Looking after staff health and wellbeing helps employees thrive and creates a healthy workplace culture. We all have mental health, and we all deserve to thrive at work.
For Mental Health Awareness Week volunteer Gabrielle Chung has written this poem about her experiences and appreciation for a supportive employer.
Three decades seems time enough
To navigate a curtailed life.
Mental ill-health engulfs those I love,
As I plot an even keel — job, mother wife.
Aspirations thwarted amidst cerebral melee
If revealed, abilities questioned; supposition of others my fait accompli.
Then fate cast a lifeline,
Albeit borne of the pound,
Gifting the adage “right place, right time”
And espousing life experience — ne’er before found.
The skies now beckon a clearer horizon, buoyed by a different voice
Timbre shaky, but conviction strong, while I cautiously rejoice.
Possibilities now unfold, juxtaposing my life-raft
Requiring an alternative vessel
To hold a new mindset, chances or craft,
And sail away from the historical wrestle.
Optimism doesn’t court utopia, more waters that are calmer,
Thank you for a safer voyage, Messrs Stevenson and Farmer.
