The Power of Community.

I originally drafted this a couple of months ago, when asked by Manchester MIND as a regular volunteer at its mental health allotment project, to write something to help promote the importance of the charity’s work and its Nature for Health project. 

Now several weeks on, myself and the other community members are still adjusting after receiving the news that sadly the project would end due to a lack of funding. We’ve begun the difficult process of accepting change and starting to contemplate next steps. While we, and I personally, continue to reflect on this news and think of new ways forward, it has given me cause for a moment of pause – and to consider a new phase in my life, keeping in my mind the value of peer support that this project has helped foster in me. 

Though our presence at the allotment is no more, our community remains alive through regular meet-ups and nature walks. We keep the memory of this very special place in our hearts. 

*** 

It’s one of life’s great truths that things can seem much worse than they are when you’re in the middle of them. With the benefit of hindsight, muddy waters can become clearer. And so it has been with my mental health journey, and my relationship with the Manchester MIND community. 

In early 2020, amidst the darkest of clouds which had gathered around me in recent months, after reaching breaking point in terms of my mental health, I’d been forced to leave my job and looked around at the fragments of my life with an inability to recognise anything positive, or see any way forward. 

Some time later, I reacted with scepticism when my social prescribing nurse described a local allotment run by the nearby branch of MIND, catering for those struggling with their mental health. 

The rainy, obscured view I saw from my living room window one Wednesday morning that summer matched perfectly my internal environment. Reluctantly, I set aside my brain’s reservations about stepping out of my carefully crafted comfort zone and made the short journey to the allotment. 

On the edges of my town, set back from a housing estate, I was met at the gates of the enclosure by Manchester MIND’s Nature for Health project facilitator Carolyn. Amid the busy activity of members of the community, she warmly and kindly introduced me to the space. Kindness: it was a word that had been noticeably absent from my internal monologue for some time, and three years on from that first visit, it’s still the word I most associate with the setting. 

On that fairly gloomy Manchester day, as I began to learn more about the project, I looked around at the people milling about and felt certain that I could never be ‘normal’ enough to belong there. Now, I know through my own reality that I was wrong. 

In the coming months as a regular patron of the allotment, I would veer between days where I was incapable of leaving my home to make the trip, others where I made the journey but became overwhelmed and found myself in tears amid the soil and leaves, still others when the sun would shine both literally and metaphorically and I’d find myself content and at home among the flora and fauna – and my peers. 

On my more challenging days, the gentle guidance of my fellow gardeners kept me grounded and gave me clarity. On one such day, Carolyn engaged me in a mindfulness exercise in which she urged me to simply listen to the sound of the chirping birds, the buzz of the bees, and the soft tones of nature around me, a grounding exercise which took my attention away from my mind – and back to myself. ‘Just keep going,’ one veteran volunteer who’d previously shared his own inspiring story of challenge, and having come out the other side, said to me on a similar day. It was a simple message, but one which for some reason struck a chord on that particular day, and planted in me the seedlings of hope for an alternative future. 

In the crowded mental health space, mantras and platitudes are plentiful. Some resonate. One which I saw often while endlessly scrolling social media during difficult moments is that recovery from a mental health condition is not linear. 

After attending sessions as a service user for a while, I was invited to become a volunteer, still attending weekly and helping with whatever was needed. Whether it was sowing seeds, making colourful signs to decorate the plot, or simply sitting in the quiet haven of the space and having a cup of tea with my peers, the regularity of my Mondays at the allotment – and knowing I was contributing to something bigger – served as a much-needed anchor for me during the peaks and troughs of my recovery. I developed relationships with other volunteers as we toiled together come rain or shine, took home produce we’d helped grow, and enjoyed harvest events where we shared food and drink, songs, poetry – and our stories. 

As I navigated the oft unwieldly beast of my inner demons, adjusted to life changes, and processed new diagnoses, the consistent presence of Manchester MIND kept me centred. While facing the detrimental, degenerative impact of perimenopause symptoms on my health and wellbeing, I found support and solace in the community, through its Mindfulness and Relaxation for Menopause course. When I rode the waves of emotional dysregulation, the MIND website provided games, advice, and other resources to distract me from my distress. 

I joined other community members for mindful walks around local beauty spots, to watch thought-provoking films, and to visit inspiring exhibitions. Under the blue sky and sunshine, I rattled collection tins as part of the team at the Heaton Park Food and Drink Festival. And while in my most vulnerable state, as I navigated the unforgiving world of the Personal Independence Payment application system, the advice team proved a vital source of knowledge and support in ultimately securing the financial aid I needed to manage my mental health and ADHD. 

In a landscape of increasingly hostile and ill-informed narratives around mental health, disability, and neurodiversity – in many cases coming directly from those who’ve been elected to represent us – MIND’s staunch campaigning against the demonisation of the vulnerable and myth-busting around conditions like depression and anxiety, helped me fight feelings of worthlessness around my conditions and need for financial support from the state, and made me resolute in the face of ignorance and gaslighting. 

It would be naïve of me to say that, even several years on, and with the help of the Manchester MIND community, my family and friends, therapist, and medication, I am cured. I know now that I will always live with my mental health challenges and my neurodivergence. But I can say with absolute certainty that I’m now in a far more stable place – and, thanks to the community which welcomed me – one in which I have hope. 

To quote one of my favourite films, ‘hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.’