This is my very first blog post on www.rainbowcrescent.ie and so, it felt fitting to explain our why - the business’ reason for being and how it came about in the first place.
In order to fully explain the reasons behind how Rainbow Crescent came to be, I’ll have to take you back to March 2020 and the dreaded start of the global pandemic. At that time, I was 6 months pregnant with my little girl, a pregnancy that had not been without its own challenges. We received the keys of our forever home on the day that it was announced that the schools were set to close and we moved in on the day that it was announced that we were going into that first lockdown. To say I was anxious would be putting it mildly to say the least. As some of you reading this will already know, I’m originally from West Cork - more specifically Ardfield - and am very close to my parents who still live there. I spent a lot of that first lockdown scared. Frightened of what might happen if I contracted Covid whilst pregnant, frightened of what might happen if my parents or family caught it, frightened of how the birth of my second child would go, frightened that I would be on my own in the hospital, frightened that she would not breathe when she was born and that she would be whisked off to NICU just like her brother had been. Just frightened, scared and anxious. Oh so anxious.
Of course, like most Irish people would do in my situation, I said nothing. I hid it from my husband, my parents, my friends and family, my GP, my midwives, everyone. I pretended that everything was fine and I was just fine with being stuck in my bubble in East Cork in a new village where I knew next to noone. Naturally enough, as you can imagine, this wasn’t the best approach.
A week before my daughter was born the lockdown lifted somewhat and my parents were, at last, allowed to come to Ballycotton to see us. It also meant that we had someone to look after our little boy when I went in to give birth so that I wouldn’t be alone. You’d think given my worries during the lockdown that this would ease my anxiety. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
The fear of a second lockdown loomed large over me. But more than that, the insecurities, anxieties and stresses I had been harbouring within myself for years started to eek their way to the surface until I couldn’t keep them at bay anymore. Eventually, when my little girl was about 2 months old and I needed to go to my GP about something else, he clearly realised something wasn’t quite right and was asking about my mood. I eventually caved and admitted to him that I was feeling “a little bit” anxious. He recommended a counsellor to me, told me to chat to her and we’d take it from there. I went on to attend therapy with that same counsellor for 48 out of the following 52 Fridays.
In February of 2021, seven months after I started therapy, things hadn’t improved majorly. I had learned techniques to deal with anxiety and I had certainly benefited from talking through anxieties and identifying triggers but I had been holding back. I hadn’t dealt about something I was struggling with - panic attacks. The panic attacks coupled with the unwavering anxiety I was feeling led me back to my GP and he, in turn, led me to a woman who has been in my life since, my Consultant Psychiatrist. I started taking medication in March 2021, however, it took months for the right dosage and balance to be struck. All the while my life had again changed. I had returned to my job as an auditor after being off for 14 months on a mix of sick leave at the end of my pregnancy, maternity leave, unpaid leave and annual leave. Returning to work was good and bad. Good in the sense that I was in a routine, more structured than things had been but bad in the sense that I was now snowed under with work as well as all of the other things that were going on. All of which would have been fine if I wasn’t experiencing panic attacks every single day, and sometimes multiple times in one day.
Things came to a head on a cold and dark afternoon in November of 2021 when I ended up down at my GP’s office absolutely bawling crying having had 3 panic attacks before lunchtime. I couldn’t see a way back from this. I was in a very dark place and felt like it would never get any better. My GP signed me off work on sick leave and stressed that a hospitalisation for my mental health would need to be explored if things didn’t improve as he was worried about my state of mind. I was worried, frightened and lost.
And then, while I was at the lowest ebb in my life, I found a hobby.
A hobby that allowed me to escape my anxiety, something that distracted me for long enough that I was able to move away from the near constant state of panic I had become accustomed to. It allowed me to be creative - something my career as an auditor didn’t allow for as creative accounting is somewhat frowned upon! I made items for myself and my family and gifts for loved ones at Christmas. The idea of maybe starting to look at it as more than just a hobby came to me at Christmas 2021 and I sat on it for a few weeks before making my mind up to register the business, Rainbow Crescent, with the CRO.
Fast forward to the first week of February 2022 and my mental health was in a much better place. Then, on the Thursday of that week I received a call from my manager who was in the unfortunate position of needing to tell me that my job was going to cease to exist in August due to redundancies. And there it was, decision made. My permanent job was going to be gone so instead of applying for new roles I took the decision that when my redundancy happened I would move to full time self employment and put everything I had into making Rainbow Crescent a success because I loved it so much. I loved everything about the work and it made me content, less anxious, less stressed, less likely to hit another catastrophic low. And so, I spent the months in between working on my website, sourcing suppliers, designing, tweaking practices, learning about materials and planning as much as I could.
Rainbow Crescent is intrinsically linked to my mental health. That’s why it was so important for me to launch with the Mind Your Mind collection and give 20% of the sale proceeds to turn2me.ie, an Irish mental health charity whose online platforms helped me at a time when things felt beyond help.
The why behind Rainbow Crescent is and always will be my mental health. Doing this work puts me in a better frame of mind than I used to be in. Since launching Rainbow Crescent I had not had a single panic attack - if that’s not reason enough to keep going then I don’t know what is.
This is the reason why our slogans are uplifting, why I want all of our products, be they in-house designs or bespoke customised pieces, to be as beautiful as possible so that they will put a smile on peoples’ faces.
I’m putting this blog post live after sharing a video about my own mental health on World Mental Health Day 2022. The theme for this year’s World Mental Health Day is making mental health a global priority. In my opinion, it will never truly be a priority unless we remove the stigma that still exists when it comes to mental health. That’s why I am sharing my story. If this helps just one person to speak up and ask for help, it will have been worth it.
Mind your mind. End the stigma. It is okay not to be okay.
As cliché as those things sound, they are all so important. Please don’t suffer in silence.
