INTANGIBLE

WELCOME

The Intangible website has been developed as a portal and "toolbox" to provide creative opportunities and projects that use the "lived experience" to raise awareness of issues and experiences of carers, families and friends supporting someone living with mental illness.

The Intangible Project wants to capture your story, amongst the backdrop of the community within which you live … it starts within the Far West, where will this journey take you next?

Why is this Project - about real people from a real place - called Intangible? A word meaning "unable to be touched or grasped; not having a physical presence; difficult to define or understand." Mental illness, unlike physical illness is often not seen or understood. This Project is based on the thoughts, emotions and experiences of people who care for someone living with mental illness.

Caring for someone comes from an emotional impulse. Caring is something we recognise, name and describe. Caring is something we do, and something that we feel, but something that we cannot touch. Looking after someone living with mental illness can often involve practical things like making them a meal, washing their clothes, or getting them to an appointment on time. The impulse that makes us care, the determination to keep going, and the love shown along the way, all remain intangible.

REAL PEOPLE – REAL VOICES

The driving force of my caring role is 'love'. I have no control over what might be. I can't take away the pain but I can give my love, for love endures and I believe gives strength and hope. Life is much more than survival and existence. Everyone of us needs love to sustain and maintain for laughter, happiness, comfort, support and a 'sense of belonging'. As a carer, I have the same needs in order to face day to day challenges. The pain of your loved one can take grip; it has the ability to consume you with grief, like an insurgent on the battlefield of your heart, totally immobilising you, an 'unwanted trespasser'. Lurking beneath the depths of despair is 'love' just like a tiny seed beneath the earth's crust in drought – waiting, resting to rekindle, a rebirth, a new strength emerging, sometimes much stronger, ready to face new challenges as do the seasons of life, for love endures. "I will love you 'til the sun don't shine and I will love you always".