says. “‘Just do it’ implies ‘what the hell’, ‘it doesn’t matter’ [which] pushes you to be a hack who’s not responsible for your own work.”

By contrast, “merely” doing the work takes us away from time spent catastrophising the work and its results. And catastrophising is what I do best, both in work and in life. I’ve shied away from continuing to post on here or on my YouTube channel because I’ve been spending too much time worrying about what image I want to project of myself. I’ve worried about how people will see me. I’ve worried about people disagreeing with me. I’ve worried about a lot of things and I am still worrying.

But the worry and the outright fear is stopping me from doing anything. It’s paralysing. So the time has come to start trying2 to spend some time everyday merely doing the work. Merely spending time each day on an act of creation, whether that’s written word on here, a video to share on YouTube or working on the edits to the novel I wrote during lockdown that I’m feeling massive resistance towards.

I don’t want to be afraid of making or sharing my art any more. But the only way I’m going to defeat that fear is, paradoxically, by making and sharing my art.

This post, then, is the first step. One step, every day, will eventually lead me somewhere. Where that is—for now—I’m not sure. I simply know that I can’t wait until I’m certain of my destination to set out because I’ll just spend all my time poring over maps and weighing up the options. Perfection will never happen. The sooner I understand that, the sooner I’ll be able to keep on keeping on.

This might not work. But it also might.

1. This is an affiliate link, which means I get a small amount of money if you choose to purchase the book. If you’d rather not do that, you can use this link instead. [↩]
2. Note: I try a lot of things that don’t work, so who knows where this will end up going? [↩]

There are some spoilers at the end of this piece. There’s a warning before them in the text.

Warning: I also allow the filmmakers some artistic licence, which may be unpopular, but sue me, I’m a filmmaker.

Five Feet Apart is a fantastic film.

Five Feet Apart is a terrible film.

You’ll love Five Feet Apart.

You’ll hate Five Feet Apart.

But what Five Feet Apart provides is the most accurate on-screen portrayal of cystic fibrosis (CF) that I’ve ever seen. Of course there are little things (and one major thing) that don’t quite ring true, but those are few and far between and some may even be explained away by US/UK experiences. What matters to me is the feel of live with CF and the picture it paints.

It’s important to note, however, that no one can represent the views of experiences of everyone with CF — I am always at pains to say I am not ‘people with CF’, I am a person with the condition. It’s also worth noting in this piece I also don’t represent the views of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust (my employer).

Let’s be clear, at its heart, this movie is a soppy teen romance where two teens fall in love amid seemingly insurmountable obstacles. No spoilers here (I’m confident it’s pretty clear in the trailer!), but if don’t like those kinds of films, you won’t like this one.

Nor will people affected by CF like this if you want it to be a film about CF; it’s not. It’s a film about two teens falling in love amid seemingly insurmountable obstacles. And the biggest obstacle is their different personalities… and the life-shortening condition they live with.

There is a lot this movie can teach you about living with CF, and we’ll come to that later, but what it won’t teach you is anything about and what we have to tackle first is —

Cross-infection

Cross-infection is a major and very real thing. Research has shown that potentially lethal bugs can pass between people with CF and travel remarkable distances. In the UK, the guidelines suggest that no two people should ever be in the same room together for fear of causing each other irreparable damage,

In the film, the characters (mostly) abide by the ‘six feet apart’ rule that’s common — although not ubiquitous — in American CF centres. This would never be allowed in the UK.

That inaccuracy, then, is the biggest hurdle for people to get over when watching the film. For people with CF, we have to let it go, which you really should have done if you’re going to the cinema in the first place! For people without a connection to or knowledge of CF, just be aware it’s much more complicated than the conceit of the film makes it.

Regardless, it’s still a good introduction to some of the more difficult elements of a life with CF and the tortuous nature of the condition that has to be faced, dealt with and accepted.

The way the characters walk the halls with masks on to protect themselves and others from bugs, but take them off to speak to each other is also a little jarring; that’s not the point of the masks, but you have to allow some artistic licence because when we watch a film we learn so much from someone’s face. Having a film where the actors are all hidden away behind masks doesn’t make for compelling drama.

And it’s this level of artistic licence that I think will guide most reactions from people with CF, because you either accept that you have to do some things for the sake of the drama and allow yourself to get swept up in it, or you don’t and and every element that’s not quite right will drive you potty. That’s something most people won’t be able to choose, it will just be an immediate reaction they can’t control.

While we’re on the subject of minor niggles, the way they show the coughing up of sputum is a bit too vomit-like to me.

The biggest challenge — especially for a British audience — is knowing how much inaccuracy is the filmmakers being wrong and how much is the American norm. Things that jump out to us may just be differences in our systems.

With all that out of the way, here’s what you’ll learn from watching Five Feet Apart.

The Cystic Fibrosis Team

Inthe film, Barb plays a critical role that’s a bit of an amalgamation of the multi-disciplinary teams we have here in the UK. She a ward nurse and a nurse specialist, and a little bit of a physio/junior doctor, too.

Regardless, the characters with CF have a special relationship with her that is wholly accurate. All of the specialist CF nurses I’ve had have been incredible people. Deeply caring and understanding, but ready with a swift kick to the rear when you need it.

I’ve known one of the nurse specialists at my hospital in Oxford, Lisa, for more than 18 years now. No visit is the same without seeing her, even if it’s just to say hello. She’s seen me through the best of times and the worst of times and she was the one I first discussed my declining health and road to transplant with — not an easy conversation for anyone.

On the hospital ward in the old Churchill Hospital in Oxford way back in early 2005, I’d just endured a horrible winter of infections, hospitalisations and intravenous antibiotics (where the drugs are pumped into your body through a line in your veins). I’d also been looking at my notes and lung function results and noticed that my peaks and troughs weren’t as far apart as they used to be. Even worse, the intensive treatment for the troughs wasn’t bringing my lung function back up to the level of the previous peaks. I was losing lung function that I wasn’t able to recover.

Lisa came in, as she did every morning I was incarcerated on the ward, for a bit of idle chit chat before her day started ‘properly’1 . I vividly remember saying, “We need to talk about transplant, don’t we?”

That was the start of a near 3-year journey to my new lungs, where she (and the rest of the team) stood solidly beside me, even as I was being introduced to a new team at a new hospital, always making sure I was keeping as well as I could while we waiting for that fateful call.

The second half of Barb in the film (Barb II we’ll call her) for me was and remains my physio, Ali. I’m not sure anyone can understand how important the relationship between a person with CF and their physio is. I know because I’ve had awful physios, good physios, great phyios, and I’ve had Ali. The worst physios come into your room, push you to do your physio and chastise you if you haven’t. The best physios make any session feel like a visit from a friend.

We didn’t have afflovests in my day, and indeed they’re still not usually provided by the NHS in the UK, which meant we had to make do with some form of breathing exercise coupled with ‘physical manipulation’ — either percussion or chest squeezing when you cough and those sorts of things.

This means that when hospitalised you might have two or three 30–60 minute sessions with a physio everyday. That’s a long time to spend with someone. When I was in hospital I would spend more time with Ali than I would with my family.

I was really, really lucky to make such a great friend in Ali because it made physio sessions at least bearable, and sometimes even fun.

The depiction of the relationships between the main characters and Barb felt spot-on to me. Part police officer, part friend, part medical professional, the central importance of that relationship was shown brilliantly and demonstrated a real understanding for what life in the confines of a hospital can be like.

Isolation

When I was a kid, back in the late 80s and early 90s there was no such notion as cross-infection. Everyone thought it best for people with cystic fibrosis to hang out with each other so that we could share our personal experiences and learn that others faced the daily regime of treatments we did, too.

Only in the mid-90’s did we start to discover it wasn’t a good idea. Then we saw it was a bad idea. Then we saw it was a very bad idea. Then we saw that it was potentially fatal. That’s why cross-infection rules are so strict.

That means for people like me we had to work hard to adapt. Rather than hanging out with our mates in hospital, sitting on beds together, sharing war stories and bitching about the junior doctors who didn’t know how to take blood properly, we were now confined to single rooms, closed off from the rest of the ward and unable to even see the other people with CF on the ward. In the beginning, the best we could muster up was sending messages with the ward nurses or physios.

The Internet has been something of a (limited) saviour for people with CF because it suddenly opened up more and more opportunities to connect with each other. We began chatting again, finding new friends online, most commonly in ‘chat rooms’2 and web forums, the quaint forms of interaction that seem almost archaic today.

Then social media came along, making it even easier, followed by FaceTime, Skype, WhatsApp etc etc, allowing us to be more connected than we have been in more than 20 years.

But don’t let that fool you.

Speaking from experience from both sides of the coin, nothing but nothing beats being able to sit on a bed, seeing your friend in perfect HD, 3D, human resolution, being able to properly look them in the eye, hug them, whisper about your favourite nurses with them and having friendships just like all the ’normals’ out there in the world.

It’s not just the isolation and separation from your friends with CF that the condition can rob you of, though. Separation from your other circles of friends and family is real, too.

Being in a hospital more than an hour-and-a-half away from my home town means that my friends couldn’t just pop in to see me if they got out of work early or had some time before starting. It made it a mission that’s hard to expect anyone to make. That said, plenty did, and they also did incredible things for me, like joining my then-girlfriend, now-wife one weekend to totally overhaul the second bedroom in our little flat into a study where I could work and earn money as a freelancer from. I didn’t know anything about it until I got home from hospital.

More than just hospital visits, my CF stopped me doing things I would have leapt at doing otherwise. Shortly before I was listed for transplant, a bunch of my best friends went off to Australia for six months, which I was excited to do with them. Thanks to an unplanned, three-month spell in Texas due to a lung that wouldn’t properly inflate (ask me about it another time), I was too unwell to join them. Every email we got from them (this was in the days before WhatsApp and universal WiFi, kids) made me more and more happy for them and sad for me. I ended up reading Bill Bryson’s Down Under to try to at least vicariously experience the same things they did.3

And then there are relationships. Not the generic kind, the intimate kind. Without spoilers, it’s fair to say this comes up a lot in the film and it shows just how hard some of the decision-making can be around what’s fair and what’s not. It’s something I struggled with for a long time.

My destructive cycle consisted of meeting someone, spending time with them, getting to know them better, being open about my condition, getting closer and closer to them and then totally self-destructing and ruining the relationship a couple of months after getting serious about things. I’m not even sure I knew I was doing it, but I systematically pushed people away until they stopped trying to come back.

The only reason I ended up getting married to my wife was because she was perceptive enough to see this and simply wouldn’t accept me pushing her away. She took it, she dealt with it and she kept telling me she wasn’t going anywhere. So eventually I stopped pushing and she helped me realise that it’s not my decision whether someone loves me or not, just as it’s not theirs that I love them. Love is love.

But that still didn’t stop me refusing to propose or get married until after I’d proved my transplant had been successful. I was listed for transplant at 23, got together with my wife at 24 and was eventually transplanted at 25. The last thing I wanted was to leave a 24-year-old widow behind, because it felt too unfair.

There are as many different views on this as there are people with CF— and I know and respect many people who have felt the polar opposite to me (including my wife!) — but the point is that what the film captures brilliantly is that relationships (of any kind) are difficult. The are harder than they otherwise could be. They are more complicated. Because CF is incapable of getting out of the way.

Death & Dying

While it may not be easy watching, for me it’s entirely true that when you get to Stella and Will’s stage of CF — what’s commonly called “end-stage” — death looms daily. Whether you choose to acknowledge it, talk about it, mope about it or make jokes about it, the Reaper always feels like he’s tap-tap-tapping away at the glass in your window.

The portrayal of how Stella and Will (and Poe) deal with this looming presence is a fantastic demonstration of how different people with CF are, how there’s no one rule for all of us and how we react to any given situation. Just look at all the people who really, truly hate this film, compared to my delight with it! In life, everyone deals with everything differently and there is no one way that’s better than another. There is only way works for you.

While I hope that helps people with CF, what I’d like to say to you, dear reader, is that there is truth in every one of the reactions you’ll see in this film.

What you don’t see is just how interminable waiting for a transplant is. How boring it is. How frustrating it is. How humbling it is. How much of a daily millstone it can become and so how easy it is to fixate on what may come next.

That’s what this film really teaches you: it’s not healthy to think about death so much, but I’ve been thinking about it since I became aware of my own mortality around 5 or 6 years old. When you know your life is likely to be shorter than everyone around you, it’s natural to focus on it and think dark thoughts, and that’s why we have to develop our own coping strategies to cling onto whatever helps us cope with that knowledge.

For those who want to avoid spoilers, this is the time to start scrolling rapidly, where I’ve made clear the spoilers have ended. Because this brings us finally to the most important part when it comes to the portrayal of CF in the film.

**SPOILER WARNING**

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Losing friends

Watching the final months, weeks and days of people you’ve known and loved caused by the same condition that you know will eventually — transplant or not — kill you, is the exquisite torture of a life with cystic fibrosis.

For everyone with CF who gets to know other people from the community and is ‘lucky’ enough to survive long enough you will eventually reach the point where your friends die.

Several years ago, I remember talking to my grandfather about life in his late-80s. He was healthy, still walking miles every day and completing the Telegraph crossword most days, and had plenty of time to enjoy his six grandchildren. He said to me the hardest part was that he now had no friends. He’d watched them all die, been to all of their funerals, and he didn’t know what to do with himself. He was too old, he felt, to make new friends.

That’s exactly where I am now. I feel at 36 the same way he felt at 86. At last count (and yes, I do keep count, because I once forgot one of my friends who had died until I was reminded of them and the pain of that moment still lives with me) I had lost 24 friends and been to around half that number of funerals.

And you better believe that that makes you angry. Angry with the world. Angry with whatever higher power you may believe in. Angry with yourself for being happy that it wasn’t you, and angry for the family that it was their child and not your parents’.

It’s terrifying because it’s another one gone and you know you’ll be there one day. It’s terrifying because you know that one day those pews at the front will be reserved for you wife, your husband, your mum, your dad, that the poems will be read by your friends and your cousins, that everything you see happening now is in your future.

So when you see Stella react as she does to Poe’s death, you better believe that that’s 100% authentic. That the rage, the need for destruction, the need to feel something real is all-consuming, even if only for minutes. It’s all true.

When Stella says, “He was my best friends and I never even hugged him,” you can trust that nearly ever single person with cystic fibrosis has had the same thought, at the same moment, in their own lives.

Because life just isn’t fair. But for people with CF — and all those affected by it — it’s just that little bit more unfair.

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***SPOILERS OVER***

Five Feet Apart might not be 100% accurate when it comes to life with cystic fibrosis, but it is 100% faithful to how it feels to have cystic fibrosis. And that, to me, is what I’d love everyone to experience.

[1] It took me a really long time to recognise that these visits were the ‘proper’ start of her day, and that spending time with everyone on the ward was a critical part of what she did, helping us all feel a little be less lonely.

[2] I was unable to type ‘chat rooms’ without quotation marks because it just feels so wonderfully dated!

[3] I met and became friends with Bill a couple of years later and was delighted to be able to tell him the difference his book had made to me at such a tough time.

1. It took me a really long time to recognise that these visits were the ‘proper’ start of her day, and that spending time with everyone on the ward was a critical part of what she did, helping us all feel a little be less lonely. [↩]
2. I was unable to type ‘chat rooms’ without quotation marks because it just feels so wonderfully dated! [↩]
3. I met and became friends with Bill a couple of years later and was delighted to be able to tell him the difference his book had made to me at such a tough time. [↩]

I’ve had the most amazing reaction to my Instagram / blog post about my recent battle with depression. People have been incredibly kind and loving. A few have mentioned how ‘brave’ it is for me to share. But I don’t see that at all.

My whole career has been built around storytelling, and telling people how important it is to tell stories. I believe in them so strongly because of their power to create change. But that change only happens when the stories ring true.

It’s not easy to be vulnerable and talk about these things when you don’t know what the impact might be, but the stories we tell when we are brave enough are the catalysts for change. Before anything can happen people have to understand why change is needed.

I’m blessed to have a loving family, a caring and considerate employer, and the support of medical professionals who have helped me through a rough time. I have everything that many people struggling with mental health issues don’t have, which makes me feel bound to tell my own story from such a safe place.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Anon1

I want to see a world where people talk freely about mental health, and their struggles, without fear of what that may mean for friendships, relationships or employment. I want people not to wait until it’s too late, but to speak up early, to seek help and to recover quickly and fully.

Sharing pretty Insta-quotes and platitudes is all well and good, but how can I expect all those things to happen if I’m not willing do the same myself?

1. Often attributed to Gandhi, this quote actually has no reliable documentary evidence. Gandhi’s closest was from a 1913 publication saying, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.” Arleen Lorrance’s 1974 book The Love Project is closest to ‘authorship’ with “Be the change you want to see happen.” [↩]

I’ve had the most amazing reaction to my Instagram / blog post about my recent battle with depression. People have been incredibly kind and loving. A few have mentioned how ‘brave’ it is for me to share. But I don’t see that at all.

My whole career has been built around storytelling, and telling people how important it is to tell stories. I believe in them so strongly because of their power to create change. But that change only happens when the stories ring true.

It’s not easy to be vulnerable and talk about these things when you don’t know what the impact might be, but the stories we tell when we are brave enough are the catalysts for change. Before anything can happen people have to understand why change is needed.

I’m blessed to have a loving family, a caring and considerate employer, and the support of medical professionals who have helped me through a rough time. I have everything that many people struggling with mental health issues don’t have, which makes me feel bound to tell my own story from such a safe place.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Anon1

I want to see a world where people talk freely about mental health, and their struggles, without fear of what that may mean for friendships, relationships or employment. I want people not to wait until it’s too late, but to speak up early, to seek help and to recover quickly and fully.

Sharing pretty Insta-quotes and platitudes is all well and good, but how can I expect all those things to happen if I’m not willing do the same myself?

1. Often attributed to Gandhi, this quote actually has no reliable documentary evidence. Gandhi’s closest was from a 1913 publication saying, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.” Arleen Lorrance’s 1974 book The Love Project is closest to ‘authorship’ with “Be the change you want to see happen.” [↩]

I originally shared the text below on my Instagram account, a place where for some reason I find it easier to be honest and open than other places, even if the authoring experience is a little trickier than other places. Reviewing it (and the comments) this morning, I realised I needed to share it more widely because it’s important. More on that below.

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Let’s just put it out there: the first four months of 2018 have been — almost without exception — spectacularly unkind and unhelpful.

Physical illness, accidents, stress, anxiety, mental health problems and depressive diagnoses have combined for the worst run of form in all the time my wife and I have known each other. Usually we play off each other pretty well, see-sawing through life’s difficulties, helping to pull the other up when they’re down and let the other lift us when we’re struggling.

These last four months the universe seems to have knocked us down at the same time with the full force of both barrels. For me, it culminated in being off work for almost two months and being medicated for depression for the first time since my transplant.

But today is May Day. It’s the day I choose to embrace optimism again (thanks, cystic fibrosis), the day I take back the driver’s seat (thanks, mindfulness), the day I break free of the mental shackles that I’ve been in (thanks, Prozac) and see the light of life and not the dark (thanks, erm… light).

I know I can only do this with the right support, so I’m also giving cry to the international call for help: m’aidez. I need your help. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week or next month, but on this journey forward from this one single step, I will falter, I will fail and I will fall. And I may need more than one hand to lift me back up.

Today is the day I become a warrior against mental health issues. For myself, because I believed I was ‘better’ and it humbled me again. For my friends and colleagues, because stigma should never cost friendships or jobs. For others, because everyone needs to know it’s ok to not be ok.

May Day is my reset button. Let’s do this.

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This post is important not just because I failed to recognise the situation I had slipped into, but because I did it while spending a lot of time preaching about how important it was to de-stigmatise and recoognise mental health issues, particularly in the workplace.

There’s more to come on this, but for now it just felt important to get this out there as a statement of intent. This is not the end of my fight, and it shouldn’t be the end of ours.