Today, 10 September, is World Suicide Prevention Day. I don’t often write publicly about this part of my life, but today seems an appropriate time to explain something that many of our clients probably don’t know: Arctic Bee isn’t simply the name of my business. It represents something much more personal to me.
In 2019, I tried to take my own life.
I survived, but that wasn’t the end of the story. I had been experiencing serious depression for around six months and recovery wasn’t a case of waking up one morning and suddenly being better. I had to rebuild my life and, importantly, rebuild myself.
Starting my own business became part of that process, and Arctic Bee was born from my own journey of recovery, resilience and learning how to thrive again after one of the most difficult periods of my life.
Starting Again After Depression
When people talk about surviving suicide, there can be a tendency to concentrate on the moment itself. For me, what happened afterwards was just as significant. Surviving didn’t automatically mean that everything that had led me to that point disappeared.
Recovery took time. I needed to work out who I was again, what I wanted my life to look like and how I was going to move forward. Starting my own business gave me something to build, something that was mine and something that required me to keep moving forwards.
As the business became stronger, in many ways I did too.
It also taught me a great deal about resilience. I don’t mean the version of resilience that suggests we should simply put up with whatever life throws at us. Real resilience, for me, is about experiencing adversity, adapting to circumstances you may never have chosen and discovering that you are capable of rebuilding afterwards.
Why Arctic Bee?
The Arctic bee became a symbol of what I was trying to do with my own life.
Bees aren’t something we naturally associate with the Arctic. It is a harsh environment where survival requires adaptation and resilience, yet Arctic bumblebees have adapted to survive in extremely challenging conditions.
That idea resonated with me. Arctic Bee became a symbol of survival and, eventually, thriving in adversity. It represented the idea that circumstances can be incredibly difficult and life can look completely different from the one you expected, but that doesn’t mean you cannot adapt, rebuild and create something new.
When I started the company, I couldn’t possibly have known everything that would happen over the following seven years. Like every business, Arctic Bee has had good periods and difficult ones. I’ve made mistakes, learned an enormous amount, worked with some brilliant people and watched something that began as part of my own recovery develop into a real business supporting clients and providing work for other people.
For me, that makes the name Arctic Bee even more meaningful today than it was when I chose it.
Suicide Doesn’t Have One Face
One reason I think it is important to talk about my experience is that we can have quite a narrow picture of what somebody experiencing severe depression or suicidal thoughts looks like.
The reality is that there isn’t one.
People can continue working. They can have families, careers and responsibilities. They can laugh, have conversations, go out with friends and appear to everybody around them to be coping considerably better than they actually are.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 720,000 people die by suicide worldwide every year. Suicide is complex and there is rarely one single reason behind it. Mental health difficulties, relationship problems, bereavement, financial pressures, employment difficulties, physical illness, trauma and many other circumstances can overlap.
Those are huge numbers, but when I look at statistics like these there is inevitably something very personal about them for me. I know that I could have become one of those statistics.
Seven years later, I am incredibly grateful that I didn’t.
Recovery Doesn’t Mean Life Suddenly Becomes Easy
I think it’s important to say this because otherwise stories like mine can become slightly misleading.
Surviving a suicide attempt doesn’t mean everything afterwards becomes wonderful. Recovery isn’t necessarily straightforward and it certainly isn’t always linear. Life has thrown plenty of other challenges at me since 2019, and there have been times when things have been extremely difficult.
The difference is that I’ve learned considerably more about myself, about mental health and about my own ability to cope with adversity.
I’ve also learned that the way we feel at one particular moment in our lives isn’t necessarily an accurate prediction of how we will feel in the future.
When somebody is severely depressed, that can be incredibly difficult to believe. Depression can narrow your view of the future until it becomes almost impossible to imagine circumstances changing. You can only see life through the situation you are experiencing at that particular moment.
My life today is evidence, at least to me, of just how much can exist beyond a moment you cannot see past.
What I Would Tell the Person I Was in 2019
I wouldn’t tell her that everything was suddenly going to become easy, because it wasn’t.
What I would tell her is that there were things ahead of her that she couldn’t possibly see yet.
I would start Arctic Bee and build a business. I would complete a Master’s degree. I would begin training as a psychotherapist. I would meet people who weren’t part of my life in 2019, experience things that hadn’t happened yet and discover parts of myself that I didn’t know existed.
None of that was visible to me when I was severely depressed.
I couldn’t see Arctic Bee because it didn’t exist yet. I couldn’t see the people I hadn’t met, the things I hadn’t achieved, the places I hadn’t been or the person I would become because none of those things had happened yet.
That’s perhaps the most important thing I can say on World Suicide Prevention Day.
Not being able to see a future doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Seven Years Later
Seven years after attempting to take my own life, I’m writing this as the owner of the business that became part of putting that life back together.
I’m not sharing my story because I believe surviving suicide automatically leads to some wonderful success story. Recovery is much more complicated than that, and life certainly hasn’t been without its challenges since. I’m sharing it because when somebody is severely depressed, it can become almost impossible to imagine a future that looks or feels different.
If somebody reading this is in that position today, I can’t tell you exactly what your life will look like in seven years. Nobody can.
There may be people you haven’t met yet, opportunities you don’t know exist, places you haven’t visited, relationships you haven’t formed, things you haven’t achieved and versions of yourself you haven’t discovered.
You don’t have to be able to imagine all of that today. You just need to give yourself the opportunity to find out.
If you are struggling, please tell somebody. Talk to somebody you trust, contact your GP or seek professional support. You don’t have to wait until you have reached crisis point before asking for help.
If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, Samaritans can be contacted free on 116 123, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If you believe you are in immediate danger of acting on those thoughts, call 999 or go to A&E.
For most people, Arctic Bee is the name of a digital agency. For me, it will always represent something more: survival, resilience and the ability not simply to survive adversity, but eventually to thrive despite it.
That is why I called it Arctic Bee.