Blast From the Past

Found emails between Janie Greville and Dr. John King, Consultant Psychiatrist (now retired) from September 2008:-

RE: ‏
From: Janie Greville (janiegreville@hotmail.com)

Sent: 17 September 2008 01:25:42
To: King, John (Psychiatry) (john.king@worcsmhp.nhs.uk)
Hi John,
Thanks for your email.
Re my essay - frankly I almost never feel that way every day these days! However, I felt that way every day from leaving hospital last autumn until well into April this year and between November 2000 and August 2003 I felt like that - at the worst suicidal thoughts pacing and smoking state - pretty much 24-7 apart from a brief respite that I believe I spent in hospital at your suggestion in 2002. And I was struggling on and off with the medium level (the doing nothing waiting for godot/coffin) until really quite recently.

But you see the fact that I'm emerging from that is less the point than the huge importance of being absolutely blunt about just how bad it is hidden from society with a 'madness' label hung around your neck invisibly but as surely as a slave's burned stamp. I want those who are hidden thinking they're alone and freakish to find they're not alone and that there is hope. The very fact that I can write about it is evidence that I'm moved or rapidly moving past it. My articulacy is the gift I have to give to those without a voice and I feel honour bound to use it.

But to reassure you - I feel far from despairing. On the contrary, I don't remember the last time I felt so genuinely well. As in my adrenalin system not raging in my body in either depression and anxiety or raging hypomania. My sister's been up for a couple of days and has been saying the same - she reckons I'm 'janie' again as the person she knew as we were growing up - that's a pretty good feeling - frankly I feel much much happier than I did as a child, since all in all I've worked through a lot of issues and let a lot of hurt and stuff go over the years I've been sitting at home - I couldn't afford the psychotherapy so I read a few books and I seem to have done a fair amount for myself.

Meaning that now I'm much freed up for more purposeful work. I've written about 10,000 words over the last week and most of it will be usable. I've got a few projects on the go in a small way, with the writing, and I imagine that by just plodding on this way I will probably have achieved a reasonable amount by the end of the year - or by this time next year anyway.

The reference you mention - it's to the CEIMH at Birmingham University. I attend their Suresearch general meetings (Service User Research and Education) and their writing group meetings, and I've just signed up for a 'train the trainers' course there that begins in November, just one day a week. It's been great - for the first couple of times I went I felt a bit awkward and shy but I rapidly noticed what a positive reception I was getting from a few individuals for comments I contributed or etc., and it's enabled me to remember and draw on my confidence from so long ago it's untrue, and being 25 years older now than then - I'm more, not less, confident than once I was. Also, however, wiser, so I've learned to keep quiet as well which is all to the good.

Hard to know where to get the essay published. It'd make a good two parter in a major newspaper, maybe a sunday edition - or a three parter - perhaps I need to build in a note of hope in a final section. To get it into such an organ however I'll need to put my brain to the matter of how to network myself into a position to get taken seriously. This maybe where my 1990's journalism hobby with the Birmingham Post ultimately comes into it's own. I'm feeling it may be the right time to apply for a whats-its-name journalist card-passport!

Well, yet again I write 25 or 50 words to your 1 - twas ever thus I believe, no worries, twas ever thus with everyone I write to. I love to write more than I love to speak, and as we all know, that's quite a claim for me to make!

Over and out, see you on the 30th September I think it is,

Janie



________________________________________

From: John.King@worcsmhp.nhs.uk
To: janiegreville@hotmail.com
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:51:30 +0100
Subject: RE: RE:

Janie-
Thanks for your news and for sending the essay. It makes a poignant read and indeed seems very despairing and I hope you don’t feel this way every day. However it is a vivid account and it will be interesting to see what responses you get. Who will be the readership exactly?
There was one or two things you didn’t expand on, for example

Sometimes I leave the house and arrive at a place where I am welcomed and invited wordlessly to bring up something of the healthy and positive and creative dimensions of my being – it is as a rainbow on an otherwise overcast universe

I wonddred what that place is (not Orchard Place??!!)

I am sorry not to have emailed you at greater length, but yours makes up for it to some extent. Were you to actually achieve some recognition your creative activities, I daresay you would find the criticisms of not doing housework etc would be magically silenced – I don’t suppose that well known authors get taken to task for not performing housework

By the way I saw Dr Dow today at a meeting, who mentioned you to me – I believe he is well disposed towards you and will try to help as best he can.

I am still developing some ideas but am rather swamped also by routine matters, however I will look forward to talking to you at greater length when you come up

All the best for now

John King