How to Make a Peg | Mental health service

How to Make a Peg

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24.01.2022 Inclusiveness. Love. Acceptance. Look at that dirty old man in the gutter clutching a crumpled brown paper bag. Is he breathing?Is he living? Is he dreaming of a past youth...the little girl next door...his first kiss? Is he thinking about war...separation from his mother. Seeing his brother shot and gutted with a bayonet? Is he your Grandad or my Grandad? Does he need a bath, a shave, a meal? Does he need a smile and a kiss from a little curly haired blonde girl handing him a crumpled yellow daisy? There is beauty there..in every bristled hair on his chin and the memory lines across his forehead. Sleep well old man. Dream of the Angels who watch over your soul. And ours

23.01.2022 It was 1980. I was hospitalised in the Anderson maximum security ward of Hillcrest Hospital, Adelaide AUSTRALIA. I was 19 years old. I was heavily medicated and the meds made my vision blurred. I cried because I could'nt see my fingernails. Or the new silver watch my Dad sent me. I cried because I couldn't see to write or paint. I was locked in with dangerous patients. I was physically and sexually assaulted by nurses and a patient I weighed about 50 kilos...and I was pretty.... The whole building smelled of cigarette smoke. I imagined I was in hell because of the burning and the stench of the flies hitting the electric zapper. Then one day...after several failed attempts on the metal lever which pulled down and clipped 2 pieces of plastic together on a metal pin. I successfully made a peg... occupational therapy

21.01.2022 Grief - that gut wrenching agony when you realise a door has slammed shut in your face and the person you love is on the other side and you don't have the key. You knock until your knuckles are raw and bleeding. You cry until the snot flows and your chest starts heaving with sobbing pain. When your mind is blinded by thoughts and images of your loved one like a wide screen movie gone wild. Their voice, their smell, their laughter, their smile. Every photo you ever had together blurs into one. When the lack of power to turn back time makes you wish you were Superman or just simply dead. I love you so much

21.01.2022 Hey Babies. I can hear crows calling from my balcony. I can hear neighbours banging...maybe cooking...maybe making love? I am in my new home. I am single.....AGAIN. Do we detect a pattern here? Happy little girl. Love you all for helping the extraction xxx

21.01.2022 Nakedness...just had a shower and feel clean and cool. My cat is sleeping. I am rocking back and forth in my skip bin acquired computer chair. The air is sweet on my body. I spin and rock for comfort because that is what people with PTSD do. I feel light. I feel God's love. I feel intense grief but it will pass. I miss my sister Kerry in Albany. I need a hug but can accept her unwillingness to have relationship with me. PTSD is not contagious my friends...I do not have cancer. You cannot catch my illness from knowing me. Just love and accept me and I will survive. Catherine x

17.01.2022 Hope - now just when you think life can't get any worse God sends his greatest miracles. New friends...new solutions...time...visions for the future. Gratitude. For all the loves you have known in your life and all the doors you have walked through to find unexpected treasures on the other side. Scarey doors...sad doors...doors which swing back and forth so you can go foward or back. And revolving doors where you have to stay in tune to find the entry and the exit...

16.01.2022 I still see white on that house at 181 Ryan Broken Hill NSW 2880 where my mother was shot. White on the inside, white on the walls, white on the roof. All the places where the blood went. I was 11 and didn't know she was pregnant to Robbie. Clarence the Clocker they called him. Came into town looking after the elephants with Ashton's Circus. He was Maori. Played guitar and sang Creedence...Do do do lookin out my back door. I was 11 and at the swimming pool. Walked home to fi...nd the empty. My gut was churning as I walked from room to room. I walked out the front and a police car pulled up with Robbie in the back. "Where's Mum" I said...hatred in my heart. I knew this man who had previously put a knife to mine and my mother's throat had done something evil. In the hospital he said. The whole house was demolished later because of the blood. But not before the neighbours broke in through the boarded up front door and helped themselves to our belongings. Broken Hill...the shit hole of the world. Wake in Fright. See more

14.01.2022 Mum...before the stomach shooting which happened in 1972. Mum (32 deceased), Cathy (11), Kerry (9), Raymond (7 deceased), Brian (5 deceased). 'Gut-shot June' the town called her after she survived that 22 rifle shot. Like a rabbit. Robbie (Clarence Robert Jackson) went to Long Bay Prison, Sydney for a 10 year stretch. Us kids got split up. Boys to Melbourne with their Dad (Ray deceased), girls to Whyte Yarcowie on the Adelaide SA road where I learned how to milk a goat and play 8 ball and drink sarsparilla at Frosty's Pub :)

14.01.2022 Mother love...let's speak about this...especially at Christmas when families are broken. Remember wise old King Solomon offering to chop the baby in half and give...half-half to each of the mother's claiming the title. Only the true mother said "NO...don't do it" and stepped back into the shadows away from the Royal Powerful King to suffer in silence. Are you in the shadows this Christmas? Separated...blamed...accused? And like the true mother you are silent and love and pray from afar. Rejoicing only that your children live...not cut in half. Your tears are nothing compared to the love you bear them and the knowledge they walk strong tall and happy. Live long and prosper all you true Mother hearts

13.01.2022 Power. What is it? Money? Status? Education? Property? Fame? Beauty? What is your greatest God-given power? Mine is love and forgiveness and willingness to learn, change and grow. Just like a baby taking step after step is the joy of growing. Sometimes we fall...but we get up and learn to not make the same mistake again. Hopefully Love is letting your bird fly free and live in it's natural habitat. However beautiful, however much you love that little bird, however gilded or large is the cage....LET IT GO. One day you may find it returns in free will to sit upon your finger and sing to you again.

12.01.2022 Who are you Carol and why did you dump all this beautiful stuff in a bin near my house at Christmas? Too much wealth? Too much wanderlust? Someone chasing you? Or just random waste..?

10.01.2022 Original collages and artworks by Catherine Anne Sawtell

09.01.2022 Suffering....it's all relative. We all suffer we all have joy. I have not suffered torture or witnessed mass genocide firsthand nor carried a dying bleeding deformed baby in my arms. How my heart aches for those experiencing that level of suffering. But I have suffered the taste of death...death of a dream...death of a career...death of a loved one...death of a relationship. Like you, I have looked death squarely in the eyes and seen and felt the black rider upon the white horse scythe or sickle held high. Face gaunt and expressionless. Death has no mercy. Death does not speak. But always after his most ravaging visit...a tiny sprout of green pokes it's trembling arms out of the frosty ground. And there you go....a new sunflower is born

08.01.2022 So when is your time, your time? Is it prewritten how good, how bad, how holy, how right or wrong we will all be? What is fate? What is karma? What is destiny? What is "the universe". JRRTolkien in his short story "Leaf by Niggle" is perhaps his greatest work. Leave alone the hobbit, leave alone the lord of the rings.....even leave alone The Silmarillon. Read Leaf by Niggle....and the secret to eternal life will be yours as well as mine.... Night all...

07.01.2022 Friends...friendship... unconditional platonic love. That person who can see you in deep distress and say "Hey your socks don't match" and you look down and say "Yes they do!" and then realise they have made you smile in a moment when you wanted to sob your heart out or scream so loud you could rip open the Heaven's with grief. Friends...who don't care what you say, how you look, how much money you have, what others say about you, what others write about you. Special people that God has made as the quiet helpers...silent angels and secret havens for the lost and suffering. Giving. Asking no reward. Honesty. Do you have a friend like that? I do. God has given me many and I cherish them in my heart. We may not speak for 40 years...but if I call they always pick up or call back. Thank God for friends like that...past and present

02.01.2022 I was going to call this book Straightjacket. Have you ever been in a straight jacket? I have. Royal blue cloth with thick cotton ties. Arms in...Arms crossed then spun and roughly tied behind my back. Dont remember what I did wrong. Just remember sitting on the cold hard floor of the isolation room for a long time in the dark. Didnt hurt. You sure can do a lot of thinking in a straight jacket. I learned that. But still dont remember the naughty lesson...or why I was there in the firrst place. Trauma does that. Big memory splash with a white paint brush. Its the colour red you have to watch out for in life. The blood. The events that make blood... Not straightjackets. They are quite comforting really. A bit like a rest once you submit. But good to get out from...

02.01.2022 Two pieces of plastic and a bit of circular wire make a clothes peg. But what about a pin peg..like you use on a felt board to track serial killer victims and patterns of behaviour. Even Jack the Ripper had a neighborhood. My hood is bigger than yours man...I'm comin for U