October 2021 in lockdown I sat scrolling through Facebook. A friend of my daughter in law had liked an event that was happening in March 2022. There was just something about it that caught my attention. The event was called Coastrek and it was a walk to raise funds for Beyond Blue.
Ever since I have been the recipient of incredible help from seeing a Psychologist, I have wanted to give back. I am passionate about people having every resource available to them to live their best lives. We spend an incredible amount of money on our appearance – cosmetics, fillers, botox, clothing, hair, nails and man sculpting. We make sure that our physical bodies are healthy by going to gyms or making sure we keep regular GP visits. However, we do not pay a lot of attention to our mental health, not until something happens.
I am now 67 and unfortunately for me, studying to become a Psychologist will mean I will not be able to help people until I am almost 75. Also, the financial restraints of studying any field make it impossible – although I would love to do it. So, I thought, I cannot do any of the things I would really love to do, but I am sure that I can do my part to support an agency that already exists to help those in crisis. I mean seriously walk 30 kms – how hard can it be???
We gathered together a team of 4 and we started our training and our fundraising. Eventually the day came for us to take on this mammoth task. Was I feeling confident – absolutely not. We, as a team had 10 hours to complete the walk. I was quite happy to take the full 10 hours I just wanted to finish. Although secretly I wanted to walk it in a really good time.
The training was hard, but the walk was even harder. There were so many unknowns and so many things that I was just not prepared for. There were beautiful views and great conversations had along the way. There was laughter and there were tears. Fear of failure, abandonment, regret, not being good enough. I went through so many emotions along the walk and as I walked I began to see this walk was very much like the journey I took to work through my mental health issues.
At times the pain was too much to bear and I wanted to stop and give up, but I didn’t. I think, many times, in life, we give up way too early. Whenever things get too difficult and there is no easy solution – we walk away. Too often we want the easy path. We got to the final meet up with our support crew and I had not sat down since we left our start point. I was afraid to sit down in case I could not get back up. I leant against the car and said to my support crew – I cannot do this. She simply smiled at me, handed me some fluids and said “you’ve got this.” It would have been so easy to sit in the car and be driven to meet the others at the finish line, but I chose in that moment to continue. As they drove off, I cried because I realized there was no going back now – I had to finish.
As we were nearing the end, I was really struggling my team mate turned to me and asked me how much money we had raised. She got out her phone and did a quick calculation. She then turned to me and said “You know we have potentially saved 93 lives, let’s finish what we started.” I burst into tears when I realized I had walked 28 kms – only 2 to go and now because I decided not to quit – a lot of people would have access to help in their time of crisis.
Sometimes we just need a cheer squad or one person who continually reminds us that we are so much more capable than we believe about ourselves. Or someone we can talk to, who will help us to navigate the tough stuff.
Find that person.
Captivating Freedom 