A born and bred “Rawmarsh lass”, Sarah’s roots in her community run very deep. Like many of us, her relationship with her hometown has not always been rosy, as she admits “I used to hate Rawmarsh, but I actually think that’s just been a lot of my own personal battle throughout my adulthood.” We sit down with her on an afternoon to delve a bit deeper into this personal battle and how it has shaped the woman and leader that she is today.
It seems a lot of her pull towards working in the community sector comes down to two factors: her own mental health journey and her experiences being a mother. She had her first son at nineteen and tells us that although she was set up with her own house and stable relationship, she didn’t know who she was. Later, after her first mental breakdown at twenty-four, during her twenties she was “constantly up and down”; she had some difficulties in her job that had got “more and more corporate as it went on” and things just didn’t feel right to her anymore. A year prior to having Freddie, her youngest child, she had a month off work: “I ended up back on anti-depressants, I’d had a life event that had really triggered my mental health and I went on a bit of a downward spiral. But it was kind of like a bit of a turning point for me.”
It was during her maternity leave that she spotted a message on Facebook from Luke, co-founder of S62 Community Together Rotherham, who had put out a post about wanting to support people struggling in the local area. Just before reading that she tells me that three young local lads had committed suicide: “It just really hits home doesn’t it? When there are these people, you knew that just live on your doorstep and you’re like, how have we got to this stage?” She had also had a baby during covid, a stressful and scary experience which saw her going through a caesarean in hospital alone, isolated from her now husband and two eldest children. This also shaped her decision, as she so eloquently puts it: “After that I think there isn’t much you can’t mentally put yourself through, you will get through it one way or another.” She decided to reach out to Luke and they met up in Starbucks and, as the classic phrase goes, the rest is history.
Working in the voluntary sector comes with its challenges, and can have its toll on anyone’s mental health, and for Sarah it is no different. She explains: “There have been a many a time where I have wanted to give up. I think the one thing that stops me from giving up is that I don’t want to go back to the life that I had before. I don’t want to stop making changes to people’s lives!” It’s clear that having a supportive team who she can be completely “real” with, is vital to keeping her on track. In the past her emotional side had been used against her at work, but it’s clear being allowed to have “a bit of a wobble” and being her true authentic self is the foundation of all she is.
Death, the theme of this years’ zine has been a marker of Sarah’s whole life: “My biological Father passed away when I was 3 months old. He was in an accident at the Steel Works at Aldwarke. Grief has just been a part of my entire life.” As she has grown older, she says that she has seen grief differently, broader and encompassing all loss. She tells us recently she has been grieving over her son who made the decision to leave her home to live with his Dad.
Interview from our zine IT COMES IN WAVES
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