Thank you

I want to thank you for reading our blog and visiting our self-harm awareness website.

It means a lot to me, to have engaged and interested visitors. It means a lot to Jules and me when we hear back from members or visitors who tell us that our stories, articles and information has affected them, that they recognise themselves in our words, and we've made them think.

I hope FirstSigns provides fantastic inspiration and information. Obviously, we don't give advice or tell people what to do - that would be awful, after all, I still struggle with the urge to self-injure, and even when I haven't hurt myself for a year or so, that doesn't mean I've got all the answers.

Answers come from within, from you yourself. And I'd love to hear some from you.

Would you care to use the comments system below to tell us how you feel about FirstSigns and the information we provide? What could we do to improve our services?

Thanks for visiting, please let us know your thoughts.


Wedge

Anger

Anger is a valid emotion, and something we can use to help us direct our energies - but it's also the cause of a great deal of stress and it can sometimes seem to control us.

The Mental Health Foundation have launched a little website to tackle anger management, and you may well enjoy going through their quizzes and videos: www.yourboilingpoint.org.uk

The April edition of our Newsletter, LifeSHINES, will also discuss anger, so I hope you've signed up to receive our beautiful, popular and free e-newsletter?

At LifeSIGNS, we believe that self-expression (and even 'venting') are incredibly important, and we help people express themselves just a little by providing our Message Board, and publishing people's art work and videos, as well as their letters.

So get creative and don't let anger be the defining characteristic of your life!

Your Unsent Letters

We have had a great response to our new Unsent Letters page and are pleased to publish two of the letters we have received so far:

Dear Mum and Dad,

It isn’t easy for me to say this, and it won’t be easy to hear it either, but I don’t want to hide it any longer, and I owe you the truth. Please don’t judge me before you’ve finished reading.

When I was in year 10 and 11, all those scars on my arms, they weren’t accidents. I hadn’t fallen over carrying a music stand, and I hadn’t walked accidentally into a locker door. I had done it to myself. And then, a few years ago, I made a New Year’s Resolution to stop. It was hard, but I did it. For a while. Recently, I’ve been struggling, and I’ve hurt myself again. Not badly, but I don’t want it to get worse. I just can’t handle the pressure to be brilliant. I’m not perfect and I don’t need to be – I just want to be me, and for that to be ok. I so often feel that the world expects much more of me than that of which I am capable.

I’m telling you this so that you understand, and so that you can support me. I’m not telling you because I’m looking for more attention, or because I think it’s your fault – I would never want to hurt you. You have given me so much.

I love you both lots

S x

Your letter doesn't have to be in typical 'letter' format either and we are pleased to publish this anonymous poem:

I feel so angry and constantly hurting inside
I want to be free of all pain
I want help to deal with my emotions
That are keeping me from the life I could have
I have not done it to hurt you
I have done it to hurt myself
to try and hide my horrible past
I need your help
I'm scared and frightened of whats ahead
I'm scared of going through my past and dealing with it
I'm also scared of it happening again
I dont want to die
Thats why I need your help
As I dont know how much more I can take.

Thank you to our members who have sent in letters so far; please do keep them coming.

Email your letters to letters@lifesigns.org.uk

We will not keep any record of your email, and will simply publish your letters at www.lifesigns.org.uk/out/letters.html in a matter of days / weeks. Letters may also appear in our Blog and within our Newsletter.

What’s LifeSIGNS Worth to You?

Have you found our services and info useful? Inspiring? Reliable? Comforting?
You know that LifeSIGNS is a user-lead, volunteer run charity right? We’re run by people like you, people with personal experience of self-injury, people with jobs, and boyfriends, husbands, people at university, people who’ve been in hospital… In short, we recruit our management committee from our thousands of members, I’m sure you’ve seen our adverts in the past.

So you know that we’re user-lead, and you know we’re volunteers, we run LifeSIGNS because we feel, as you do, that self-injury needs to be better addressed and people need a greater awareness of the subject and the emotional turbulence behind it.

Get involved

We really appreciate how involved and engaged our members are, you give us hints and tips, life details and stories - providing in-depth insights into life with self-injury. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to be here, doing what we do. We’re always pleased to hear your ideas and concerns, LifeSIGNS is always growing and developing, and your input is vital.

So, would you like to write an article for our Newsletter? Have you got a subject in mind that other people would be interested to read? Have you got an experience to share that would inspire or educate our readers?

LifeSIGNS also appreciates your other contributions. It’s difficult to talk about money when we’re all on a budget these days, but LifeSIGNS is generally a self-funded charity, we don’t get money from the Government or anything, we are supported by our members like you, and by sales of our Wristbands, SI Awareness Book and Training. LifeSIGNS is your charity, and so can I ask you to consider what LifeSIGNS is worth to you? A subscription to Heat magazine costs £79, and the Sunday Times costs around £1.20 each week. Everything LifeSIGNS publishes is available free; even our £5 SI Awareness Book is available for free download, how many organisations offer a whole book like that?

You know what I’m getting at, we haven’t discussed money for ages, but it’s fair to say that we exist because our members want us to and one of the ways you can show support is by purchasing a wristband, a book or by making a direct donation to us.

You can donate with a PayPal account, or just directly with a credit or debt card.

89080

In the UK, you can also donate £1.50 right now by texting us. To send us a single donation of £1.50, please text Give signs now to 89080

If you’d like to send us £1.50 every month, you can just text Give signs on to 89080 – that’s it, nothing more to do! (You can cease your monthly donation my texting Give signs off to 89080)

Unfortunately the service is not available to Virgin Mobile or 3 users. Uppercase or lowercase letters don't matter, just text the bold words shown above. We’d really like to see more text donations coming in, and of course you get a ‘thank you text’ right back.

Please help the sustainability of LifeSIGNS, we need to grow to do more, your donation will directly help us do more. Remember that if you can’t afford to give money, you can still support us financially by signing up for EveryClick which costs you nothing. LifeSIGNS have made over £800 from EveryClick - click on the logo on the right to sign up!