I'm swimming to help young people with their mental health
- This is my first year diving
- in for youth mental health
Hello, I want to raise money for mental health support. As a neurodivergent young person myself who has lived experience with several complex mental health conditions, I want people to get effective help for things that they may be struggling with. I also want to advocate for better information about the needs that someone would have if they had differences and to make adjustments for these needs more easily accessible. After seeing psychologists for years with mixed results, my mother took the advice of one of my biggest helpers: A specialist that helped me through one of the toughest conditions to beat. The specialist said that when specialists aren't trained for neurodivergent people or to be trauma affirming they may not be able to treat people as effectively. Mum did find someone (even though this wasn't always easy. She truly is a supermum!) and now I'm doing a lot better. I want everyone to be able to feel comfortable and safe in living their lives and for them to be able to access help easily.
I want to help this charity because they will help reachout who has many neurodivergent people on their peer chat who helped me when there is a gap between appointments with my wonderful neurodivergent psychologist and I happen to struggle throughout daily life. It helps to connect to people who believe what you tell them and give you ideas on what you can do to make things better. Even if you don't come up with any strategies I find that just talking with someone who will try to help you ends up making things feel better already. I mention their wonderful neurodivergent peer chat workers because I know that speaking to someone who understands (whether due to lived experience or not) is great and I wanted to use an anecdote from my past to highlight this. I want the right help to be out there and easy enough to get to for all people.
I heard about this through Western Sydney university and considering that despite not having much time with studies and volunteering to do much else and also having gross motor skill delays (which would make it hard to do several kilometres of swimming) the idea of being able to choose how long you can swim for (although I think it would be more accessible to some if 1km wasn't the minimum) and also not being restricted by a date or location makes it easier for me to help.
Laps
Hello everyone! It has been a while since I posted something. I keep forgetting to do it! On Thursday I will do the final 9 laps of my goal (mum made me put them in now because today is the last day) I hope you have a nice school holidays!Thank you so much!
Hello everyone! I would like to thank you all for donating and/supporting me with this. I want to thank my mum for telling everyone and my gogo for telling the ladies about it. I also want to thank all of my family, mum's friends and anyone who has supported me. I didn't even think that I was going to reach the target but within less than 2 days since I opened the page we have exceeded it! I did my first 10 laps on Wednesday but they didn't really go how I expected as I had trouble swimming. I got nervous about breathing and tried to keep my chest afloat but then it would cause by back to curl inwards and it would hurt. When this would happen, I would try to stand upright but then buoyancy would make my float and roll over. Due to this mum would occasionally hold me up or push me. She even took the role of my arms at one point so I just had to kick. I didn't want her to do this and I told her not to but she wanted to help me until I was strong enough to be able to swim independently. I ended up swimming on my back and propelling myself through the water like how a jellyfish uses their bell. By the last few laps, mum was letting me do more by myself and just looking out for me so I didn't crash into anyone or stop floating and panic with water in my nose. When this happened she would help me again. I'm planning on bringing a pool noodle next time because I know that these are allowed for the challenge. I wanted to do more than 10 laps but I also had hydrotherapy after the first 10 and mum didn't want me to be tired for yesterday. She was right to tell me to stop though as I was so sore yesterday that I couldn't sit down comfortably for a long time. I have issues with my joints too and propelling myself lead to issues with my wrists, elbows and eventually shoulders as I tried to concentrate the force upwards as lower joints started to have issues. My right shoulder is usually quite reliable when it comes to staying in place but it had a few issues yesterday and it even caused me pain to pop my left one in (it doesn't normally hurt but it comes out a lot). Apparently the laps reset tomorrow for March when the challenge actually begins (this doesn't reset the donations though, so please don't worry) and so mum doesn't want to let me do more laps until March. She didn't want me to enter Wednesday's laps until later but I thought that it would be unfair.My Swim Progress
I've swum
1.00km (59 laps)
My Goal
1km
How do you compare to other participants?
Average Distance Swum: 9m
Average Distance Goal: 16KM
My Impact
So far this year I helped provide...
113
Young people with vital mental health support.
Fundraising Progress
Raised
$450
My Goal
$300
So far, you’ve raised 150% of your fundraising goal!
Raised
$1208
My Team Goal
$2,000
So far, you’ve raised 60% of your fundraising goal!
Raised
$3,604,011
All Goal
$3,600,000
So far, you’ve raised 101% of your fundraising goal!
My Team Members
Team Member
Joanne
Raised so far:
$132.48
Team Member
Brendan Hoey (C)
Raised so far:
$268.34
Team Member
lily wever
Raised so far:
$0
Team Member
Dakota Cook
Raised so far:
$450.25
Team Member
Bill Maharjan
Raised so far:
$15.00
Team Member
tan phu david nguyen
Raised so far:
$0
Team Member
Lily Morgan
Raised so far:
$341.45
Thank you to my Sponsors
$56.24
Bec Franklin
$50
Lorraine Wilson
$50
Mandy Cook
Go my greenie, honk.
$50
Catherine Waygood
$44
The Mangles
$33.15
Rhonda Dodds
$33.15
Cathy Shearer
You are a superstar Dakota x
$27.21
Dakota Cook
Honk honk honk honk honk
$27.21
Matched by Reef Shark Foundation
$22.58
Tracey Wiffin
Good luck!
$22.58
Natasha Barkee
Keep being amazing!
$20
Suellen Reeves
Great cause Codes!!
$8
Anonymous
mum made me do this.
$6.13
Lana Wilson
Good on you, Codes!
So very proud of you Code! And such a worthy cause. 🥰