The government needs to stress the importance of diet to the nation’s mental health and recommend we all eat more oily fish: My mother’s belief that fish is good for the brain turns out to have been absolutely right. Rachel's wonderful book offers a carefully curated and wisely annotated selection of poems designed to offer support and solace during the more heart-stopping, heartbreaking, exhilarating, joyful, and unpredictable times of our life.' You’ll Never Walk Alone: Poems for life’s ups and downs is a collection of the kind of inspirational texts – mainly poems – that can accompany us, whatever we are feeling, from sorrow to delight. The poems are organised according to the season in which they ‘belong’: we all have seasons of our minds, be they wintery and dark, or more spring-like and hopeful. Sometimes I feel like freedom is near Sometimes I feel like freedom is here Sometimes I feel like freedom is so near But we’re so far from home.

This idea is developed in the second verse, in which the writer longs to fly ‘closer to my home’. Repetition adds to the plaintive feel of this cry from the heart. The third verse suggests quite how tough the experience is of being motherless: it is ‘hard’; ‘such a hard time’; and ‘such a really hard time’. In the last verse, that word ‘Sometimes’ again suggests the possibility of hope. No. At the height of my depressive episodes, I only thought about myself. I was utterly preoccupied with how unwell I felt – I was in screaming agony, in a fetal curl in bed, holding onto my husband or mother or a nurse or whoever was nearby… it felt as if I was falling into a bottomless pit of darkness and if I didn’t hold on, I would die. Another analogy – it felt as if I was on a plane which was going to crash… as if an emergency landing had been announced and I was hanging on for dear life. The feelings were terrifying and continuous. My heart raced; I felt nauseous; and my thoughts were darker and darker and darker … it felt as if taking my own life would be a relief. It all sounds dramatic, and it was… so no, at that point I didn’t think of others at all. Only when I began to get better did I want to share my experience and the reality of severe mental illness, how it could happen to anyone, and why charities like SANE are lifesavers to those who were desperate like me. Probably fish. I know it’s expensive, and it’s best to choose sustainably sourced fish, but fish contain omega 3s or ‘healthy fats’, which are crucial to support good brain health. Many of us don’t eat nearly enough fish… which means we are deficient in omega 3s, but also in Vitamins A, D & K and essential minerals such as iron, zinc, and iodine. We've loved dipping in and out of You'll Never Walk Alone: A poem book for all life's ups and downs by bestselling author, Rachel Kelly. Really inspiring - it's like a hug in book form. If you're looking for thoughtful mother's day gifts, you won't get much better than this. * UK Mums *This book will show you how to bring poetry into your everyday emotional reality, where it can be a new tool for wellbeing. And one that means you'll never walk alone. Nothing compares with the experience of enslaved people. But all of us can feel motherless at times, even if we are blessed with the most loving of mothers. In my darkest hour, when I suffered severe depression, my mother could not comfort me – she who had hitherto been able to soothe any pain. There is, it turns out, a limit to a mother’s ability to succour her child. From Rachel Kelly’s heartfelt introduction advocating the power of poetry You’ll Never Walk Alone is an inclusive, supportive and effective book that makes the reader feel as if they are understood and given succour. The use of the pronouns I and you has the effect of Rachel Kelly speaking directly to the reader and to them alone as a friend might. I loved this feeling of a friend in a time of need. In this lovely book there are poems that allow us to enjoy a full range of emotions, from wintery and dark verses to poems that are more spring-like and hopeful. Even if you haven’t looked at a poem or written a creative word since school, it’s never too late to explore the moving power of poetry. According to Rachel, ‘It’s all about finding the right poem, to which you feel connected’. Rachel Kelly runs poetry workshops and is also an official ambassador for mental health charities Rethink Mental Illness, SANE, The Counselling Foundation and Head Talks.

It was something my own mother recognised: it was she who gave me this poem. Now a mother myself, I too sometimes feel powerless in the face of the suffering of my own children, or indeed my own feelings of abandonment. This spiritual allows me to accept my own limitations, just as it may have helped my mother to accept hers. As if in the middle of an intimate conversation between the poet and reader, the poem begins with what seems strange advice. Oliver urges us to unlearn one of the first lessons we are taught – to be good. In fact, we do not have to be good to be loved. Instead, all we need to do is reconnect with our essential loving, animal nature. All we must do is to ‘let’ this happen. My enormous thanks to Bei Guo at Midas for sending me a copy of You’ll Never Walk Alone by Rachel Kelly. I didn’t realise it was a signed and dedicated copy until I began reading so I was thrilled. Ironically, You’ll Never Walk Alone arrived just at a point when I really needed a boost and I’m delighted to share my review today. Jul 2023 Rachel Kelly: Navigating mental health, the NHS crisis and the power of poetry in “You’ll Never Walk Alone”As an advocate for the healing powers of poetry, her new book You’ll Never Walk Alone is an attempt to convey her enthusiasm and passion for the written word. It is a collection of “poems for life’s ups and downs” that will show you how to bring poetry into your everyday emotional reality, where it can be a new tool for wellbeing. Her hope is that poems can become part of everyone’s emotional life too, even if you don’t think poetry is ‘your thing’. Rachel is also a well-known media commentator and former Times journalist as well as an official ambassador for mental health charities Rethink Mental Illness, SANE, The Counselling Foundation and Head Talks. On to the book itself; this is a book of poems that have been put together by Rachel Kelly, who is a Sunday Times bestselling author. Rachel Kelly is a writer and a mental health campaigner and ‘an advocate for the therapeutic power of poetry’. She has published several other books and is an ambassador for several mental health and wellbeing related charities. She introduces the book and includes some detail around how poetry has helped her psychological wellbeing and has a healing power. In sharing the poems and arranging them by season she hopes to help other’s wellbeing and also to highlight that it’s perfectly acceptable to have a variety of different feelings, including both highs and lows, both of which are equally valid. a b Pearson, Allison (22 June 2014). "Rachel Kelly: 'I tried to be perfect. Then I dropped all the plates' ". Telegraph – via www.telegraph.co.uk. Government here must play a role in helping the disadvantaged, sitting at home on their own. We desperately need more psychiatric beds and more NHS funding for these serious cases.

This new understanding naturally leads to different answers to the psychological problems. We need a two-pronged approach, and neither answer is about supplying more medical help or more demands on the NHS. The first applies to all of us; the second is more targeted. Writing is about connection. Therapy can be wonderful but at 3am it is unlikely to be available. Words can be our companion at any time of the day or night. Which is why I called the book ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone. That’s not to say that You’ll Never Walk Alone is a glib panacea for depression or sadness. Some of the entries are despairing and negative, affording the reader the opportunity to realise all emotions are valid and acceptable – it’s what we do with those emotions that counts.A lovely collection of inspirational poetry, designed to help you through every occasion, on good days and bad... insightful. -- HELLO You have overcome great challenges in your life and use those to help and inspire others which is wonderful. How do you manage your mental health with such a busy life? When you were at your lowest, did you ever envisage a way out and that today, as now a keynote speaker, bestselling writer and mental health advocate, you are sharing your experiences to help others and encourage debate about mental ill-health? Some of the poems are from well known poets such as Keats, Wordsworth and Cummings, well known names such as Abraham Lincoln and Emily Brontë and others are from less well known ones (although my knowledge of famous poets stopped accumulating upon leaving education!) Their biographies are in a section towards the end of the book. This book will show you how to bring poetry into your everyday emotional reality, where it can be a new tool for wellbeing. And one that means you’ll never walk alone.

For National Poetry Day (6 October), Rachel shares two poems featured in You’ll Never Walk Alone that she uses to help her own mental health. Motherless children have a hard time Motherless children have such a hard time Motherless children have such a really hard time Are we going to have to radically reappraise how we approach mental wellbeing more broadly, given that the level of demand raises the possibility of the NHS never being able to solve the growing mental health crisis? Rachel Kelly is a bestselling author, mental health campaigner and Ambassador for SANE. Poetry has played a huge role throughout her life and was an integral part of her recovery with depression. Probably therefore, the most important change in the last 100 years that is causing the current epidemic of mental ill health, is the overall deterioration in our diet, of which low fish consumption is one example.

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Obviously, if you hate poetry this book probably isn’t going to be right for you, but if you either already like poetry or are even slightly undecided about it, then this is a gentle introduction to poems grouped together to link to specific moods, so you already know which section to go to if reading them for wellbeing reasons. It isn’t a book I’d have thought to have bought for myself but is one I’d recommend as a gift for someone, maybe for Mother’s Day as that is coming up or as an alternative Easter present. As I mentioned at the start of my review, I found the actual book aesthetically pleasing, so it would likely go down well to unwrap from pinky purple wrapping paper as an eye catching gift.