My name’s Matthew and I’m a writer.

We all play a number of roles and adopt a number of labels in our lives, some of which are more fulfilling than others.  On the face of it being able to say ‘I am a writer’ would appear to be a source of greater satisfaction than ‘I have a mental illness’.  But if it weren’t for saying the latter I wouldn’t be able to say the former.

My experiences with mental illness and the need to make sense of thoughts and emotions swirling through me were a major catalyst in igniting the dormant spark that urged me to write, on a miserable night – in both senses of the word – in December 2015.  And on that cold, rainy night in a hotel room in Tamworth I could not have conceived of just how much of a blessing writing was to become…