In episode 272 of The Just Checking In Podcast we checked in with Rose Rowkins.
Rose is the Founder of Start The Conversation.uk, a suicide prevention training organisation.
Rose has had a hugely varied career and has worked in the mental health space for over two decades.
She started by working at Samaritans in her early 20s and progressed rapidly to become a trainer of other people to become Samaritans.
As a long-time Brighton resident, she then managed two mental health youth projects in the city, including ‘Safe Space’ and the ‘Right Here’ project.
From there, she trained and worked as an English teacher, then later as a counsellor (working mainly with young people aged 13-25 and women affected by domestic abuse) and in 2015 as a suicide prevention trainer.
Last year she was the volunteer lead for the Brighton leg of a seminal campaign called ‘Baton of Hope’ run by Baton of Hope UK.
The campaign travelled to 12 cities across the UK in 12 days, where 90 people affected by suicide or had personal experience of suicidality themselves, carried the baton across the city in a 27km route, which culminated in a showcase event at the Brighton Dome.
Now, alongside providing suicide prevention training to a host of organisations, she is a Director of ‘Speak Their Name’ (STN) which allows users to create digital memorial pages for loved ones who have died by suicide and provide them with a permanent legacy, like a digital patchwork quilt.
In this episode we chart Rose’s career and how it led to her involvement from Samaritans to Safe Space to Speak Their Name – and everything in-between.
We then do a deep dive into the work that STN does, what it wants to achieve in supporting those bereaved by suicide and reducing the stigma.
For Rose’s mental health journey, we discuss: her perfectionism and people-pleasing she did in her childhood, the suicide of a family friend when she was a teenager and the impact that had on her career, her mental health struggles whilst working out in Australia and the suicidality that accompanied it.
We finish by discussing motherhood, Covid-19. the importance of community and in Rose’s words, ‘finding your tribe’.
As always, #itsokaytovent
You can find out more about Speak Their Name here.
You can find out more about Start The Conversation here.
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