I Rise...
(but tentatively!)
Only a month ago I was moping around in my flat, in a weird depressive limbo that had me wondering why I felt as if I was living half a life and barely leaving the safety of my flat. Existing mostly for the purpose of the 'work' I'd found myself embroiled in over the last eight years, neglecting my own self-care needs to chase the dopamine hits I got from feeling useful and helping other people. I think 'they' say it's a trauma response to want to help other people not feel the sadness you feel inside. I see it a lot in the suicide prevention sector – particularly people who have been bereaved, who probably had never even understood what suicide prevention meant before the unfathomable loss they faced.
Thinking back to after I published Mindarium Magazine in May 2018, I found myself not only separating from my son's Dad, but moving out of our 'home' and becoming dependent on welfare benefits as I was struggling with my mental health. Despite registering Mindarium as a Community Interest Company the following year, the realisation of me being able to run a regular publication when my own mental health was unpredictable soon put the brakes on the impressive and detailed business plans I had made.
Then, of course, the following year we entered the COVID disruptions and suddenly the stability of being on benefits seemed like the safest option, particularly as my mobility worsened and the unmedicated menopause was in full effect. While all this was happening, I was just plodding along in the background doing bits of voluntary work here and there, helping out when I could without any pressure. I even tried doing paid 'permitted work' until my transition to Universal Credit complicated everything.
I had tried not to do so much 'work' and hand some of the projects over, but I always migrated back to it, usually after another depressive episode where I lost my mojo, wondering why I felt so lost in between and understanding the meaning of a 'coping mechanism'. That's pretty much how the last few years have been: up and down, from the safety of my flat, supported by welfare and just trying to find a sense of peace and balance in my life which always feels so elusive.
It may sound odd, but the last few years of living independently has possibly been one of the most stabilising times in my adult life. Although I'm renting from social housing, the feeling of home is mine and it has become a real sanctuary for me. Filling my walls with my taste in art, my bookcases with books I've always wanted to read, shelves with oddities of my choosing and my cupboards rammed to max with my own clutter. Playing music to match my mood or watching whatever I want on telly; living life on my own terms. In a way, it's like discovering the real me.
Perhaps the timing of the menopause, my son becoming an adult and me being single has reinforced this feeling. Who knows? But despite external forces trying to rock my boat, I think I may have found a way to steer this ship, even in rough seas. I guess I'm trying to explain why, despite feeling in limbo just a month ago and wondering why I couldn't just do nothing – no work, no projects, just keep floating along – that thought was pulling me under. So, when many of my peers are planning or taking retirement, I'm on the brink of changing my course in a very radical way.
I've rented an office pod. That probably doesn't sound particularly radical. People rent offices every day. But for me, taking my work out of the safety of my home and putting a key into the door of somewhere that exists specifically for it feels enormous. I've been circling this moment since 2018. And I'm still scared shitless. Because I've learned over those eight years that doing work you care passionately about and building something capable of sustaining that work are two entirely different things.
I'm an industry-trained graphic designer. Except these days, design is probably one of the smallest parts of my working life. Setting up any organisation isn't simply about doing the thing you're good at. There are a million other jobs hiding behind it that nobody sees. Funding applications. Accounts. Policies. Insurance. Governance. Safeguarding. Meetings. Partnerships. Websites. Emails. Budgets. Evaluation. Social media. Networking. Project management. Reports. And somewhere amongst all that you're supposed to find the time, energy and headspace to actually do the thing you created the organisation to do.
When that work involves suicide prevention, there's another resource being spent that doesn't appear on any balance sheet. Me. I've met so many extraordinary people in this sector who arrived here because something terrible happened to them. Bereaved parents, partners, siblings and friends who somehow took the worst thing imaginable and decided they would try to prevent another person or family experiencing it. There is something incredibly powerful about that. But there is fragility in it too. We talk endlessly about resilience. We talk rather less about the fact that the people doing the helping are human beings themselves. Caring doesn't make us indestructible. Lived experience doesn't automatically become an infinite source of energy. Sometimes the very thing that makes somebody so determined to help other people is also the thing that means they need protecting themselves.
And then, while I was writing this, PAPYRUS closed. Two days before World Suicide Prevention Day, PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide entered administration and its specialist HOPELINE247 service stopped operating. And today I find myself thinking particularly about Jean Kerr. Jean's son Edward died by suicide in November 1989. He was just 17 and would have been 53 now. She described his death as a complete shock to the family and remembered him as kind, caring, academically gifted and someone who would make cakes for people's birthdays.
After Edward died, Jean started asking questions. The very same questions each one of our networked parents continue to ask. How could this be prevented from happening to another family? What could be learned? She began writing to health organisations, attending suicide prevention conferences and speaking to the NHS and Department of Health. Her own experience had become the thing that drove her to try to change things. But eventually she realised something else. She felt like a lone voice and couldn't keep doing it all by herself. Other bereaved parents joined her and, in March 1997, PAPYRUS became a reality. Seven people were meeting in Jean's home with around £10 each between them. It's not a million miles away from the journey we've taken with the Co-alc Alliance.
That number stopped me in my tracks. Eight years. Eight years between Edward's death and PAPYRUS becoming a reality. Mindarium began in 2018. And eight years later, I'm sitting amongst boxes preparing to move my work out of my home for the first time, frightened by the enormity of trying to turn things I care deeply about into something genuinely sustainable.
Jean went on to chair PAPYRUS for its first four years before recognising it was time to step back and let others help the charity grow. She described PAPYRUS almost as if it were another child: something she had nurtured in its early years before watching it find its own feet. And now, nearly thirty years after those seven people first gathered in her home, PAPYRUS has entered administration. I cannot begin to imagine what Jean must be feeling now, and I wouldn't presume to. But I keep thinking about something she said: "The need for our work will sadly never end." And therein lies perhaps the cruellest part of all this.
The need hasn't ended. PAPYRUS has. There will rightly be questions about how that happened, and I don't think any of us yet knows enough to answer them. We do know that demand for HOPELINE247 had risen dramatically. In its last published accounts, PAPYRUS reported 40,653 interactions in a year – an increase of 101%. We also know that the organisation spent significantly more than it brought in. It is a sobering reminder of something I'm only beginning to understand properly myself:
Being needed isn't the same thing as being sustainable. You can have passion. You can have expertise. You can have lived experience. You can have an extraordinary idea. You can demonstrate need. You can even build something that thousands of people depend upon. But none of those things, on their own, guarantee that the organisation behind it will survive.
And yes, that frightens me. Because I'm standing at the beginning of precisely the kind of journey PAPYRUS travelled much further along. For eight years I've been able to retreat when I've needed to. I've worked from home, relied on the security of welfare when my health hasn't allowed me to work, volunteered, experimented, started things, stopped things and somehow kept coming back to the projects that give my life purpose.
Taking an office doesn't suddenly turn that into a conventional business. But psychologically, it feels like planting a flag in the ground and saying: I'm going to give this a proper go and have a valid reason to leave my self-imposed sacrarium. With that comes a question I haven't quite managed to answer yet. How do we build things that help other people without destroying ourselves in the process? How do we grow without growth eventually becoming the thing that sinks us? How do we pay people properly, fund the boring infrastructure nobody wants to fund, keep enough in reserve for the bad years and still put as much as possible into the people we're actually here to help?
How do organisations built from passion and lived experience become strong enough that their founders don't have to hold them together through sheer bloody determination? And personally, how do I stop the work I love from consuming the life I've finally learned to love too? Perhaps the office is part of that answer. For years, my work has lived in the same rooms as I do. There has been no commute. No locked door. Often no underwear or make-up either! No physical boundary between Maggy working and Maggy simply existing and isolating.
My beloved Mac goes to sleep. My brain doesn't. An email arrives while I'm watching telly. An idea pops into my head in bed. A project I'm worried about sits six feet away from where I'm trying to relax. My sanctuary gradually became my office too. So perhaps taking this leap isn't actually about becoming more committed to work. Perhaps it's about finally creating somewhere I can leave it (hopefully ). A place where I can care enormously, work ridiculously hard and try to build something worthwhile – and then lock the door and go home.
Back to my Pascy. Back to my clutter, my books, my oddities, my music, my art, my sanctuary. My life. I don't know whether I can make all of this sustainable. I don't know whether I'll ever feel financially secure enough to completely relinquish the safety net that allowed me to rebuild my life in the first place. And after watching what has happened to PAPYRUS this week, I'm certainly not going to pretend that passion, good intentions or even demonstrable need guarantee survival.
Maybe courage isn't being certain it'll work. Maybe it's recognising the fragility - of organisations, of finances, of the people we're trying to help and, importantly, of ourselves – and building with that fragility in mind rather than pretending it isn't there.
Maybe sustainability isn't just about keeping an organisation alive. Maybe it's also about making sure we remain alive within it. Eight years after I first started Mindarium, I've finally got somewhere to go to 'work' from. A new community, a new reason to thrive, a new designated space of purpose, and hopefully a new healthier routine. Whatever financial basis or time commitment that ends up being, I know I have to give it the best shot I can. And more importantly, understanding when it's time to come home and leave all that in the office.
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