Tonya
I struggled with my symptoms for months and months. Being a high achiever, just like my colleagues, my deteriorating health was very hard for me to face. It was devastating. It was just so difficult for me to say, ‘Hey, I can’t do this anymore,’ so I continued to press on believing that I would be fine. I also didn’t realise just how ill I was, and didn’t want to feel like a failure. So I just kept pushing ahead. Not surprisingly, without any treatment, things at work fell apart and so did my relationship.
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There’s an incredible stigma created around mental illness and it makes it very difficult to work, difficult to date and difficult to live. I am a mature, intelligent, educated, professional woman, but facing the challenge of mental illness is hard in a society where people just don’t understand. Despite this I’m doing well.
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The road to recovery has been really difficult for me because of the enormous losses I’ve had to endure. For a long time I was very depressed and seriously contemplating ending it all. I got to the point of doing research on the internet to establish whether the medication I was taking would kill me if I took enough of it. I didn’t really want to die. It was just that the circumstances were so terrible and hard to face. But by doing that research, I started finding other things to read. I found accounts that were uplifting and encouraging from other people with mental illness. This gave me something precious beyond price. Hope.
Sonya Melbourne
A current member of the Australian Society of Authors and SCBWI, Sonya is a serious and committed author, who treats writing as a business as well as a passion.
Media
Her mother’s comment that her life was ‘filled with joy’ was what inspired author Sonya Melbourne to write a book about a lifelong struggle her mother has fought with mental illness.
Inspired Recovery will be a compilation of true stories from those diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, who have achieved happiness and success in their lives. In short, Inspired is about the triumph of the human spirit.
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