Photography – hobby or a potent pill for dealing with mental illness
This is a very short post and nothing to do with my own photography.
One of the wonderful things about a ‘like’ or ‘follow’ on your blog is that so often it opens the door to an unknown world.
A ‘like’ on my recent haiku post on my other blog – grumpytyke – in which I mentioned the stress of everyday living, came from an organisation, a blog, that I had never heard of – the Broken Light Collective.
http://brokenlightcollective.wordpress.com/
A recent picture on the Broken Light blog – this is a screen grab
Of course I always go to see what a ‘liker’ is doing, and found on this occasion a collective of photographers who suffer or have suffered from mental illness but who have found photography to be therapeutic.
I think that’s wonderful. And now I’ll be following Broken Light from this blog, for its photographic interest.
I do not, and never have so far, suffered from depression or any other mental disorder, though I’m just as abnormal as everyone else. But I do have two family members ravaged by depression, and through my work have frequently come across people suffering or recovering from mental illness.
I am delighted to find that something which to me is just a hobby, but which usually through others’ photographs turning up in my ‘followed’ box nevertheless often brings calm and a feeling of well-being, is such good medicine for others who suffer in a way I hope I never will.
I follow them too. There is the most wonderful pictures with fantastic stories to them, though many times really sad. But there is always a streak of positivity within.