Crunchy numbers

Most Popular Posts in 2014

• How do I know I’m multiple? Nov 2011
• My approach to first episode psychosis Jan 2014
• “When sex gets hard’ – Sex & disability forum June 2014
• Dissociation is a super power Feb 2014
• Do you need a ‘DID expert’ therapist? Sept 2014

I’ve been working hard on my websites lately. My Business site is also much cleaner and easier to navigate now, and today I’ve added a new service to those I offer: Professional Writing. I wrote up some of the feedback I’ve been given for this Blog over the years and it was… beautiful. Clarifying.

“Your writing is beautiful, evocative and inspiring—thankyou!” -NGO Supervisor

“Your articles… have saved my life. My partner and I cannot thank you enough.” – Peer

“Sarah… has improved my knowledge and understanding enormously… my everyday life with my partner, and my ability to work with people from right across the mental health spectrum.” – Carer

“A brilliant emotional description, clearly showing the possibilities of being in charge of your psychosis, understanding it and working through, real recovery in action” Ron Coleman

“As always, your writing captures the depth of suffering and brilliance of madness” – Transactional Analyst

“It was worth dealing with 20 yrs behaviorism in the UK to (find) your writing.” – Social Worker

I’m actually starting to take some positive feedback on board for the first time since I was a child. I can see clearly what I’ve been doing all these years with this work. I’m ready to launch myself out there in a bigger way, so I’ve been sharing my upcoming talk about Psychosis widely and reaching out to organisations to arrange talks with them. The networks are also growing, I’m not holding back anymore, not bewildered and confused about where I’m going and what I’m doing. It’s all come clear in my mind’s eye and I’m exactly where I should be. I am so full of urgent life right now, I write notes for books while parked at traffic lights, I carry college journals with me to sketch designs in waiting rooms. I am so brimming with life I can’t contain it, there’s a joy in me, a bubbling laugh that just spills over and carries me along with it. Tamlorn has died and yet somehow the world is the most beautiful place. I feel like I went down into death with them and now I’ve been reborn, full of urgency and clarity. I am so proud of my work and so passionate about my future! I drive so carefully because no one else can write these books that are bursting out of me and I’m desperate to get them written before I die. There’s so much to do and learn and experience. And so many amazing projects to grow. I’m so proud of this Blog. It’s a beautiful, intimate account of my life, far beyond the stereotypes of mental illness, poverty, or disability. This is my account, my voice, my own perspective. Pieces of myself I have brought out into the public to say such simple things: that people with multiplicity are still human, that artists have important contributions to conversations about mental health, that psychosis does not have to be only terrifying and destructive. That we are never alone, not even in the deepest experiences of shame or pain. That life is horrific, and it is also beautiful.

So, I’ve tidied up the frame in which I hang these words. It’s pretty and clean and shining and simple. Because I’m finally realising how beautiful this thing I’ve created really is, and how glad I am that, come what may of all my other dreams, these words at least will last.