Lonely Boy

Some thoughts on Lonely Boy:

I’ve been writing about mental health here for almost 7 years. How mad is that? I haven’t always gotten it right, but I’ve always been coming from a good place with it. I’ve lead with the heart. This week however, people tried to tell me I was being insidious and disingenuous. It was easy to ignore these lies because that’s exactly what they were – lies. I know who I am, so what other people say and think about me is none of my business.

It hasn’t always been this way though. I haven’t always known myself. I haven’t always been comfortable with looking inward and taking stock. Self-awareness as a skill takes a lot of time to integrate. And it’s often extremely painful to integrate too.

Last year I wrote a book. it’s called Lonely Boy, and it’s going to be published traditionally by BookHub Publishing later this year. This book is essentially an exercise in looking inward. It’s a book about my mental health journey, which I’ve so often documented here. The book was the most therapeutic undertaking I’ve ever done, because it allowed me to address problems I have always ignored and pretended weren’t there.

We all have things about us that we’d prefer weren’t real, and we often teach ourselves to ignore them. Carl Jung calls this the shadow of our psyche. And the real healing begins, not when you successfully eradicate these flaws, but rather when you learn to integrate them, when you learn to accept yourself entirely, flaws included.

When you do this, then what other people say and think about you becomes irrelevant, because you now know who you are. You know all the bad parts, and so nothing anyone can say about you can bring about destruction.

I really can’t wait to share Lonely Boy with you all. It’s raw and honest and writing it was painful in parts. But the hope is there that once you read it, then maybe you can begin your own journey inward and help yourself to heal from the past.

Because I promise you, life is a whole lot different and whole lot more fulfilling since I did it. There is light in more places now than ever before.

Something to think about.

Drink water,

Daragh