Author: 'A Poetic Potter & A Potting Poet'

First published 24 October 2023

Forty-five years ago, I completed a degree in Ceramics. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago, though, that I started working with clay again.

The intervening years have been challenging, to say the least.

As a teenager with undiagnosed mental health difficulties including an eating disorder and depression, I struggled to get a foot hold on life and eventually came crashing down.

For the last thirty years I’ve largely been focused on getting back going again, pushing through, surviving.

A sense of well-being isn’t easy to establish or maintain when your mind and mood are volatile, like mine can be, always trying to pull me back to a pivotal point of trauma and grief that have been so hard to leave behind.

I do try to make the most of each day, and be thankful for what I’ve got – which is a lot – but when tiredness takes over from positive thinking, it can feel almost overwhelmingly bleak.

Sometimes it’s best to do nothing, rest into it and let it pass. I also find that, if I can get absorbed in making something with clay, I can start to come through the low mood to a brighter sense of self and life.

I have a table at home that I have set up with basic tools and materials, but I find it most uplifting when I go to a studio where I can spend a morning or an afternoon with others. We are all focused and industrious but there together, and it has a special kind of effect, which always leaves me feeling so much better at the end of a session than I felt when I got there.

It isn’t easy to pick up the pieces of your life and start again, but picking up a piece of clay is now a part of my ongoing journey of recovery and reclamation.

First published 3rd September 2023

One of the fellow potters that I meet up with occasionally at the #pottermanstudio used to be an art therapist.

She told me that she no longer works as an art therapist because there is no basis of evidence that art is therapeutic.

I’d come to the same conclusion myself, although am also now going to contradict myself because I do believe that art can be therapeutic. It just depends on a lot of other factors such as context, timing and the weight of influences going on in a person’s life and head at any one time.

When I was an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital back in the 90s, I went along to art classes in the hope of finding them helpful, but they made me feel much worse.

I had a degree in art and design, but in those classes I was only able to produce work that most 6-year-olds would be embarrassed about. At least, that was how I felt at the time.

Subsequently and periodically, I’ve gained some benefit from drawing – particularly life drawing – but I found more therapeutic benefit from smashing rocks with a sledgehammer when I worked as a volunteer on the Appalachian Trail (ATC). I’ve also found typing and other repetitive tasks – addressing and stuffing envelopes, for example – therapeutic, in different ways.

When I worked at a small publishing unit – part of the Longman publishing group – we used to send marketing mailshot work to the same psychiatric hospital that I stayed in myself a few years later. The stuffing of envelopes with marketing materials was deemed to be therapeutic for some of the patients, and, based on my own experience, I believe it probably was.

It isn’t just the stuffing of the envelopes – or whatever simple repetitive task it is that you are doing – it’s also the experience that you have while doing it. Stuffing envelopes alone is highly unlikely to be particularly therapeutic – although it may pay bills if you’re doing it to earn money – but in a supportive group environment it can be very calming.

I set something similar up in a Buddhist community that I stayed at for a while, after my breakdown, helping to raise funds for the community. We sat around a table in the Temple and it was very meditative, for a while at least.

When you’ve got a lot of inner turbulence going on, it’s hard to find something – anything – to settle on for any length of time. It’s important to keep looking for and finding whatever it is that gets you through, until the next time you have to start looking for and finding whatever it is that gets you through.

This brings me to one of my ‘Rules for Self-Management’ that I haven’t referred to for a while:

Rule No. 5: Don’t underestimate the therapeutic value of envelope stuffing (but don’t overestimate it either).

I’m glad I’m no longer envelope stuffing – either therapeutically or for a living – and am happy to be steadily working with clay in a creative way. This is therapeutic for me now, but it wasn’t before. A lot of other work needed to be done before it could be.

 First published 20 August 2023

Struggling as I have been with my own mental health for most of my life, I haven’t always been able to prioritise dental health.

In voluntary and paid roles supporting others with mental health difficulties, I’ve noticed that poor dental health care is a common problem. Published research supports this observation, for example ‘Oral health interventions for people living with mental disorders: protocol for a realist systemic review’, Kenny Dickson-Swift, Gussy et al, International Journal of Mental Health Systems 14, Article number: 24 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1186/s13033-020-00357-8.

After a major breakdown in my late thirties, I was able to regain and maintain sufficient mental health stability to work and function within society (with various blips and crises along the way) and have since retired. As part of the process of recovery that I went through, I managed to reconnect with regular dental check-ups and treatment.

Recently, though, I struck a stumbling block while going through a tough patch mentally.

I hadn’t been able to get a check-up at the surgery I’m registered with for over 18 months. While many dentists are still struggling to catch up after Covid, the dentist that I’ve been going to have had an additional burden of backlog due to a fire on their premises. Though they’ve been able to set up satellite surgeries around the city I was advised that, if I wanted a check-up on the NHS, I should seek it elsewhere.

As I have moved out of the city to a neighbouring village, this made sense anyway, so I started ringing around. It was only then that I discovered there was little or no chance of being able to see an NHS dentist as a new patient within the next 2-3 years.

Apparently, this is due to government funding, although I don’t know the details of how it works.

What I do know is that government mental health strategy is due to be updated (https://www.bacp.co.uk/news/news-from-bacp/2023/24-january-government-mental-health-strategy-update-announced/) with a claim that mental health will be included in an overall ‘major conditions’ strategy that will focus on ‘whole-person care’.

If that strategy is to be worth more than words on paper then it would do well to ensure prioritisation of funding that enables people who have recognised mental health disabilities to access NHS dental care. It would be one less enormous obstacle to climb for those who deserve a medal just for getting out of bed on a morning. And let’s face it, if you can’t even look forward to a cup of tea because it’s too painful to eat or drink anything, then what’s the point?

It’s taken me several months to be able to concentrate enough to work out how to tackle the presenting problem and then follow up and get myself booked in for an appointment. I’m fortunate in that I’ve been able to pay privately for a check-up (£59.00) and have been presented with a range of options to address my dental treatment needs that I can prioritise on – for me – an affordable basis (approximately £250.00). Basically, I’m going to book in for a hygienist appointment to address some gum issues and also get an old crown taken off so that the dentist can explore what’s going on underneath and put a semi-permanent top dressing on. This should keep me going for another year or so at least and I’ve got myself down on a 3-year waiting list at a surgery closer to home.

Others who are less fortunate than me financially shouldn’t have to suffer and wait, compounding mental agony with dental agony.

For my part, when I do eventually emerge from my current ‘downer’, I’d like to be able to smile without worrying about the fact that I have gaps in my teeth.

First published 7th April 2023

It can be profoundly difficult to acknowledge the dark side of our selves.

We’re brought up to be “nice”, “good”, “well-behaved”, and get no instruction as children on how to deal with thoughts that counter those values in constructive ways so we work it out for ourselves. As a result – because we want to please our parents and other adults who are important in our lives – such thoughts can get buried, pushed out of mind, to fester in the deepest darkest resources of our brains. Left unattended, the smallest ‘unacceptable’ thought can grow into a monster, desperate to do what monsters do, and our psyches go to great and often bizarre lengths to keep the monster behind bars

My partner wrote the following piece about his monster. It takes a lot of courage to acknowledge the monster that is part of us and even more to write about it and be prepared to share that part of our selves with others. I don’t agree with him though, that the monster needs to be banished. In my view it is enough to see it for what it is: a thought that we can simply be aware of, trusting ourselves enough to just let it be.

Frankenstein’s Monster

The monster, with the horns and tails of a devil, lurks in the deepest, dankest dungeons of my mind, eyes burning red, teeth like vampires’ fangs, talons like dragons, hunch-backed, ready to pounce. Saliva drips from its gaping maw, the talons clutch a dagger dripping with blood.

All is dark, the blackness is solid, no light penetrates.

The air is hot, oppressive and stifling.

The smell of death pervades the atmosphere.

The monster is a chimera reflecting all my fears in one being. Its hybrid nature combines all my fears.

The shadow lurks in my unconscious, emitting negative thoughts, amplifying the anxiety.

The dread is unremitting; the torment is ceaseless.

I close my eyes.

I breathe in. Om!

I hold my breath. Ah!

I breathe out slowly. Hum!

I exhale black smoke.

I inhale bright white light.

I visualise the banishment of the monster.

The dread eases: a dim light starts to glow dimly through the dark night.

The monster disappears in a cloud of sulphurous smoke, emitting a shriek of rage and frustration.

The dismal fog clears. I see the sunrise.

(c) Trevor J. Leavesley 2023

First published 28 March 2023

I desperately needed a new pair of dog walking boots and have just found the perfect pair at Shoezone.

Also bought some black patent shoes, which made me think of some patent shoes that I had when I was a child, with a buckle. I loved those shoes, as I did a pair of purple patents that I had a while ago.

I loved those purple shoes so much that I wrote a poem about them. Here it is:

Perfectly Purple Patent

No other shoe
Looks quite like you do
Purple patent perfection
You don’t just give my feet protection

Your bright shiny uppers
Light up my soul
When I’m out wearing you
I can only be bold

Bright yellow stitching
A statement of strength all around
Air cushioned and confident
A complement of colours profound

I love you purple patent shoes
You’re perfect in every patent way
And every time that I wear you
My heart and soul become more purple
And less blue

First published 25 March 2023

I’m taking some time out this weekend – just me and Lydia – to rest and recharge. I knew I’d run out of steam and, after a bit of searching on #airbnb, found a super dog-friendly place just a couple of hours drive away.

It’s a small, converted barn, built in the 19th century and perfect as a peaceful retreat.

I don’t have a coherent plan about what to do while I’m here but it involves eating, drinking, sleeping and catching up on a few things.

There is a secure grassy area so I can let Lydia out whenever she wants.

Yesterday she had a walk in the morning as usual, then I took her to a secure dog park near where we live #poochiepark before we set off to come here. Tomorrow we’re booked into a park near the barn #littlepaddocks. So today it’s a pj day for me.

I think Lydia is OK with this arrangement – she looks pretty chilled to me.

First published 14 February 2023

For many years of my life, I struggled to find any sense of identity, direction, purpose or path.

I didn’t know why this was the case, or what to do to change it. It took many years of jumping in at the deep end – particularly with relationships. I hadn’t known how to form them or make emotional connections of any kind when I was younger, and eventually I knew that I had somehow to kick-start my life into action if I was going to have any kind of life at all.

Two divorces, another failed relationship, a shipwreck of a business venture and extreme bullying in the workplace led to me having a breakdown in all aspects when I was in my late thirties.

This included having what was described later by a psychiatrist as a ‘psychotic episode’. The psychotic episode followed a period when I was desperately trying to be as positive as possible about a situation that was too much to bear. Afterwards, my brain went ‘clunk’, ‘clunk’, ‘clunk’ down into the depths of depression and I have spent much of the last 25+ years training my brain to come to terms with the past and think differently about the present and future.

In my desperate state, running on survival instinct at best, I began to realise that I was very much not alone; that many people were struggling with many different difficulties, and when I could I reached out to help them too. I decided at one point that, knowing I was going to feel crap inside for a very long time, at least if I did ‘stuff’ along the way, I’d know that I hadn’t just done nothing.

After doing loads of different kinds of voluntary work and then part-time paid work, I was able to start a full-time job again and sustain myself in that for the next 14 years. By that time, I’d learnt to prioritise, and I concentrated on work to the exclusion of most other things. Working and resting didn’t offer much scope for a personal life, but it was my way of getting through. At one point I decided that, if I could achieve nothing else in life, I would make sure that my cat, Bertie, had a good one. It felt like that was enough, and I do believe it was. At that time, that was my purpose in life.

Who is to say what is important in this world and what isn’t? In finding my own priorities I finally started to find my own path. Not a well-trodden one, and not one without trip-ups and tricky spots along the way, but mine.

I was eventually able to start and maintain a fulfilling relationship and my life is continuing to open up in ways that I could never have imagined possible when I was so aimless and adrift.

I continue to prioritise on a day-to-day basis, often on things that may not seem important to other people, but they are precious to me. My purpose is to make the most of things that come my way, the everyday, the challenges, the opportunities to engage – with others, with household tasks, with being creative or being quiet.

As for the dolphin, well that’s another story!