My own personal struggles and why I wanted to start Wandering Moments

The idea of creating a mental health charity, a mental health charity for men specifically has been in the back of my mind for a number of years. Dating back to when I believed that I was at rock bottom and was searching for support myself. What I found in my search was that there was so much opportunity for women; for men however, services and support were restricted. In addition, what I also found was that the structure and set up of these services were not truly beneficial to men and the typical male 'mindset'.

Men and women naturally have different mindsets and approaches when it comes to mental health. Women's services promote talking and are structured that way, each women will have a list of people that they can call to talk to and get what is bothering them off their chest, to cry to, to rant to. This is not to say that it is easier for women to deal with mental health issues and it is not as big of a burden, just that opportunities for women are more available. One day I believe that this will be the case with men, but for now, this is definitely not the way men deal with things. The way society has been for a long time and the view of what a 'man' is, fights against this ideal. Men are not allowed to admit that we are struggling, that we are upset, that we are vulnerable. The only acceptable emotion for a man is anger, we aren't allowed to cry because crying is showing 'weakness'. Or at least that's what we are programmed to believe... Men are trained to be silent. The following are a number of phrases said to a young boy growing up. 'big boys don't cry', 'man up', 'take it like a man', 'be a man about it'. These phrases literally train those young boys, those young men to be quiet about their struggles, but also that men are not allowed to struggle, to show emotions that portray that we are upset. This is why men suffer in silence, because we think that we are inadequate if we admit to this.

This was my issue... I hit rock bottom, or what I believed to be rock bottom when I was 25. I couldn't see a way out of the hole that I had found myself in, the pain, the misery that I was going through every single day. I needed help but I felt that I weren't allowed to admit this to anyone because then I would no longer be a man, I'd be weak. Instead I shut myself away, I started to sabotage friendships because in my mind I felt that they would be better off without me. I'd always been the person in my friendship groups to give advice to others, that people came to because I would protect them, help them get through their own struggles. How could I continue to do this if I could no longer protect myself? They didn't need another issue in their life which is what I viewed myself as (which was definitely not the case).

Eventually it all come pouring out. I went in to work and was making my morning coffee before going to finalise my plan to teach for the day and I just started to cry, in a room full of people, they could all see my 'weakness'. The trauma that i pushed deep down and suppressed through the avoidance of dealing with these emotions, because that's not what men do, came flooding out to the surface. The grief of losing my Dad finally came out, after 15 years. I ended up being diagnosed with depression and anxiety, put on medication and going to counselling sessions. I had never felt less 'manly' in all my life, my self esteem and confidence, although they had never been significantly high in the first place, plummeted. Through going to counselling and admitting to myself that its okay to struggle as a man and realising, that in reality, every man has their struggles, I was able to come out of this. I still have my moments where I struggle and days where I feel really low, but now I accept that this is normal and its okay to feel like this; I will get through it.

Shortly after this, I got a job in the Mental Health sector for a Social Links team which supported people who were dealing with mental health issues to get back in to social environments and build their confidence in this. When I worked in this mental health department it confirmed what I thought when I was looking for support; the opportunities for men to get support are very few compared to the opportunities for women. This is where the idea was born, at this moment in time I didn't know what opportunity I was going to create but I know I wanted to offer something that would give the support that I didn't receive when I needed it. Once I began working in the outdoors it all became clear, I wanted to offer people the opportunity to get in to nature, to escape from their issues for a day or two and work on coping strategies with them amongst these couple of days. The idea of Wandering Moments was born.

Through conversations with Harry and Jamie and us all realising that we had even more common ground than our interest in the outdoors, in sports and our sense of humours; we had all suffered with mental health in one way or another. We had all wished that we had support but struggled to find it, so we decided we would put our minds together and create a support system and a safe environment for men dealing with mental health issues.

Through Wandering Moments I want to fight against the programming of what a 'man' is, to fight against this feeling of inadequacy and make men realise that they are much stronger than they realise, that they are adequate. I want to highlight that being a man isn't someone who can lift the most in a gym, beat someone in an arm wrestle or intimidate someone else in to submission. A man is someone who can admit they are wrong, someone who can admit that they need help but also someone who can ask for that help when they need it.

Lets train men to speak rather than to be silent, let's change the statistics.