Two weeks gone in a flash

Two weeks gone in a flash. Two Recovery champions courses finished, two very different groups of participants, one outcome though, 42 people have gone away energised, reflective and enthusiastic about going back to work. I love this work, I love the power of the recovery process, and I love the way we can generate love for each other restoring faith in humanness with all its frailty

First week was mainly people from the NGO sector, mainly from organisations that have embraced recovery as a way forward, half of the group were relatively new to mental health work & are joining new programs, the other half were already engaging with recovery in their workplace. The second week, the staff were nearly all health sector staff with many years experience. What was beautiful to see was watching them being energised & revitalised as the week went on yes they were physically & emotionally tired and even though we were working very long hours by the end of the week they were all ready to go back to work & implement what they had learned, Ron & I were both exhausted by yesterday & Ron was particularly emotional as he had grown very close to this group as had I too, being an ex nurse, it is special when we have a group of nurses to work with.

Perth was very wet, Tasmania has been sunshine, showers, rainbows, wind & cold just like home. We hope to return here again it’s a lovely place much greener than the main land. Richmond fellowship Tasmania, announced this week that they will auspice the setting up of the Tasmanian hearing voices network, which is fabulous news too.

Today we had a well earnt rest, walked to the famous Salamanca markets & bought winter boots, gloves & hats ready for the cold of Canberra next week, spent the rest of the day chilling, dosing & watching TV-heaven!

Tomorrow we fly to Canberra where we will work for 4 days with old friends and new.

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Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor have an international reputation as speakers and authors. They are the directors of ‘Working to Recovery Limited’ an innovative international consultancy, training and publishing company with a cutting edge approach to supporting and improving mental health provision.

Getting ready for Australia!!!

I am sitting in an exhausted stupor at Glasgow airport waiting for my flight to Dubai. The last 4 days have been an absolute whirlwind as I prepared for leaving home for 5 weeks. Hoovering at midnight last night to make sure the house was reasonable for the nanny to take over, stupidly up at 6am this morning making a cheesecake for the kids tonight as it was promised a couple of nights ago. Yesterday was 3 trips to Stornoway -180 miles to get building materials for our new office, which hopefully will be complete when we return & our bedroom will no longer be a multi task space!!!

Cleaning out all the animals, making sure they all had plenty of feed for next few weeks, weeding my beautiful veggies, which will be most productive when I am away. Trying to give the kids some time, who were all giving me big hugs all day, leaving them for the school holidays is a big wrench, but we would have hardly seen them as we are working solidly day & evening whilst away so they are best at home in their own environment pier jumping, playing with friends & sleeping in their own beds.

Living in a small village can be difficult, yesterday I got reported to environmental health for going a way to Australia & leaving my 13 yr old in charge of the animals, nobody had rung me to check the facts, he is feeding the pigs every day under supervision to earn £75 for a pair of ridiculously expensive football boots, but that’s his passion & I think important for him to have earned the money rather than being spoilt. Any way the guy turned up saw the animals were in good health, that I had contingency plans in place & reassured me that he gets a lot of malicious phone calls, no wonder people get “paranoid” I am busy trying to work out who would do such a horrible thing with out the guts to speak to me first.

5 hours sleep, two nights in a row definitely don’t suit me. I hope I manage a long sleep on the plane.

We have a great tour ahead of us & are visiting & working in Tasmania for the first time, which I am really looking forward to as it is meant to resemble NZ my most favourite place on the planet.

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Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor have an international reputation as speakers and authors. They are the directors of ‘Working to Recovery Limited’ an innovative international consultancy, training and publishing company with a cutting edge approach to supporting and improving mental health provision.