Reflections of 2012

As I reflect on 2012 I realise how wonderfully lucky I am.  I have health, an amazing family, good friends and incredible connections with people all around the world.  Turning 50 has again made me stop and think about who I am and what I want from this life, the search for meaning and purpose is so strong.

I feel I have an obvious purpose as a mother to nurture, teach and transform my children into positive vibrant, caring, intelligent young adults.  I say obvious, but sometimes so much other stuff comes in the way - the drive to make recovery possible in mental health services across the world, has sometimes blinded me to what my own family need for their mental health.  So driven to make it right for everyone else, I can neglect mine, Ron's and my children's mental well being.  Trying to have enough of me to go around leads to frustrations on my part that there is not enough time in a day.

Thankfully, living on Lewis, 10 minutes outside - watching the sea, the storms come in, the wind, the light, vibrant rainbows, the pigs and poultry doing the same thing everyday - brings me back to my need, for my feet to be strongly grounded in the earth.  When you see the huge waves pounding against rocks, millions of years old, it gives a sense of perspective of how tiny we are in this world.  How significant our lives are, yet every positive thing I do, can impact on so many people.  Every act of kindness, every moment of love, can make a difference for generations to come.

Love - it's a dirty world in Psychiatry.  It's an embarrassment never to be mentioned, but every bone, sinew, gut instinct in my body, believes that if we do not act in every moment - with love and compassion we become less human.

What is better: to fill someone will pills, strap them to a bed and leave alone; or to sit beside someone in their madness, to really listen to their pain, anguish, joy, search for spiritual identity, search for peace, search for meaning.  To explore with them the metaphors, to hear the messages of the voices, to help interpret, to hold a hand, give a hug, to bear witness to their story.  To believe in them, to give hope, to help understand, to build resilience, to leave another person with a possibility for transformation - surely that is the work of every decent mental health worker, every decent citizen.

We can also choose to remain - embittered to be cynical of everyone's motives, to hate and despise rather than try to understand the other side, to be always looking for the negatives, we can put all our energy to this - or we can just get on with healing ourselves and each other.  Perhaps that is what true peer support is, each human being taking care of those around them.

I truly believe this world can be full of light and hope, each one of us has the capacity to be another candle and embrace and nurture change in our system.  To encourage every positive move anybody in the system makes, to stand beside those brave enough to want to make a difference.

I hope my children understand what Ron & I do - that they won't hate us for not always being there.  I hope they have enough love from us, to also go out in the world and be candles to burn away other people's pain.  I can't stop this work I do - yes I earn a good living, but everyday I see another person begin to understand their pain, to begin to want to live, to begin to love themselves - it is worth every sacrifice, every bit of energy I have for this world.  Love is truly all we need.

Happy solstice, Christmas and New Year to all

Love Karen xx

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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.

Reflections from New York

It's been a reflective couple of months for me. I lost both my maternal grandparents within 10 days of each other, they were both 91. I was very close to my grandmother, spending many school holidays staying with them in Frampton on Severn a beautiful village in Gloucestershire.

My grandfather was a farm labourer on the manor farm, and my childhood was shaped, going with him into work, watching the milking, sheep dipping & combine harvesting and helping in his vegetable garden. Perhaps that is why having the croft has been so important for me. My paternal grandfather also worked on a fruit farm, had a huge vegetable garden and kept geese - and for a while my father ran a market garden and free-range chickens. The earth to me is so important and now my grandparents have returned to it.

A week later, I lost my only pedigree gilt, she went into labour on a night when it was snowing - went outside to nest and died. By the time I got to her, the crows were already doing their work. Nature can be cruel and relentless - two days before we had temperatures of 19 C.

Spring has naturally been my most vibrant energetic time, it's when I have fell in love, made big decisions, grown. This spring I have just had my 50th birthday, do I feel different, Yes. I am wiser, who knows - time will tell. What I do know is that the work I have been chosen to do in awakening people to the process of love and acceptance, to recovery to journeying with another hurt distressed person is like planting and growing, preparing the seed bed, watching the seed develop its roots, its green leaves, how important water and light is, pulling out the weeds to stop its growth being stifled, watching the flowers open, the fruits develop. Isn't that exactly what the workers job should be in the recovery process?

I am writing this in New York. A huge city with millions of people, yet walking around, there are trees everywhere - gardens on top of buildings where ever people are. They still need to feel in touch with the earth, even when surrounded by so much concrete. We had a great public meeting last Thursday on working with voices, about 70 people were there including the organizers. There is a definite hunger here to do something different, to look beyond medication and diagnosis - workers are fed up of being in a system that is failing people. I think that the hearing voices movement can bring about great changes here, if it is grown and nurtured - and workers are grown and nurtured to sustain it.

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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.

Recovery and all that jazz

Hi to everyone who reads my blog, those of you who came to our recovery champions courses in the last few months, will know my passion is jazz singing and that Ron had bought me for Christmas a 5 day jazz singing course in the south of France. Well I finally did it a couple of weeks ago & it was amazing, in fact the way the week was set up it felt like I was a participant on a recovery champions course! But my singing improved & I met some wonderful muscians.

Over the summer Ron & I have spent time at home & actually had a proper holiday in France with the kids. We have also had 4 litters of piglets, the latest are only 4 weeks old. We bought some quails & these have become Ron’s pet project.

As for work we have concentrated on new products, with several new DVD’s, from Eleanor Langdon, Dirk Corstens, intervoice conference and our first joint Italian/English DVD of a hearing voices conference.

Ron’s new edition of Recovery An Alien Concept was just launched last week. It doesn’t seem like 12 years ago when we lived in Gloucester & Ron would write deep into the night on the first edition. 

This time he asked Eleanor Langdon to edit it for him & she has done a great job, for all of those academics out there who encouraged Ron to get the book edited & indexed properly a big thank you, with particular thanks to Marius for his comments and Eleanors excellent job. The book looks beautiful with its stunning new cover designed by Evelyn from the puffin room http://www.thepuffinroom.co.uk/. She designs all our DVD covers and has been great to work with.

It has also been very professionally copy edited & type set by Sharon & David  from Two Raven press who also live on our island in Uig they have been a great find

http://www.tworavenspress.com/. Take a look at their books. I can really recommend Sharon’s own book - The long delirious burning blue. A beautiful intense moving book that kept me riveted from cover to cover.

Finally Ron & I are moving into a house further into Ness facing north looking right out to sea, that we will actually all fit in to.

We are hoping to use our croft cottage for some interesting recovery work in the future & for holiday lets.

This autumn Ron will be very busy with a tour of North America. I will be knee deep in mud with the pigs & moving slowly into our new house.

We will have further new DVD’s coming out one by Marius Romme & One by Sandra Escher & a fabulous new workbook in the victim to victor series for male survivors of sexual abuse called reclaiming our lives written by Jim Campbell & Ron Coleman.

I am writing this from a hotel in Manchester.

We have just had a very successful 2 days of workshops in Glasgow & Manchester with Oryx Cohen & Will Hall from the USA. They were wonderful presenters and really made me think more about how we connect to our communities and start change there rather than trying to change the mental health system, we hope to invite them back again next year.

I’m waiting for my flight to Australia where I am working in Perth for one week, my body clock will be very confused by next weekend and my return to Lewis. Ron has unfortunately been taken into hospital for a couple of days to sort out his diabetes. I must admit it’s a little nerve wracking leaving him and the family but he assures me he is alright. 

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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.