Beginnings

Posted by: Alison Chisnell on: September 15, 2013

• In: Fundraising | HR for Mental Health | Mental health | Running
• Leave a Comment

This blog post is far from neat or conventional in the usual rules of beginning, middle and end.  It seems to me that there are at least three different beginnings to the story that I want to share with you, the middle continues to be a work in progress and the end is far from known. Many of the pieces of this jigsaw may already be familiar to you, so forgive me for restating them.

The beginnings are these…

In January 2002, my brother-in-law committed suicide. None of us knew at the time that he was depressed or suffered any mental health issues. I wrote about his story here.

In January of this year, I published this post as part of the Advent and New Year series, written by Jon Bartlett, which caused huge waves in the HR community about the topic of mental health and what we as HR professionals could do about it. This led to the 25% Club series of posts of individuals sharing their experiences of suffering mental health conditions, an HR for Mental Health event with Mind Charity, organised by Jon and a much more open dialogue on the topic of mental health.

This time last year, I was training for my first half-marathon, having not run at all previously. It was a huge deal to me, uncertain as I was as to whether I would achieve the goal which at the start had appeared reckless and unattainable. I did it and was delighted.

Right now I am again in training for the Royal Parks Half, which takes place on the 6^th October. This time I am running for Mind and I really want to raise as much money as I can for them, as it is such a brilliant cause. Because of my brother-in-law and because of the increased understanding that I have gained this year of mental health and the work that Mind do, it means a huge amount to me and I would love it if you could support me and them.

This will be my third half-marathon in a year and I am still waiting to discover the magical point of when the training becomes easier, or perhaps more accurately, when it becomes easy…but given that the three or four training runs I do each week still frequently feel tough, I don’t think that will happen anytime soon! That’s OK..I know I’m not alone on that one ;).

If you would like to support me and donate to Mind, you can find my sponsorship page here.

Please do take the time to check out some of the fantastic resources that Mind produce about mental health at work and visit the excellent Time To Change website.

Thank you!