The Patty project

Content Warning: This post discusses mental illness, death, substance use, and child protection involvement.

I’ve been sitting with some heavy thoughts today.

My deceased sister’s only child is now 25, and their step-mother has just passed away. She was far too young to die — not even in her mid-50s.

She lived with chronic mental illness. She was institutionalised multiple times when the voices became too loud. Her two biological children were removed for their safety. She spent much of her life in bed and struggled with heavy drug use.

It’s confronting. It’s sad. And it’s layered.

My mum said to me today, “Look at your life — how good it is — and look at hers.”
And I responded honestly: “I made a choice to live well.”

That sentence may sound simple, but it isn’t.

I’ve lived with depression too. I know what it feels like when the bed feels safer than the world. I know how heavy the mornings can be. I could have stayed there — many days I wanted to — but somewhere along the way I chose, again and again, to get up.

That doesn’t make me better.
It makes me someone who had different supports, different timing, different capacity — and a different set of interventions.

This is something I say to the women I work with every single day:
If you got out of bed today, I congratulate you.

Because staying in bed when depression takes hold can quietly shrink a life. The longer you stay there, the harder it becomes to step back into the world.

Getting out of bed isn’t a small thing.
Leaving the house isn’t a small thing.
Choosing to engage — even imperfectly — is a choice toward life.

When you step out of bed and step outside your door, you’re not “fixed.”
But you are choosing the possibility of getting better.

And sometimes, that choice — made over and over, on the hardest days — is what keeps us here.

I wanted to put these thoughts somewhere before they slipped away.
Because this is real.
And it matters.

“This is my present self holding my past self — a reminder that healing often starts with choosing to get up, even when staying in bed feels safer.”