Elizabeth Elwell Cook

The last year and more has been incredibly tough on our family and many friends close to us. Full disclosure: I am suffering from depression, and despite many attempts to do something about it while life has been too busy to do a whole lot of proper self-care, we recently discovered that most of the medications which support people with mental health issues do not work for me. Quite the opposite: they cause me enormous amounts of physical pain, including teeth-grinding and muscle spasms which were pretty miserable to live with until I heard a dentist talking about the issue on ABC Radio 702 just a few weeks ago. I had to go cold turkey, not just from the SSRI, but also from the painkillers my GP prescribed, because they too were interacting and making the whole thing worse. It took two weeks for my face to stop twitching, but I now mostly have body and brain back, and am slowly recovering a normal sleep pattern as well. Because of this, I am currently working to bring an arsenal of alternative methods to bear, and haul myself out of this hole. I also know that I need a bit of accountability, and would like to help others while also helping myself. So I commit to walking every single day in October, preferably the 6km circuit around Portland that should take me to 180km, but I've set this at 150km to try and give myself a little forgiveness as well as backup for wet weather... My goal is to raise $1000 and give back, or pay forward, to the community and friends who have supported me throughout. Let's beat depression together!