The smallest noises are the ones worth making.

HELLO EVERYONE!! I am back!! FILLING YOUR EARS WITH THE beautiful SOUND OF MY VOICE.

So quite frankly, I am being lazy this week. I have let someone else do my job for me. However, I figured it is ok to sacrifice my own voice for the good of the whole. So, please do not get too down about it. I will be back soon.

Jessica, is a good friend of mine from Sweden, and an inspiration through her job to people all around her. I do not want to take much away from what she is going to say, but this week she is talking about vulnerability.

This topic is broad and our message to you is broad but the importance of this is one I can’t stress enough. The Noisy Movement will soon be moving on to talk about men’s mental health, especially in sport and to me the message of this post should be transferred to everything we are trying to make noise about.

Please, read this post… and help us in sharing this message. I promise next week we will try and make you laugh. Please remember to contact me at: anniemuggoch@icloud.com to help me spread the right messages.

HOTLINES

CALM - Campaign Against Living Miserably, for men aged 15-35.

Phone: 0800 58 58 58 (daily, 5pm to midnight)

Website: www.thecalmzone.net

Also please visit

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mental-health-helplines/

To reach other helplines which may be helpful for you or someone else.

Introducing... Jessica Lehmussaari

I am going to be honest with you. When I first started writing this blog post, I had a hard time figuring out how open I should be. I was lost in knowing how much I wanted to share with you - a bunch of people who I may or may not know. As I started writing I decided to not keep it too personal. After all, anyone has access to reading my story through this blog. But then it finally hit me that the whole point of this movement is to raise noise. To talk about the things we do not want to talk about. So here it is, a part of my story, that I want to share with you. It is not revolutionary in any way and it will not be the saddest thing you’ve read. But I’m hoping it might give a little light to those of you who are going through something hurtful right now.

Before we jump into that; here’s some quick background facts about me. My name is Jessica, I’m from Sweden, 22 years young, and besides studying I work as a public speaker. I mostly focus on inspiring youth to fulfill their own potential. But anyways, thank you Annie for letting me write this blog post and now: let’s get to it.

Recently I went through a hard time in my life. My grandmother passed away, I got my heart broken and at the same time people who I thought were my friends turned their back on me. I was very sad most of the time and on my worst days even getting out of bed was a struggle. Although I’ve been through life’s lows before - this time, it was different. It hit me deeper than I expected and I just couldn’t figure out why I was reacting the way I was. Usually when I go through pain, I fake a smile and handle it. But this time my body just shut off and all I could do was cry.

For the past years I have been working a lot on myself. When I was younger I saw all of my worth in the things I accomplished but I had a hard time loving myself for who I actually was. That, combined with my curiosity for developing my professional career, led me to leadership educations and different lectures on the topic. And during those years of self development, I realized one thing: I have always been afraid of breaking.

As a kid, breaking just wasn’t an option. Whenever things did not go my way I would respond with anger or just act as if I didn’t care. I’ve spent a lot of time on wondering where it comes from. Maybe some of it is from my mother who always told me to get up and stop crying after falling on the playground. A part of it might come from my dad who has a hard time communicating his feelings. Actually I don’t really know but a few years ago I realized I didn’t want to live my life like that because it had me missing out on so many things - love for example. Things that could hurt me.

So at one point I decided it was enough. I needed to deal with my fears in order to grow stronger within myself. Because if you do not have the strength to show your vulnerability, I swear to you, you are missing out on so many beautiful things in life.

If there is one thing I’ve learnt from life so far it is that you will meet people and experience things that will be shit. We all do but it is still up to you to choose how you handle it. And I’m not saying you should always know how to do it, or always have the capacity to do so, but you have to remember that it is a constant process.

I do realize when writing this that it might be an easy thing for me to say as a privileged woman born in one of the safest countries in the world. And even though what I say is not a universal truth - I do believe that many of you reading this might be privileged as me in one way or another, even though we do not always get to choose what cards we’ve been dealt. My point is just that if you have the power to shape your future, it is your responsibility to do so.

So, as I told you before I recently went through a really tough time and I was also so angry myself for feeling the way I did.

But now, looking back at it, I realized that for the first time - literally in my entire life - I allowed myself to break completely. The fact that I was bawling my eyes out for a week was not a sign of weakness. It was quite the opposite - a proof that working on myself has given me the strength to be open about how I feel. And it makes me happy that I can share it with you, without feeling ashamed or scared.

I think that is the key to self love - to share the good and bad parts not only with yourself but with your surroundings. I made no secret of the fact that I went through a hard time recently. The people in my life who I see as important in a way or another - people I love, people I work with, people I study with - they all got to hear that I was having a hard time functioning. And it wasn’t to invite them to a pity party where we could all sob together, the reason why I did it was because it was necessary. In the past I’ve been an expert on not letting other people in - as an example, I hid the fact that my mom was suffering from cancer to my previous colleagues because I did not want them to feel sorry for me. Some days I went to work with anxiety filling up every inch of my body - but I told no one. That made it even worse for me because on days like those I could’ve used a helping hand, even though I didn’t want to admit it to myself. But more importantly - not being able to let other people in took away deep relationships from me because I was too afraid of sharing my true story.

We all feel like shit sometimes. Is it really that big of a deal? If everyone experiences it I really don’t see the point in hiding it. So I’ve decided to be open. Not only because it sets me free, but in the hoping that it could inspire someone else to try it out. It’s not that I am an unhappy person or that I talk about my feelings with everyone all of the time, anyone who’s met me knows that I bring sunshine with me on most days. It’s just that I want to live my life to the fullest - meaning that I want to experience all of life’s emotions. And once I accepted that life is crappy at times and that I will wake up with anxiety some mornings, suddenly I felt this a different level of control. Our sad feelings are just as an important part of our lives as our happy feelings. So why do we sometimes feel the need to hide it?

I’ve come to realize that being vulnerable is fierce as fuck and there is nothing stronger than allowing yourself to feel it all. Being vulnerable is both a blessing and a curse. But I don’t think that’s anything to be afraid of.

I know all of you can relate to what I’m saying in one way or another because EVERYONE feels like this sometimes. Some of you will experience it way worse than I have, some less, but I hope your main take away from reading this is to raise your voice. It might be your own voice - saying that you need help to handle the darkness surrounding you. It might be somebody else’s voice, perhaps a friend’s, who needs help but is too afraid to ask for it themselves. It might be you asking a stranger if the person is alright. Mental health is a silent killer worth SCREAMING ABOUT, so it’s time to tell the perfect paintings that we portrait our lives as, to fuck off and start being real with each other.

So, break. Break as often as you have to. Break down to then break away from old habits, shit friends and people who treat you badly. Break down to discover new parts about you and to be able to wander off to new adventures. It’s okay to not be okay. The question you have to ask yourself is: Will you let the sad things in your life pile up and build an ever bigger mountain of yours, or will you be the one to start climbing it?

And let me tell you the best part about breaking. Once you’ve gone through all emotions there is only one feeling left:

happy.