Lapidus News

Every month we have a chat with a Lapidus member, and get them to share their words and wellness journey. First up, it’s Pam Blamey.

Tell us about yourself:

I’m a British Colonial Empire girl by birth but not by political persuasion. My father was a New Zealander, my mother was born in Kenya to British parents. I migrated from Kenya to South Africa as a teen and then to Australia with my husband and children in 1981 to escape apartheid. We settled in Brisbane and when my children went to university I did too. I studied Social Science, where I was introduced to Joseph Campbell and Carl Gustav Jung, and later did a Masters in Art Therapy. Before that I had been a nurse and a teacher of English as a second language. At some point my childhood love of fairy tales was re-ignited into a full-blown passion when I read an anthology of tales with a Jungian commentary and I knew I had found my vocation. 

 Jhilmil Breckenridge spoke with Stephen Gillatt about the issues of mental health and men and how society does not allow vulnerability in men. Stephen has recently written a mental health memoir as he wants to get more men talking about mental health.

How did you come to writing for wellbeing?

I have been writing and journaling all my life. Early on, I realised the power in putting things into words, and writing helped me to heal when my mother committed suicide. When I left my second staff journalism job to go freelance in 2001, I used journaling, along with studying lyric writing and acting, to unblock myself creatively. Later, I trained in life coaching and teaching and set up a successful English tutoring practice. Through this, I discovered that I had a talent for helping people to overcome the fears, blocks and shame that can stop them from fully-expressing themselves in writing.

Carolyn Shanti is the author of ‘Trap, Prey, Lust’. The novel is based on the true story of her own childhood, where she was brought up in a wealthy and privileged family in England. A secluded and idyllic mansion, surrounded by acres of private property was where she spent her childhood years. It was also a place of dark shadows and sexual secrets. Her father, a prominent businessman in the fashion industry was a member of a well-known occult society. As a young child, Carolyn suffered ritual sexual abuse and was raped, not only by her own father but members of the society. She was ‘groomed’ and the use of mind control techniques were put in place to work against her remembering the abuse or the perpetrators of these acts of violence.

Kate Heaslip runs Book Incubator, an organisation that runs literacy workshops for primary schoold children in Australia. The focus is on improving literacy, telling a story, and boosting creativity. Francesca Baker, Lapidus’ Outreach Manager, asked her a few questions…

A new report entitled A Society of Readers, commissioned by the charity The Reading Agency and conducted by think tank Demos, finds a significant body of evidence to show that reading can help to combat the growing issue of loneliness, as well as acting as a tool to protect future generations from loneliness. With nine million people in the UK currently feeling lonely "often" or "always", the research shines a light on the benefits of using reading as a form of social connection. To find out more about the report and what it means, we caught up with Edward Cutler, Digital Communications Officer at The Reading Agency.

Tony Page has used his experience as a chartered psychologist to craft an interesting psycho-history of his family secrets. Secret Box: Searching for Dad in a Century of Self, is published this month by Telling Stories. He spoke to Barbara Bloomfield about dads, families and the craft of memoir.