We are midway through April 2025. Does anybody else think this year is going exceptionally quick?

I’m struggling to fit everything in to it, important stuff like contacting family, doing DIY jobs on the house, thinking of my own fitness. This blog post is about me recognising where my priorities lie and being proactive in doing something about it.

This week I’ve tried to really focus on doing more stuff around Home and family. And balancing this long days on building the charity.

Our Charity is going really well – this week we have brought on four new trustees, we’ve interviewed new area and Regional coordinators and of the last fortnight we have done over 20 face-to-face events across the whole UK. We’ve written funding applications and we are planning our 5 to 10 year strategy. But with all the positivity comes a sense of sadness losing Leanne from the board of trustees, she has been a very consistent rudder steering the ship through choppy waters, a real stabilising influence and will be greatly missed both professionally and as a friend, though I know she will still be with us whenever we need help.

But in all of this admin stuff what’s more important are the stories from people we are supporting. Our work is very long-term and if we do it right people won’t hear about the impact because we’re preventing something catastrophic. How do we measure what are doing this? How do we prove we’re making a difference?

Let’s look at this differently, if we get our approach wrong it could lead to somebody ending their life and this then has a tsunami effect on average on over 120 people – the impact of a single suicide is devastating. So hearing stories of people we have supported are a tangible way of showing the impact we are having. 

Just under a year ago we started working with a family whose wife and daughter came to us at an event (Ride4Life) because dad/husband was too poorly to talk. He couldn’t even turn up at the event to talk to us. We started to hatch a plan with mum and daughter and that was to get dad to another event a few weeks later. This was Motorcycle Live. I remember sitting with the whole family in our welfare van at a very busy show and they just talked openly and honestly about Dad’s situation, he remained very quiet and to a certain degree embarrassed, sat there broken and hurting. When we asked Dad/husband  what was going on? for the first time he properly talked about how he felt and how poor mental health was affecting him. I think it surprised Mum and daughter because they weren’t expecting it to flood out in this way, but it did and we then knew what we was dealing with.

For over an hour our team sat in the welfare van and we created an action plan of support which would run over the next few months. This involved an eight week mindfulness course that we paid for, it also involved our peer support group and getting him talking on there with others. It also involved Mum and daughter checking in and being open up with him. This was a proper premiership team effort.

With this level of support he didn’t have a great deal of reason not to engage. The good news was he did the mindfulness training and he found it very useful, he worked with mum and daughter and he used the Support around him. Months on he is a different person and he has a lot to thank the people around him for, he wrote a series of beautiful messages talking about how important this support was. He’s now very open and says that things weren’t looking good for him 12 months ago and that he potentially might not have been with us without the support. 

When you are depressed and feeling at rock bottom, experiencing poor Mental Health and all the challenges this throws at you, you don’t  recognise the pain you cause the loved ones around you (I am talking from personal experience here). Like the person we supported I have been in this place, but through the love of friends and family I’ve gotten through it (for now – it never goes away). 

The person we supported is back, present as a friend as a father as a husband. And this was due to lots of people working together as a team to fight his poor Mental Health. I cannot stress how important this Charity has been to so many. This is what we do and this is what we do well. 

I am very proud of the team that made this happen but this is just one story of many. One story of how an unfunded grassroots charity is making a difference. We need your support and we need your belief that everybody is important and poor mental health sometimes leads to poor judgement calls and bad decisions. Try to get underneath this, don’t be judgmental- recognise poor mental health doesn’t always bring out the nice side of a person and help us break the stigma around talking about it, then we can help fix a few other families so that they can move forward and be more productive around their own family friends, neighbours and colleagues. 

I suppose the point in sharing this is it helped me understand my own poor mental health and what I need to do to fix myself. I’m walking more, I’m engaging with the beautiful nature around me which I really enjoy, I’m choosing to spend time with people I like and not those that are toxic, I’m switching the news and social media off and try not to become angry by world situations that I cannot change. I’m thankful for each day that I have where I’m not suffering. I’m also trying to be a better father, husband, son and friend. Life is hard and it is flying by. Finding the balance can be challenging.

All I would say is enjoy the moment don’t take life for granted and don’t waste the opportunity you have to make a difference to others. I have found i am much happier doing this than I ever have been searching for financial wealth and status and power. 

Seize the moment and be the change maker. Be the person who makes a difference to yourself and others around you. With the right team we can change things.

Xxx