About

What’s Feeling Fragile?

Feeling Fragile is a space to learn more about mental health issues, chronic health issues, and disabilities all from a lived experience perspective. It’s a place to get lost in and find answers or create more questions. It's a space to keep up with relevant issues that impact those most vulnerable. Most of all, it’s a space that hopes to reduce the stigma surrounding how people see others (and themselves) and their issues.

 

What's in the name?

Fragile is the term given to something that can be easily broken or damaged, when used to speak about a person it means someone that is not strong or sturdy but instead delicate and vulnerable. For those with mental and physical health issues, it’s often how the world sees them. This isn’t the case when these people have gone through so much and the fact that they are still standing proves to the world around them that they are not fragile. But there are times when a person may feel fragile, they may feel like one wrong move could make them crumble, this isn’t a bad thing it just means that in that moment, they need to handle themselves with care.

When trying to think of a name for this site Feeling Fragile fitted with what the site hopes to achieve which is reminding people that it’s ok to feel fragile but it shouldn’t be used as a descriptive term when it comes to talking about people. It’s about taking ownership of the negative definitions associated with fragile and changing how people see those who society (and themselves) label as fragile.

The person behind the keyboard

Hi, I’m Erin, the writer and creator of Feeling Fragile. In the past, I wrote at Erin's Antics a blog that I started at the age of 15 until a couple of years ago when I took a break from writing. When I decided to return to writing I realised that I needed a new space to write, a space where the focus could be on raising awareness of mental health issues and allow me to write more factual pieces so Feeling Fragile was created. 

I am a mental health peer worker (or lived experience worker) passionate about raising awareness of mental health issues and reducing the stigma that's associated with them. I have always battled with mental health issues and then in my mid-20s I started to experience chronic health issue

s along with this my younger sister has Down Syndrome, so I have experience not only as a peer but also as a carer. 

These experiences have opened up many doors, including volunteering at ReachOut Australia for 6 years as a youth ambassador and a peer volunteer forum moderator, consulting on research proposals for The Kids Research Institute Australia and helping co-design a new program with Siblings Australia. 

I believe in taking a holistic approach with mental health issues and that while recovery may not be easy it can be doable. 

When I am not writing you can find me crafting, baking, walking along the beach all while figuring out life one day at time.