Growing up, I remember going into a hospital a lot however had no understanding of why I was there. As I got older, I started to understand mental health more and that it impacts everyone differently.
Through my late teens and early 20’s, I became a support person for someone suffering and struggling with their own mental health, this was confronting, confusing and scary. I felt emotions that I did not understand and had to provide continuous support to someone I could not help. I wanted to fix things which left me feeling incapable, angry, disappointed, and sometimes embarrassed. Throughout this time, I did not know who to lean on for my own support or if there were any services out there for me as the “support person” to discuss my own feelings.
This is how we came up with the idea for “You Matter Too”. Mum and I shared similar emotions and experiences when it came to the lack of access to support for the support person and we felt like we could not be the only ones lost in this space. We researched many times to try and find something that felt like it resonated with but we could not find what we were looking for.
The idea of walking to raise awareness originated because walking became an outlet for us to clear our minds and talk about life outside of our support roles.
The walk is going to be long and challenging but we have built up so much resilience throughout our journey and we believe that it will help get us over the finish line. It will also be rewarding to bring people together that are feeling the same way as us and start a conversation around how they can get help and services they need, that we felt like we did not have for a long time. It will be about appreciating all the “support” people we have in our lives and for a moment focus on them and making sure they are ok as well.
You can sign up to join Tammy and her Mum on their walk and donate to the cause HERE
This story was written by Tammy Vos and put together by the TradeMutt team.
