Our fantastic Social Prescriber Stephanie is running the London Marathon 2024 on 21st April.
Stephanie has wrote a short piece about why she took on this challenge and how its influenced her work as a Social Prescriber.
I am Stephanie the Social Prescriber based at NCYC. I am currently training for The London Marathon 2024. I will be running for The British Heart Foundation in memory of my Dad whom I sadly lost last year.
My role at NCYC aims to support the community to offer advice and confidence building to help prioritise and work through anything that may impact mental or physical wellbeing. Outside of the centre I have been on my own personal journey of grief, and all of the feelings that come with losing a loved one. I have tried to make a conscious effort to practice all of the advice and healthy habits I support my clients to achieve.
One thing I have taken from marathon training is the journey is the most important part of the race, it takes lots of small achievements for the end result. My Role supports individuals, helping them navigate on their journey to better wellbeing through signposting to services, offering a listening ear or working with them to problem solve.
Reflection is important to be able to look back and credit ourselves for the adversity we faced and the journey we took to work through it. Marathon training is not an easy journey but neither is the grief of losing a loved one. For lots of people the thought of running a marathon is not obtainable or too daunting to consider. Breaking down the training into smaller mile by mile achievements helps make the end objective feel more achievable. This is a key part of social prescribing, helping someone identify or break down their current needs to make finding solutions more obtainable and less daunting.
Since training I have lost toe nails, run miles in all weathers both early morning and late evenings. My Sunday afternoons are spent running up to 3 hours at a time in preparation for marathon day. I have learnt its ok to admit when something is hard. Sometimes when faced with adversity and moving through a journey, we don’t always admit when things are difficult, if we didn’t admit when times were tough we wouldn’t learn how to move forward and heal.
I have been given the opportunity to create a positive outlet for myself through exercise and discipline to support the management of my grief, as well as potentially helping others. The process has taught me about how we deal with negative or difficult life experiences. In life sometimes we have to run the race we are given and not always the one we hoped for, meaning what we choose to do while running is what counts. I hope in my role at NCYC I am able to help guide others on their ‘run’ when faced with adversity to help find solutions to support better wellbeing.
We wish Steph the best of luck and know she will do brilliantly!
