You'll Never Walk Alone: Poems for life's ups and downs

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From probiotics to poetry: how Rachel Kelly keeps depression at bay". www.newstatesman.com. New Statesman. A poetry book can be a gift of healing, and Rachel Kelly's anthology You'll Never Walk Alone: Poems For Life's Ups And Downs is the perfect present. A true evangelist for poetry as an aid to wellbeing, the mental health campaigner begins, 'Words can be a way to make sense of our feelings', and divides her choices into the four seasons, representing moods of sadness, hope, joy and reflection. The range is engaging, offering old favourites such as Keats and Derek Walcott as well as songs and new writers. Kelly follows each poem with a beautifully concise explanation which will be welcomed by anyone unaccustomed to reading poetry - and bring fresh delight to those who encounter familiar poems anew. The whole book is an essential companion. -- Bel Mooney * Daily Mail * Rachel Kelly is a bestselling author, mental health campaigner and Ambassador for SANE. Poetry has played a huge role throughout her life and was an integral part of her recovery with depression.

That’s not to say that You’ll Never Walk Alone is a glib panacea for depression or sadness. Some of the entries are despairing and negative, affording the reader the opportunity to realise all emotions are valid and acceptable – it’s what we do with those emotions that counts. As an advocate for the healing powers of poetry, her new book You’ll Never Walk Alone is an attempt to convey her enthusiasm and passion for the written word. It is a collection of “poems for life’s ups and downs” that will show you how to bring poetry into your everyday emotional reality, where it can be a new tool for wellbeing. Her hope is that poems can become part of everyone’s emotional life too, even if you don’t think poetry is ‘your thing’. Sometimes I feel like freedom is near Sometimes I feel like freedom is here Sometimes I feel like freedom is so near But we’re so far from home. Rachel is also a well-known media commentator and former Times journalist as well as an official ambassador for mental health charities Rethink Mental Illness, SANE, The Counselling Foundation and Head Talks.

Jul 2023 Rachel Kelly: Navigating mental health, the NHS crisis and the power of poetry in “You’ll Never Walk Alone” For National Poetry Day (6 October), Rachel shares two poems featured in You’ll Never Walk Alone that she uses to help her own mental health. Like Rachel Kelly, I passionately believe in the power of poetry to reach the soul. In times of heartache and joy, this wonderful anthology will help and delight all through the year. Kelly's brilliant introduction and explanations of each choice make this an indispensable companion, always.' Kelly, Rachel (1 April 2017). "Talking about mental illness is no substitute for offering real help - Rachel Kelly". The Guardian. Government here must play a role in helping the disadvantaged, sitting at home on their own. We desperately need more psychiatric beds and more NHS funding for these serious cases.

I didn’t think of others at all. Only when I began to get better did I want to share my experience and the reality of severe mental illness, how it could happen to anyone, and why charities like SANE are lifesavers to those who were desperate like me. Mental health campaigner and journalist Rachel Kelly has published a new book You"ll Never Walk Alone Rachel Kelly graduated from Oxford University, studying History. [1] She then worked as a journalist for The Times newspaper in the UK. [2] Since 2014 she has run wellbeing workshops for mental health charities MIND, as well as other organizations. [3] Kelly now works as a mental health campaigner. [4] She has written opinion columns for The Guardian [5] and has served as a commentator on the BBC. [6] [2] Books [ edit ] Nothing compares with the experience of enslaved people. But all of us can feel motherless at times, even if we are blessed with the most loving of mothers. In my darkest hour, when I suffered severe depression, my mother could not comfort me – she who had hitherto been able to soothe any pain. There is, it turns out, a limit to a mother’s ability to succour her child. Thus we can reverse the narrative that to love ourselves is selfish and wrong. It is natural, and normal, and should be part of our everyday lives: an ordinariness suggested by your ‘own door’ and your ‘own mirror’, and the gentle invocation to ‘sit here. Eat.’Just before Christmas I was kindly sent a signed copy of this lovely book. A collection of wonderful poems to help us through some of life’s challenges. As some of you may know I love poetry and find it soothing and powerful. I dip into my poetry books when I need a mood boost or to sit with my feelings, but feel comforted, knowing that I’m not the only one to feel that way. Which is what this book is meant to do. There’s a wonderful selection of poems, old friends and some new faces too. Whatever you’re going through, poetry can help remind us to keep going. You’ll be ok. Some of the poems are from well known poets such as Keats, Wordsworth and Cummings, well known names such as Abraham Lincoln and Emily Brontë and others are from less well known ones (although my knowledge of famous poets stopped accumulating upon leaving education!) Their biographies are in a section towards the end of the book. On to the book itself; this is a book of poems that have been put together by Rachel Kelly, who is a Sunday Times bestselling author. Rachel Kelly is a writer and a mental health campaigner and ‘an advocate for the therapeutic power of poetry’. She has published several other books and is an ambassador for several mental health and wellbeing related charities. She introduces the book and includes some detail around how poetry has helped her psychological wellbeing and has a healing power. In sharing the poems and arranging them by season she hopes to help other’s wellbeing and also to highlight that it’s perfectly acceptable to have a variety of different feelings, including both highs and lows, both of which are equally valid. The new book is You”ll Never Walk Alone: Poems for Life’s Ups and Down. It is a selection of poems and writing, prefaced by Kelly’s thoughts on why she chose to include each one. The range is broad, from Sappho through Keats and Wordsworth to Mary Oliver and Derek Walcott, the author of her favourite poem in the book, Love. Poetry can be like a salve to the soul if you find just the right one to read in the right set of circumstances. This inspirational and soothing collection, organised according to the season, not only provides great comfort but acts as a friend, too, when there are times to celebrate. As the title suggests, you'll never walk alone when you have this trusty companion by your bedside. -- My Weekly

Since then, I’ve been running ‘Healing Words’ poetry workshops, for mental health charities and prisons, and in schools, and have discovered first-hand the lovely feeling of companionship which poetry can bring. This new understanding naturally leads to different answers to the psychological problems. We need a two-pronged approach, and neither answer is about supplying more medical help or more demands on the NHS. The first applies to all of us; the second is more targeted.The intimacy between poet and reader is further heightened in Oliver’s promise that from now on we will trust each other sufficiently to open up, as we are equal in our humanity and our despair. ‘Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine’ shows how fiercely the poet wants to connect with her reader: this is the heart of the poem’s power – we are loving creatures, says Oliver.

This book will show you how to bring poetry into your everyday emotional reality, where it can be a new tool for wellbeing. And one that means you’ll never walk alone. My Review of You’ll Never Walk Alone The poems are grouped by season with each season having a different tone; Winter – time for sadness, Spring – time for hope, Summer – time for joy and Autumn – time for reflection. Each poem is printed and Rachel then reflects on the meaning. Spring includes ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ by Oscar Hammerstein II – the one the title is taken from and also the one that definitely can’t be read without effectively singing it in your head. Bestselling UK author and Mental Health Advocate Rachel Kelly believes in the power of writing for wellbeing. It has helped her to navigate challenging times in her life, especially when she suffered from depression. I found You’ll Never Walk Alone completely surprising. Whilst I always enjoy exploring poems and I love being out in the natural world, I’d never truly considered poetry as a seasonal entity – despite studying and teaching seasonal poems in my past! There are also short prose pieces too that balance the book and provide another perspective. You’ll Never Walk Alone: Poems for life’s ups and downs is a collection of the kind of inspirational texts – mainly poems – that can accompany us, whatever we are feeling, from sorrow to delight. The poems are organised according to the season in which they ‘belong’: we all have seasons of our minds, be they wintery and dark, or more spring-like and hopeful.The workshops take place across four sessions. In each, we share poems which reflect the different ‘seasons’ of our mind, from the winter of discontent to the spring of hope, on to the summer of joy, and ending with more reflective poems with an autumnal feel. Unsurprisingly perhaps, given my belief in the power of poetry to help us feel more connected, I’ve called my new book which explains which poems might help and why You’ll Never Walk Alone: Poems for Life’s Ups and Downs. This book will show you how to bring poetry into your everyday emotional reality, where it can be a new tool for wellbeing. And one that means you'll never walk alone.