YOU ARE- Breaking Free of the Stigma

YOU ARE

Dedicated to YOU


INTRODUCTION

In all honesty, if someone were to ask me "What do you do?" just a short time ago, I would have answered with a half arsed, slightly uneasy, "Oh I'm a barista... and I draw and paint portraits and things for people sometimes..."

Now this is hardly what you call being confident in yourself to pursue your dreams. I have worked in coffee for about six years now since the very beginning when I luckily was notified of a casual position at a pretty trendy little Coffee Roastery that just happened to be walking distance from my modest family home in Yandina, Queensland. Yes I can call myself a barista, It is essentially what I do for a day job and I am proud of what I have achieved in the industry, It gives me peace of mind and somewhat of a safety net in tough times; but a 'barista' isn't what I imagined calling myself in the larger scheme of things. I have been dabbling in writing for a couple of years but because of a recent bout of anxiety returning, (bout haha more like a full forced invasion!) I have decided to get right into it and finish what I started.
This project was aimed to be very raw, quirky and personal, I hope to shine some light on the stigma mental health and give readers something they can really actually relate to! I'm not here to rant about cures, I am here to give my personal insight into my own journey, how not only mentally but PHYSICALLY taxing a mental illness can be, to connect people through real, raw experience, sometimes funny, sometimes terrible; it's about us all learning to take our own advice, and be present with others. This will be me, opening up to you in a real and almost playful way. YES it is terrifying to say the least, do I want everyone to know these things about myself? Well yeah of course I do! I want to help people and I feel there is such a lack of communication and connection and this is why I am happy to share with you, part of my soul.

I would like to guide you through a vast compilation of personal thoughts and experiences with the hopes to put a little sunshine in someone's darkest days including my own; to allow you to acknowledge your strong points, your weaknesses, your creativity, who you really are as a person and to give you the confidence to give your peers a more self-assured answer to who you pride yourself in being. We often seek advice and comfort through reaching out to others in times of need. And more often than we would like, so many of us struggle to reach out or express our emotions in any way at all; no thanks to society's norms and regulations and the ongoing fears being pumped into people by the 'big guys.' These are times when we may feel that we don't have a way out or a solution. We feel stuck or in limbo, dancing with our thoughts in a game of tug of war. While reaching out to others is effective and important, little do we realize that our own advice is equally as impacting for ironing out the bumps and creases of an unsettling run of emotions. But how often do you give advice to a friend and weeks later find yourself in a similar situation not knowing what to do or how to feel? We can all agree that it is hard to take our own advice at the best of times. What I have found is that this all comes with getting to know 'you' on a different, more in depth level, in other words tuning in to the complexity of your own clockworks of emotion, intuition and natural flow. Get to know your hidden strengths and weaknesses. What works for you as an individual? What makes you tick and what keeps you balanced in the chaos of being human?

MY STORY

'YOU ARE' being my first published book and first thing I have really ever written, has been a refreshing turn of artistic expression for me over the past months, and a way to put some of my own advice onto paper. When you can read your own thoughts it can be a big wakeup call! I have learned that we are all very capable of having a deeper understanding of ourselves. This book for me is a way to look back and take that advice that has been hidden in the ever changing catacombs of a somewhat insane, oddly beautiful, wild and unconventional mind and put it into action.

"A Book, in my eyes, is for spilling your imagination into the physical world creating a billowing stream of magic that opens your mind to a new reality that no-one knew existed...