Emily Burrell

As part of GBRf’s wellbeing champions continuing drive to increase the awareness of and remove the taboo around mental health, I wanted to share with you something that I stumbled across under lockdown. At first it was just a silly idea for a birthday message and an NHS rainbow but as time went on I found to be extremely beneficial as a single person locked down 23/7 in my house.

I started a 28 day challenge with a colleague who was on
furlough, for 4 weeks we were drawing or painting daily based on the theme for
that day.  As you can see from the above I am by no means an accomplished
artist and at first I was googling/watching you tube videos on how to draw
faces etc. and some days were more successful than others.

What it meant though, was I got the time it took to draw
& colour the picture without thinking about Covid-19.  It also showed
me how differently my colleague and I interpreted the same theme and in a
totally unexpected way meant we got to know each much better as the
conversation was less and less about work/Covid-19 and more and more about the
funny stories/ inspirations for the art work.

So why am I telling you this?  As WMHD approaches I
wanted to invite friends & colleagues, who are too shy to share any content requested on the internal emails and posters to win prizes, the opportunity to donate and see if we can raise some money for Suffolk Mind
at the same time!