Brew Monday

Teapot Trust Young Voices get involved in Brew Monday  

You may know the 15th of January as ‘Blue Monday’, supposedly the saddest day of the year. However, it is also Samaritans ‘Brew Monday’, a positive alternative highlighting the power of sitting down with a hot drink and listening.  

At Teapot Trust we know that living with a chronic condition can be isolating – not knowing other people with experiences like yours, feeling different, and finding it hard to talk about your experiences of illness. We also know that for children and young people living with chronic conditions, there is no such thing as one universal saddest day of the year because the impact of living with a chronic condition varies so much from day to day. Some days symptoms can feel manageable, and other days, they can be overwhelming.  

The importance of these topics to us and our young people, as well as the day sharing a tea themed name meant we had to get involved!  

This year, Teapot Trust Young Voices are marking Brew Monday by sharing photos of their favourite mugs and what it means to have space to be able to talk about their health.

The importance of conversations to make you feel less alone:  

"Talking about my health really does make a difference to me realising that you are not alone in your journey and that there are other people going through similar situations as you really does help." 

"Having space to talk about my health helps me feel less overwhelmed by the constant decision making that comes with managing an energy limiting chronic illness." 

Talking to other people who ‘get it’ and how this can be more complicated with less visible conditions: 

“Living with a less visible condition means that I can meet someone else with a less visible condition too and have no idea unless one of us starts that conversation.” 

 "There is something especially important about being able to speak with other disabled young people, the sense of solidarity is everything especially when it can feel so isolating at times." 

“I think sometimes my friends and family don’t want to talk about me being poorly because they worry they will be reminding me or bringing it up when I don’t want to think about it and this upsetting me. This is silly because I think about it almost all the time anyway, I just don’t talk about it all the time because I worry about being a broken record or making other people feel weird.”

So, this Brew Monday if you have a loved one with a chronic condition why not take the pressure off them and be the one to start the conversation? If you don’t know how to start the conversation, then put the kettle on and try one of these conversation starters: 

• Has your health been on your mind much recently? Do you want to talk about it? 
  

• How have your symptoms been recently? 

• How are you feeling about your upcoming appointments/tests? 

• I don’t think I fully understand how your condition impacts you day to day. Would you mind explaining it to me a little more? 

• Is there anything I could do to better support you with your chronic condition?   

A huge thank you to the Young Voices volunteers who got involved in Brew Monday – we hope you join them! Let us know how your Brew Monday goes. 😊  

To find out more about joining Young Voices email Ally.