"What's Normal Anyway?" Inspiration from a book

I've just finished reading a really good book called "What's normal anyway?" by Anna Gekoski & Steve Broome. In it they interview 10 celebrities (or public figures as I prefer to call them, celebrity seems to be an increasingly dirty word nowadays) from Politicians to glamour models to footballers to actresses (guaranteed you will have heard of somebody in the book whatever your interests are) who all have one thing in common, struggle with mental illness. The stories are harrowing and in some cases very near the knuckle (particularly Trisha Goddard's description of her suicide attempt) but I must point out that the book does come with a trigger warning in the introduction. Although each of the subjects is very different and their conditions vary from OCD, Bipolar, Depression to Body Dysmorphia etc all of their stories show the sheer devastation that mental illness wrecks on a person, their friends and family. But each of the stories also carries a sense of hope, that not total, but part recovery is possible and that you can get a large part of your life back. The book is available on Amazon (of course) and is well worth a read.

People are often critical of people in the public eye sharing their stories about their own, or loved ones' experiences of mental illness and I'm really not sure where this criticism comes from. Take for example Catherine Zeta-Jones going public about her Bipolar disorder, the general consensus from the tabloid media was to sneer at her being 'soft' during what was a pretty horrendous time in her life - husband with a life-threatening illness, seperation from said husband, raising kids and mental illness - how is the woman still standing??? Contrast this with the outpouring of love from the same titles when Angelina Jolie disclosed her double mastectomy that she underwent last year. Now please don't get me wrong, I ADORE Angelina she is possibly one of the most beautiful creatures ever to walk the earth and I have a massive crush on her. But I have to ask why is it ok to sneer at one woman's illness and not anothers'? 

With the storytelling theme in mind I want to share with you all something I've been working on for the last week. About a month ago The Blurt Foundation http://blurtitout.org/ approached a number of people who have blogged for them over the last year (you can read my posts here, here, here and er here - hey they're super-lovely and publish my work!) and have asked us to be part of Project X. The plan is to publish various accounts of depression and mental illness in an e-book to raise money for the foundation. So far I've written about a 1000 words but weirdly am kind of struggling, it's easy to fire off a blog post here and there but to write an entire story and still keep it snappy and interesting is a far bigger ask. Even though I'm writing the story that I know best, mine, it's still hard to think of what to write or how to explain things that I still don't fully understand myself. Finishing the book has helped though, I figure if public figures with everything to lose have the guts to tell their story then so should I.

Love Jen

XxxX