A new partnership!
We are delighted that we will be working with Directions for men to support Men’s mental health.
As LoveFootball has grown, we feel it’s more important than ever to do our best to ensure we look after our players wellbeing. Back in the early LF days when it was one session a week it was easy to keep the message of men’s mental health at the forefront of our sessions, one huge factor being it was still so raw for me.
I had spent the year running up to starting the first session in a dark place. Gambling addiction, Suicide attempts, an inpatient stay on a mental health ward, arrested for drink driving after i crashed into a wall in another suicide attempt, not wanting to be around anyone because it was too difficult to be accept what i was going through and that i would, at some point in the near future have to be 100% honest about how i felt.
When we had the first football sessions it was constantly on my mind about mental health it consumed my thoughts, not necessarily in a bad way, but it was ever present. This made it easy to speak about it from the heart and it was always on the edge of my mind waiting to spill over. As i began to add things to my life, and remove things, that helped my mental health become more positive, I started to get talk less about my experiences. (I’ve never done this because i like talking about myself, but purely because if i feel that way there must be someone else that feels that way and hopefully it will help them feel they are not on their own and that maybe they can talk about it). I felt like i was going on with myself and that it was time for someone else to tell their story and mine had ran its course. So i just stopped talking about it. It didn’t help that with the COVID-19 restrictions in place i didn’t fetch the lads in at the end of a session to drive the message home but that’s just an excuse.
I saw a Linked In post about Directions for Men wanting to collaborate with other groups to bring additional ways to support more men. After a quick message a phone call was arranged. Me and Chris from directions had a great chat and it was unbelievable how many thoughts we shared about life and men’s mental health and we both organisations could compliment each other.
We really look forward to this coming year and are really excited about what impact we can have together.
Dan
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