I love attending the I Can sessions.  It enables me to stay positive.  It’s like a circle of friends and Kay the wonderful lady who encourages us to consider positivity is fantastic. I especially like the fact that rather than just talking we get to stick all sorts of positive thought’s in our Life Planner.  This means that in between time I can look through it and remind myself to stay positive.

This wasn’t the sort of thing that I learnt in school or at home as I was growing up, so I grew up being negative and eventually when I came into contact with the right people learnt about being positive and setting goals. I was very positive for a long time but then started suffering from anxiety and depression it has taken its toll on my self-belief and positivity.

I can see changes in the women that attend the group each time I go.  It’s nice to be amongst women that are non-judgemental and also experience the same kinds of problems with mental health, so they really understand what each of us go through but in turn the I Can helps to keep us upbeat.

Some of the women also bring things to the session and that’s really nice, like poems, unicorn cards, cross stitching. One of the things we made with Kay was a little reminder, an I Can pebble which we wrote I Can on and popped it in a little drawstring bag, we can then keep this with us at all times to remind ourselves that WE CAN and not we can’t.

The lovely Beverley helped us make our own I Can bags to put all of our bits and pieces in from the group sessions.

I benefit from I Can an incredible amount as it enables me to focus on making good things happen to me because even though Kay helps me to stay positive. I do realise that I also need to help myself. I feel really lucky to be part of the I Can… group and also Cohort4.  It has changed my life so much.  It has also enabled me to have the confidence to make new friends outside of the group also and stop seeing friends that don’t care about me.  To also realise I don’t need or have to keep toxic people in my life, friends or so-called family.  I have made huge changes with all of the help and support from Cohort4 and I Can.  I realised my life wasn’t going to change for the better unless I made changes in my life.

Thank you so much Cohort4 and I Can… Hurrah

Love Sophie x