Let's Create For Mental Wellness!

Welcome :)

This is Creativity 4 Wellness, 

Thank You for stopping by!

Let's Create for Mental Goodness

This blog will explore the idea of sharing creativity (writing, arting & making) as a way of mindfulness, healing, and communication.

Through this blog, I want to share with you paintings and hap-hazard creations that might give insight into a few tricky things I have felt at times. Some of you might be able to relate to these feelings too. 

This blog aims to encourage you to try creative outlets, suggest ways of exploring your passions, and maybe discuss ideas on how we might be able to find a bit more happiness.

I hope to share with you the simple healing tool of a pen and paper, and also describe to you the usefulness and poignance of splashing around some colour, or making squiggly drawings such as this:

Interesting.

A bit about me: 

I am not in any way a Professional People-Helper-Person...I can only share my personal experience of what has helped me, which I hope can help others. I have no special qualifications in Wellbeing (half an A-level in psychology (graded at a D) and approximately a quarter of an NVQ in Health & Social Care)...those probably don't count... my degree is in Textiles. If you'd like to look at my textile nearly-creations you can find out more here:

http://lauracallaway.strikingly.com
(Not wanting to admit that I am not a commercial textile designer)

Here:
https://laurakate1991.wixsite.com/lkctextiles
(Celebrating denial and pretending I am indeed a proper commercial textile designer)

Or here:
https://www.facebook.com/HandmadeLKC/
(A bit more interactive, just handy-madey things, and where I am going with my creativity more recently)

That last one is the more useful one.

A bit more about me, unfortunately:

I'm not sure why I have so many different websites (Thank Goodness they are all free.)..It is also a mystery as to why I have so many email addresses, various accounts on all sorts of things, multiple things I have signed up to on these multiple email addresses... Often it is because I forget I already started or registered with something ages ago, or commonly it is because I forget my passwords every 3 days. Potentially I have many more inactive websites because I was trying to create The One that made me into some sort of Fashion Designer to fulfil some awkward expectations for my degree.

But I'm not a fashion designer. I love materials, and colour, and making...but I am much more interested in drawing, and words, and writings, and playing around exploring crafty fun things and creating ideas and things that make people happy, and making just because I like to. Actually I sort of need to.

I have found creative outlets immeasurably useful

 in learning to cope with mental illness. 

For me it is drawing, and painting, and cutting and sticking, and colouring in, and stitching and repairing. And writing! This is not my first ever blog - I have written blogs previously. Blogging before was a way to try and be positive, to create something uplifting, during some difficult times. The blogs were a space outside of my own melancholy and self-very-depricating hand-shakily-written journals, to portray some sort of happy character, and largely to cheer myself up. Writing is somehow cathartic for me.

Throughout those older blogs, there are a few mentions of tricky emotions (I think - I haven't read them entirely)... But they are mostly light-hearted, despite the fact that I was struggling so much and dealing with a lot at this time. I was trying to be positive, but was embarrassed, confused, afraid and ashamed of the mental anguish and some of the horrible things I was experiencing.

I started to write and paint an awful lot as a way of dealing with some difficult things.

These previous slightly embarrassing, remarkably self-indulgent and grammatically inaccurate blogs, if you are interested, (I promise it is unlikely that they will be of use or interest to you)
They can be found here:

http://inlauraslocket.blogspot.co.uk
(2010-2012) - Adventures (within four walls) of a Cat Lady
http://writedrawlau.blogspot.co.uk 
(2013) - Adventures (actually outside) into The World

My self-esteem was incredibly low throughout writing these. Like I said, I haven't read all the posts, and I don't want to. I'm sure they are minorly cringe-worthy. I may have blurted a few things out on there in a few either manic and overtired, or desperately sad and also tired, moments. My blog was, at times, my only friend...   I stopped blogging at points in panic, because I got so anxious when I reread some of the things I had posted so publicly. I was ashamed by it,  and afraid of what I was sharing. I'm not afraid, or ashamed of it anymore. I'm not proud of them but I couldn't bring myself to delete them either - they are part of my history.

Now, I am much stronger than I was then.

Creativity is a tool for self-expression, communication

&  a journey into acceptance and freedom. 

This blog, will be much more honest than the before ones. My posts will not always be fun or fluffy or trying to make light of anything. At the same time, I hope some posts will be genuinely positive, uplifting and inspiring. There are a lot of things I would like to say, that I have realised I no longer need to be ashamed of. And I am beginning to not be ashamed at all. Having been quietly keeping quiet for a while, I am now really enjoying my Freedom of Speech. It feels like a wonderful new gift. That feels liberating.

So I have become a bit of a chatterbox, and I'm going to write things down more because that is how I chat best.

I have become really passionate about using creativity, my care for others, and my experience of mental illness, to make some positive changes. I hope that this blog will be both a space for people to realise they are not alone, an interesting read and safe community where we can share ideas, and also a space to use our freedom of speech and say some things that really need to be said, in order to ensure that the future is brighter for others who may be suffering in the same way that I have done, and that many people are.

-Our Mental Health is important.-

I'm keen to raise some awareness as to why, and have some ideas as to how this could happen.
Here is a little video that might be able to give a little more insight into some of things I will be talking about:

https://vimeo.com/220965075

I am not sure, but I think that maybe

Creativity, Innovation, Communication & Kindness

- Make The World a Better Place -

I hope you will be interested to find out more,
I'm really pleased to be blogging again :)

Laura.