From the week of 16th to 20th August, I participated in a Reform Radio course that focused on well-being, mental health and creativity called Positive Frequencies and it all culminated in an in-studio, live audience roundtable session on Friday 20th August.
Hosted by Tito (who's also a Sonder Radio facilitator) and Dan (who's got a really nice job title that I forgot but is especially Reform Radio's in house therapist and feel good teddy bear) throughout the week from 10am to about 3:30pm they took us through the 5 steps to wellbeing, the inner critic (that annoying little voice that tears you down but can also build you up), imposter syndrome, PAC or parent-adult- child mind-sets and (under the guidance of Alex) using Soundtrap to create music. On Thursday Reform's manager, Jemma, showed us how to script the show that we would be recording the next day.
Joining me on the course was my unofficially adopted sibling Bill, Lewis, Scott (who are all members of my Reform family), Paris, Maddie (who, along with Dan, did an incredible job of typing out the script for the Friday show), Sam and Martin (who was there to assist Sam).
We were all given the opportunity to create an artistic piece to bring to the show, and if you know me then you know I love seeing others' artistic expression and one of my greatest joys is seeing people break out of their shells to try something new.
The Friday in-studio session at Reform Radio (which also included Joe and Toby, two young men who came in as audience members) included too many mini joy bubbles for me to list (I will explain what a joy bubble is in a later post), but here's a snippet: Bobby (Jemma's French bulldog) joined us along with Jemma, we had pizza (mine had pineapple) for lunch, Bill made all of us Victoria sponge cake and vegan brownies (and no they weren't "special" brownies either) and there was an amazing Spider-Man sculpture in one of the hallways.
Sam and Martin created the music that was our show's intro and outro. It was ambient and very synth pop and was so cool because I feel that it completely embodied the idea of 'positive frequencies' as a soundscape. As an afterthought, I wish I'd asked for a download of it because it's that fantastic.
Lewis created an amazing comic (essentially) that detailed the 5 Steps To Wellbeing represented by the growth of a tree as well as a poem titled 'In Reverse' that detailed how the way we perceive the world is like looking into a mirror, and how dissatisfied we can be with those reflected surroundings and how, if you want to change the way you see them all you need to do is change the things in the world around you until the reflection you see is the way you want it to be.
Paris' creation was a poem titled 'Reflection' which was partly about the inner critic but also about how exhausting it is having to fight the inner critic all the time when it's in a negative state.
Scott wrote a poem called 'Friendship' that almost made me cry (Scott is one of the most joyful enthusiastic people I've been fortunate enough to get to know through Reform and he is one of those people that has the magic power to make me smile whenever I think about him).
Tito, who not only took amazing care of us all through our creative process by being the caring and encouraging voice of calm (and showing the ultimate form in commitment by getting the microphone to us all during our Friday show recording, shedding her heels for an hour in the process) but she also featured her song DNA (which she created for a previous project) that deals with the relationship between science and mental health, the chords of which mirrored (as closely as possible as there is no T chord in music) the molecular components that make up our cellular foundation.
Maddie (on top of her fantastic scripting skills) shared her poem about being a young carer to her mum.
Bill (who also has experience as a carer) shared their heart-tugging poem 'It's Never Too Late' about finding yourself, and your home, in the family that finds you (how I didn't burst into tears is beyond me).
Bill also wrote a rap which we included in a song that I had actually written in May of this year called 'They'll Get It Twisted' after challenging myself to write a song about an asexual relationship and the perceptions that others have about things that are none of their business. It also ended up being about how our own thoughts can get twisted by our inner critic. Dan created the chords to it and played the keyboard on it. When I wrote the lyrics I had no clue the world would hear it so soon, or that it would be as beautiful as Dan and Bill made it, and even though it's my song, I'm honoured that it's now theirs as much as it is mine. We put it together in two days, rehearsing once while setting up, and I chocked on the second verse because it hit me that people were actually listening (I couldn't look anywhere other than my lyrics book while singing). I know it was a big step outside of their comfort zone to rap and Bill (who featured on the song as Heavy B.) absolutely smashed it!
I also shared my song 'The Voice Of A Friend' which takes the narrative of my muse: the kind voice in my head that I often wish to hear when times are hard. Often the inner voice is critical, tearing us all to shreds, and the words in the song are often the words I tell my friends but not (when my mental health was at it's worst) myself. When I sang it (while staring at my lyrics book) I could feel it in every nerve of my body that it was special, I felt alive, a little scared, because I've never had that feeling of universal connection while around other people nor have I performed the full song in front of actual people (I don't think a zoom performance counts). Knowing that I'd tapped into a power that's bigger than me and then getting to share it was one of the greatest joys for me, because that feeling that I get when I sing has gotten me through some pretty bad times and at one point was my only reason to keep going. When I get over the stage fright I look forward to being able to share my music with the world. I can honestly say I have no clue how everyone felt about my voice after my performance (despite the applause and people saying they loved it) because I went a bit blurry afterwards.
The show consisted of our creative pieces with questions and discussions about them and about the things we learnt during the course. We took turns presenting the show; me first, then Paris, Scott, Lewis then Maddie.
I also got to participate in a little video about the course and Reform Radio, which was a lot of fun.
I know that we all stepped out of our comfort zones and it was a joy for me to see people bloom while doing so, especially Sam, but also seeing everyone so much heart and soul into their work was beautiful. It was easy to see some people's anxiety, but then seeing them vanish because they knew they were in a safe space, but then again Reform Radio and everyone a part of it) is like that.
Reform Radio is very close to my heart for different reasons. Through it I've had life-changing opportunities and met incredible people who are pretty much my family now. I'm ending this post with an enormous thank you to everyone who's not only a part of Reform Radio (and Sonder Radio as well) but also to everyone who was a part of the Positive (or pawsitive as I like to call it mentally) Frequencies course.
AN ENORMOUS THANK YOU TO: Sonder Radio, Reform Radio, MAES (Manchester Adult Education Services, for making the course possible), Dan, Tito, Jemma (and Reform's mascot, Bobby), Robin, Tasha, Nia, Jade, Lauren, Olivia, Alex, Joe, Toby, Scott, Martin, Lewis, Bill, Maddie, Paris and Sam. And an extra thank you to Nara and Laurence (who due to scheduling conflicts couldn't make the second part of the course so I hope that they get the opportunity to do it in the future).
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