First Blog Feedback

Wow.

Didn't expect everything that happened from the first blog.

In all honesty, when I started the other day I thought that it would be read by a few friends and family members and that would be it. By Monday afternoon my phone went mad. Messages, emails, comments and shares. People I knew and people I didn't were getting in touch with me offering me support and telling me their stories. Some I had to sit for a few minutes to compose myself before I replied back. All of them were thanking me for starting to share my story.

Writing the blog was very cathartic for me,  and it also opened up lots of other avenues of conversation. I created a closed group on Facebook, also named The Order Of The Dog, so people could have somewhere to share with each other. 

Also, it allowed me to have certain conversations with people I knew. My dad was diagnosed with early onset Alzhiemers three years ago and has had various degrees of depression both before and after the diagnosis. On Tuesday afternoon we sat and talked for two hours about, well, lots of things. I'll admit it was probably the longest and most personal conversation we'd had together for several years. My dad came from a generation where you didn't talk about things like that but since his diagnosis he's become a spokesperson for alzhiemers, trying to raise awareness of the disease. After the talk he agreed to sit down with me at a later time to talk about his depression and how it's affected him.

I'm hoping to write my next proper update in the next few days. I'm not 100% sure what I'll talk about next, but I'm starting to put together a list of subjects I want to broach and people I want to talk to. There's already been some interesting people come forward and I can't wait to work with them.

If you want to join the Facebook group, do a search for The Order Of The Dog and we'll get you added. Also, if you'd like to contribute or talk to me about anxiety and depression email me at rustyred666@googlemail.com

Thanks,

Scott.