Running the London marathon

[p]As a mother of four boys and someone who has experienced post natal depression.I ask you to give what you can afford to Mind. Depression literally crippled me silently creeping into my thought process throughout my first pregnancy and beyond . It took away any magic and wonder and let me down a toxic path of self destruction. From the outside I appeared a woman with everything to be grateful for, yet ,on the inside I was screaming underwater for answers to questions I couldn’t articulate. I felt dumbfounded and mentally I was a prisoner on a merry go round of negative thinking and feelings of dread and failure. Much like an imminent tragedy waiting to happen, the feeling of waiting for the axe to fall came in waves through my whole body as my brain slowly cancelled out any positive emotion as it scanned for nightmareish scenarios without my permission.[/p][p]I have no idea why it hit me. There is no trauma in my life to pinpoint ,maybe its genetic ,maybe its hormonal, maybe both, but what I do know is ,my brain and my thought process were not mine to command anymore and it nearly cost me my life. We need answers.We need more research. We need more support and we need less stigma to this condition. One day hopefully we will be able to have some sort of scan and actually see and look at the physical image of depression, maybe then can we fully and truly understand that the enemy is the mental illness and not the sufferer.[/p][p]I’m honestly dreading this marathon but I’d rather run ten marathons back to back than suffer one hour of the debilitating feeling I experienced in the dark depths of depression ..... [/p][p][br][/p][p][br][/p][p][br][/p]