Today is World Mental Health Day. A close topic to my heart. And a core reason why I am running the Athens Marathon and doing my Go Fund Me campaign, to raise awareness for domestic abuse and sexual violence in schools across the South of England.

Here is a picture of me laughing hard on a beach in Ibiza on one of my NLP retreats. This captured moment looks like absolute blast and like I am having the best time. I definitely was in that moment and I have had many more wonderful times like these.

However, my life, like many others, has been a succession of huge struggles with my mental and emotional health. Once a sufferer from Complex Post Traumatic Stress disorder for 30 years and Body Dysmorphia, and only recently fully recovering, I am still very much ‘a work in progress’. Due to my own life’s journey, I am hugely passionate about mental health.

The start of my jewellery business was the beginning of the end of my healing journey. Finally I found something that gave me hope, reasons to live and a creative vehicle where I can make something beautiful and impart hope, joy and courage to the next person that may be suffering and struggling with mental and emotional health issues.

Sounds deep and hardcore – and it is. Mental and emotional well-being is a hugely important and massively overlooked social issue, not only by ourselves but I feel by society as a whole.

I have had to do a lot of work on myself to get to where I am today, and today I can say I am finally healed enough to start sharing my journey and use my experience, jewellery and efforts like running the Athens Marathon to create value for myself and others.

The charity I am supporting, Tender, is really progressive. They educate young kids to not only become aware and protect themselves from abuse and sexual violence, but to also understand what it means to respect the dignity of their own lives and the lives of others.

I feel and believe, that these are really important values and paramount to the education system. As the saying goes, ‘history repeats itself’ and it will continue to do so until we collectively make a change. But where does the buck start and end? Unless we personally hold ourselves accountable for great change, it becomes an endless, perpetuating cycle. All it takes is the power of one. One person to stand up and start making a difference. And for me, Tender is really pioneering in this particular area for social change.

Education is really important and educating the youth to the best of our society's ability is even more so. I believe education is where we can start to create great change in this area, which is why I feel so passionate about supporting Tender.

If you haven’t yet donated to this wonderful cause but would love to, please do so! I would love your support.

If you can’t afford to donate, that’s no problem. Please do share my cause on Facebook or my Go Fund Me link, and to anyone you think would be interested in my campaign.

Rosie Odette. X