Disclosure - Ex social worker, Sophie talks about the impact of having her bipolar 'outed' to her manager

HI Gang! Did you miss me? What d’you mean who am I? Who are you? See…how’d you like them er…lemons…?

Welcome back to you, my second favourite listener…I’m trying to inject a bit of competition in here…just to make you, the walkamilers, a bit more edgy…

Yeah, you’re right, that’s quite enough of that – welcome to the walk a mile in my shoes podcast – I’m your host, Chris Young, and in this episode, I’ll be speaking with the delightful Sophie about a whole range of stuff…from her career as a social worker working in child protection, her diagnosis and experience of bipolar and what it felt like when someone ‘outed’ her and her condition to her manager.

She tells us about her experience of the mental health system – and how that drove her to set up a just giving page to raise money to give little bags of care – toiletries, pyjamas and other bits and bobs – to people with mental ill health as they try to navigate hospital admission, often via accident and emergency.

You can find her excellent blog here

I’ve got to say, this, for me, was the greatest start to a podcast conversation ever…but sadly, you’ll never get to hear that, because I forgot to press record! In my defence, it was the hottest day of the year…and, I am an arse…I’m sure you’ll agree we more than made up for that missing 8 minutes though…

Huge thanks to Sophie for coming on the show – it was an absolute delight talking with her. Remember, I’ve put links to her Just Giving and blog pages in the blurb.

Thanks to you too for coming along for the ride – you can follow me on Twitter @walkamileuk or, if Facebook’s more your thing – you’ll find our lovely group here

In other news, I’ve got solo episode coming up soon, especially interesting if you’d like to hear a bit about where I vanished off to. I’ll also be telling you all about a whole new project I’ll be launching over the next couple of months…stay tuned…

Until then,

I’ve been Chris Young,

And you’ve been rather lovely

Walk a mile