A woman who “felt like nobody would notice I had just gone” is helping others survive the impact of suicide. Zoe Richards spoke about how she felt; days, weeks and years after trying to take her own life. After surviving she tried various things to help - and says some worked but others did not.
The 62-year-old, from , eventually learned what worked best. Zoe found what worked was "a jigsaw of different things". Zoe told the ECHO: "A failure of taking your life just feels like you're adding to the failures.
I started to do something that my nanna used to do as my nanna had mental health issues and her mother did as well. "She would end each day counting three blessings. She would say 'if a blessing today was all you managed to do was get out of bed, it was a blessing'.
"I would end each day looking for three blessings, it could be I got a car parking space, tiny things, nothing huge. I also said something my nanna would say: ‘everyday in some small way, I’m getting better and better’, and I would just keep saying that to myself everyday, and that helped a lot". Over five years from 1993 to 1998 Zoe had feelings she describes as "a very slow gradual sense of not feeling right and a really hard thing to describe.
When I talk to other people who've had mental health struggles, certainly at the start, it just doesn't feel right. "You can't put your finger on it and say this is what's wrong with me. It's just a niggling feeling, a bit like you don't notice you put on wei.
