Madelyn Daphney: Mental Health Advocate & Writer
My mom had been urging me for quite some time to find a place to submit my writing. I finally listened to her, and after finding their website on Facebook, submitted my first story to The Mighty. It was a story about how my bipolar disorder makes my head feel like a balloon, and it was published on The Mighty soon after I submitted it.
The Mighty is an online community of support for those who suffer from mental and chronic illness and disabilities of all sorts.
It was May of 2016 when I started submitting stories to The Mighty. I wrote about anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and postpartum depression. Since I began submitting stories, I have had 72 published, and I continue to write and submit stories on a weekly basis.
I advocate for mental health in my stories by addressing the stigma of mental illness and how it affects me and other sufferers like me.
I advocate for mental health through sharing my story in its many parts. Doing so helps people better understand mental illness, and encourages other people who suffer to share their stories and end their silence, too.
Sharing my story is important in ending the stigma because people who take part in stigmatizing those with mental illness can read and see that I am not my illness. I am a person, and my mental disorders are merely a part of me. Sharing my story is even more important to stop the description of 'crazy' from being used to define people who suffer from mental illness. We are not crazy. We suffer from mental disorders, but we are not crazy.
I am strong, determined, and confident when I share my story and do my part to end the stigma that surrounds mental illness. I will continue to write for The Mighty, as well as other mental health websites and magazines.
I have contributed two stories so far to #SickNotWeak, an online mental health community whose mission is to prove that no one who suffers is alone. My stories so far have been about bipolar disorder and postpartum depression, and I will continue to write and submit to them, as well.
As of the end of July, I am a weekly columnist for The Painted Brain News, the newspaper for The Painted Brain, a community of mental health activists that use all forms of art to change the way the world sees mental illness. I've had three columns published so far, and will continue to write about mental illness for The Painted Brain in attempt to change the conversation about mental illness in our world.
I don't only write to advocate for mental health. I write as my own personal form of therapy. Writing about my experiences with mental illness allows me to expel any negativity from my mind and turn it into a piece that others can relate too, and pull support from. Knowing that I am helping other sufferers is also therapeutic because when I do this, I feel a great sense of self satisfaction from helping other people.
Writing and advocating for mental health are my passions. First, though, I am a mother, and my daughter will always come before my passions. Thankfully, she allows me time to write by playing independently and occupying herself for a few hours throughout each day.
I have free time to write, to advocate on social media, and to hand write letters for a charity I volunteer for, called Letters Against Depression.
My dream as a writer and advocate for mental health is to someday publish my story with the goal of offering a hardback piece of support, encouragement, and hope to those who suffer from mental illness. To make this dream come true, I am writing every day, supporting as many people as I can, and am preparing to compile my stories into a book that I hope will be published someday.
I'm a mother, writer, mental health advocate, and dreamer. I am Madelyn Heslet.
