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The Disability and…Podcast gets right to the heart of some of the most pressing issues in arts, culture and beyond with a series of bold, provocative and insightful interviews with disabled artists, key industry figures and the odd legend. The Disability and…Podcast is currently monthly.
Intro
Welcome to Disability and… bringing together thoughtful discussion and debate. In this month's podcast, Disability Arts Online Founder, Colin Hambrook, chats with author, comedian, and psychotherapist Liz Bentley about her new book, The Suicidal Therapist.
Colin Hambrook
Welcome to the Disability and... podcast, this month, it's my absolute pleasure to welcome Liz Bentley, psychotherapist, writer, comedian, mother, wife, and musician. And Liz I've known for many, many years on the on the Disability Arts circuit as a singer/songwriter and comedian with her ukulele at the ready, and Liz is about to publish a book with survivor voices called The Suicidal Therapist, and that's what we're going to talk about today, despite the title as a content note, I should just say we won't be talking about suicide, but we will be talking about the book and so Liz, welcome to the podcast. Can you tell us a bit about how you came to that title? It's quite a provocative title.
Liz Bentley
Thank you for having me Colin. It is such a pleasure to be here and do this with you because we have known each other a long time, and you've been, I would say, sort of by the side of this project for so long. So, it's been a long time coming. So, thank you so much. In relation to the title do you mean?
Colin Hambrook
Yeah, yeah, the title because it started off as from London to Essex in 101 boyfriends.
Liz Bentley
Yeah, from Essex to London. Essex to London in 101 boyfriends. And I guess the theme of that blog that I did was around promiscuity, hey. But of course, it involved other themes as they came in, and I started to take it a bit more seriously. And went to an Arvon course, and then I got a writing mentor, the wonderful Rosie Wilby, and the title of the book kept changing. So, at one point it was Jigsaw, because it was like, I can't cope with all these pieces. Then there was another title, which I won't say because it kind of gave away too much about another of the themes of the book about my childhood trauma and then The Suicidal Therapist. And again, I can't really talk too much about it, because there are twists and turns in the book that Colin you know about, but I don't want to reveal because the aspect of part of the theme needs to be, in a way, hidden to the point it's revealed. Because I think it's the very essence of being a psychotherapist and having to deal with your own trauma.
Colin Hambrook
Absolutely. I mean, it reads like a real vindication of the powers and strength of facing mental pain head on for a book that deals with such a heavy subject, the narrative is run through with humour and that really, that really helps to bring the story to life. I'm intrigued how you, how you do that.
Liz Bentley
I'd like to know how I could not do that because my access into comedy was by reading a short story at a spoken word event, very seriously. And it was one of these promiscuity events, where it was a relationship with a with a man that I just met probably half an hour before, like you do, and it was the story of the sex that happened. To me, it was traumatic and I thought, oh, this is good, you know. And people laughed. And at that very same event, which was at the White Swan in New Cross Deptford, there were some people there that were part of a writing group, and they came up to me afterwards and invited me to their writer group. And that's how I kind of, oh, performance poetry. Didn't even know that that was a thing. That's what kind of got me into that world, if that makes sense.
Colin Hambrook
I was thinking, because the memoir, the memoir sits in an established tradition of Survivor memoirs and kind of thinking of authors like Janet Frayne, it's different from those survivor memoirs in that it opens with a conversation about the vulnerable position the therapist is in, almost as a pioneer in the land of taboo, holding space for unspeakable experiences, and as both the therapist and a recipient of therapy in the current climate, when there is, you know, that there's an acknowledged mental health crisis happening in the country. Y know, working within the NHS. How does that? How does that sit?
Liz Bentley
Well, I don't work in the NHS anymore. I well, I actually got really quite ill and needed to leave at that time. But all the psychotherapists in certainly Southwark primary, primary care and everywhere else, really got were got rid of and that was the time when CBT came in and the 12 session model, etc, or even six sessions. And I don't think I could work in the NHS now at all, because I would be so frustrated and so upset and angry and about, oh, I don't know, probably about 17/18, years ago, I absolutely loved my job. It was very much a sort of the doctors were all men, and then there was me, and then there was a nurse who was also a woman. Well at one point when I needed help and I couldn't afford private therapy at the time, supervision was being paid for weekly by the by the surgery, I had an extremely supportive manager at the time, June Robinson, who I will name check, because I will send her this, because she really was a dear to me and all the staff and patients and I went to my GP, who referred me wisely so to King's psychotherapy department at that time, at the same time I was referring one of my patients to the same department, and this completely freaked out the assessment psychoanalyst, I can't remember whether she wrote to my doctor or wrote to the surgery I was working for, but I know that my GP’s that I worked for and my manager got involved with this, deciding that I might be unfit to be practicing. And I was absolutely mortified by this, but it's almost like getting the book published. It's been trauma upon trauma and getting help sometimes has been trauma upon trauma. But this opened up a real sort of question at the time, and as I say, I was very supported by my GP and the GP’s I worked for my manager, so they weren't even going to see me. I just got this letter of a rejection because of whatever. And eventually she saw me for an assessment, and it was very awkward assessment. But what came out of that was I ended up with two years really good psychotherapy at St Thomas's with a great therapist, not only that, because my walking is always sort of up and down, and sometimes I can do public transport, and sometimes I can't, and they allowed me to have a parking space right by the room was I'd be seeing the therapist. Everyone with MS is completely different, so no one has the same mobility or fatigue. I mean, it's just a minefield, but they made it so accessible for me. But to get that help was really traumatic, if that makes sense, and it wasn't until you put that question, and I was thinking about it, that I remembered that I also work as a supervisor, and I supervise people that work in organisations and also I supervise private therapists to work with people in lots of different organisations. So I'm hearing a lot all the time, every week, I'm astonished at the lack of support for people that work with mental health, whether it's schools, colleges, any organisations, any organisations, particularly the NHS in mental health that do not get the support and mental health we are all wounded healers. I mean, the subtitle of my book is Confessions of a Wounded Healer, because the best, and I believe the best therapists out there, not necessarily all the best, actually, but the wounded healers really are able to understand and get on a layer of understanding, but the support that is out there for them is astonishingly lacking.
Colin Hambrook
I think that's why that why this book, what sets it apart from other survivor memoirs, and why it's so important because, because it really does, it really is a vindication of the of the importance and the power of going to those depths and working with the darker side of your experiences and coming to terms, coming to a place of acceptance and a place of healing. But the process, the road to that healing is, is, it's, there's no quick fix. It's, it's, it's a long and studied and for the person who's facilitating another to kind of to understand their trauma, that is, it's quite, it's quite a difficult thing to hold and I think unless you've experienced it yourself, how, also, how can you, how can you help other people? And I and the book really kind of speaks to the power and importance of the of those issues, I think. You were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis I think when you were, you were quite young and you went through as a very young child. You went through a lot of health issues that you talk about in the book, and the trauma attached to those. But what stands out to me is that several points you talk about dealing with multiple sclerosis in your own way, in a counterpoint to the medical model, way of doing things. And I wanted to ask you about your feelings about the medical model, and, and what that what that means to you.
Liz Bentley
There's a place for medicine let's say, I also think that looking inside yourself, really looking inside yourself, but not just inside yourself, in relation to the world, let's say you're going to come up with more answers than somebody prescribing you something that they've only known you for maybe half an hour, maybe only 10 minutes, maybe more, if you're lucky, because we are all so different. And I mean, we know that with any kind of medication, it works for some, it doesn't work for others. Why does it work? For some, why are those? The research is, it's never extensive enough to really understand what works and what doesn't. And that's the same, that's the same for therapy. I mean, we've got all these new, fashionable tools that psychotherapists can use, and the psychotherapy world, they're like constantly. We gotta, we gotta do EMDR, we gotta, we gotta train in DIT we've got to train in CBT, we've got to understand LSD, I mean, I could go on, but the sitting with the pain, the getting inside of it, alongside it, with it in with patience. And I would say advanced empathy is where your answers are going to come from. I'm a big fan of Gabor Mate, and he talks a lot about people with MS, and he talks about being in a group, being of groups with people with autoimmune disease, and the common denominator is that that they there's a real repression of anger. And repression of anger can be so psychosomatic, so physically interpreted, if that makes sense in a physical symptom. I was ill quite recently over Christmas, and I couldn't walk or do anything at all. And I could absolutely relate it to certain things that were going on in my life. And it was, it was really quite brutal, and I was very scared, and I needed to get back in touch with my MS nurse. I needed to get back in touch with my GP. It's taken me years to understand what my needs are, what my wants are, to be able to find the right people to help me. I mean, I have a team of people around me. I have a homeopath, I may say, around I mean, people that. I can call on when I need and they know me now. They know I don't cross boundaries and I'm respectful of their that, their access, etc. I have a cranial osteopath. I mean, I didn't know what that was. I mean, we talk about that. That's mentioned in the book, actually. Who else have I got? A massage, a local massage, person who really understands she's a friend, and I get discount because she's a friend and I probably we give and take with each other, because I'm a psychotherapist of 30 odd years. So, I've got things to give. It's a mutual exchange, if that makes sense. So, I think it's about finding the right support to manage whatever it is.
Colin Hambrook
And Survivor Voices has been an important part of your journey, especially with this book.
Liz Bentley
Well, we've only just begun. It's like it's a new relationship. So, Survivors Voices Press is very new and very exciting, and they want to be very trauma led in the way that they they're going to be publishing their books, and I will, I really am going to be and looking forward to being involved more. I've not, I've been totally focused on the book at the moment, and once the book's out, and then I'll have more time to get involved in we're hoping that I'll get involved in their writers group and involved in the press to help with this trauma led publishing, if that makes sense, because it is traumatic. Well, it was for me. I think I'm not the only one, but so it's a new relationship and exciting, and I'm only beginning to get to know them. They've been going for 20 years in the background, doing some amazing work, and they started off with helping people that were abused in the church. They are an abuse survivor led organisation that turned the pain of abuse into power to improve responses to trauma. And they run peer support, support groups, creative Healing Retreats, peer communities for Survivor researchers, writers, activists and those in faith settings. Yeah, I have, I have faith in in them, I'm coming from the outside into their organisation, and they're trusting me.
Colin Hambrook
And are they, are they a survivor led organisation?
Liz Bentley
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Colin Hambrook
I think, I think that's really important, that that kind of because, because it creates a sense of peer support. You know, it's something that was very important to me in my survivor’s poetry days, and survivors’ poetry continues, I think, to be a real beacon of light for a lot of survivors of the mental health system.
Liz Bentley
Because I've been very open about being a comedian and all my and I've got a website, albeit it needs a lot of revamping, but people Google you these days, and my prospective clients and clients, they sometimes choose me because they've seen my crazy comedy Life, or they might have read something of a blog or something, or they might find out I've got, MS, I think it's so important that psychotherapists are human beings, and that, you know, they suffer from the human condition as much as anybody else.
Colin Hambrook
The problem with psychiatrists is that 99 times out of 100 they don't understand, they don't understand what they're dealing with. They have a, you know, they have sets of labels that they abide by, and some of them make absolutely no sense. I, you know, I really don't believe in schizophrenia at all. I think it's a, it's a real nonsense of a label that has no scientific basis to it at all. And most of the other labels have the understanding of neuroscience. It's, it's advancing, but it's, it's still an absolute minimum. So, psychiatrists largely don't understand, you know, there are a few that come from a trauma informed perspective and that will admit that that drugs are not necessarily an answer. The psychiatrist manual, what was it called the DSM, it's a nonsense, and it really takes someone who has looked at their own difficulties growing up being a being a human being, to develop that kind of empathy that's needed with mental health issues. And you know, when I hear on the on the BBC that you know there's this mental health crisis, and you know, it needs to be addressed, and the government needs to put more money into it. I despair because, because all that means it is more drugs, more and which create more layers of dependence, which is kind of why I was really impressed with the way you, you, you kind of deal with the medical model, because you kind of take, you take or leave it when it, when it, when it's when it has value.
Liz Bentley
I think it's important to go into any relationship with, well, any, any, anybody that's supposed to be helping you with a with an idea that this person is here because, on some level, they want to help me, even if it's a quite a warped level, because they need to tick a box, or they need to get paid at the end of the month. But it's trying to find that through the mask, I mean, in psychiatry or any kind of NHS type model there is, I mean, even if they're not wearing the white coat, let's call it the white coat syndrome in where there's a big barrier, you've got to somehow get through that barrier to be seen as an individual.
Colin Hambrook
There's, there's a hierarchical relationship happening, isn't there? There's the, yeah, there's a power relationship and so often, especially with mental health, people come through that process just feeling further abused by the experiences that they had within the NHS.
Liz Bentley
In fact, this came up when I was with my lovely doctor this week, he was talking about my last consultation with a MS specialist, I said to him, You just reminded me of one of the reasons why I transferred from one hospital to another hospital is because, and this is when I was younger, so I wasn't 61 but maybe I'd have got it at 61 anyway. Who knows. But one of the first things he said to me when I walked into that appointment was, I like your dress? And that completely put me into a spin of, what the hell? And I, and I, I was in that, back into that sort of freeze of, why has he said it, is my dress nice? Should I be should I be pleased about this? Will that mean I get special attention, or does this mean that he's more interested in my dress than my notes, etc, etc, etc? And I said to this GP this week, I did say so. I said, I look back and I really wish I'd made a complaint about them back then, because that wasn't the only thing he said, by the way, that was one of the things that I remember. I mean, this is, this is about survivors, voices, for example, some of their training going into organisation, teaching about trauma, informed work.
Colin Hambrook
It's about deepening insights, isn't it? And, yeah, I think that's that, you know, that's another theme that comes through the book you You've talked a lot about the kind of the struggles that you've been through in writing the book, in the way that it's meant reopening wounds for you, yeah, but I get a sense also that through that process, you've also gained more insights into what trauma informed really means.
Liz Bentley
Yeah, there's this sort of, Oh, you don't want to go over it again. Oh no, once you've done that and you put it to bed, you don't want to go over it again. You know it's like, you don't want to be re traumatised. But I actually really disagree with that, because I think there is layer upon layer upon layer that can be worked through. And the deeper you go, I think the better you're going to feel. Is this the classic no pain, no game, when I was getting my mentor with help with Rosie Wilby, who was incredibly supportive. Rosie asked me a question, and I can't remember what the question was now, well, I kind of can, but it's really, I don't want to give, give, give too much away. But no one had asked me that question before, not a psychotherapist, not by hadn't asked it myself. I hadn't asked it relation to any of the reading I'd done in the research I'd done. And I was taken aback. And that was another sort of layer, layer of like, Oh my goodness. And that, so when I came to rewrite that chapter, it had changed. So, if I was to write this book again, it would be totally different Colin, because I started this years ago, it'd be a different book. It'd be a totally different book. And I read it now, and I almost can't recognise myself in a lot of it. But that's the nature of creativity, isn't it?
Colin Hambrook
Going back to what you just said, though about the GP, and kind of still kind of sitting with the shock of that, you know that a GP would actually say that to you and just reduce you to what you're wearing.
Liz Bentley
Yeah, well, this was the consultant. This was the consultant, the neurology consultant.
Colin Hambrook
You know, if I went see my GP, would they say the same thing to me, like, I like your dress?
Liz Bentley
Well, if you were wearing a dress, Colin, they may. They may well.
Colin Hambrook
It might be fun to experiment and try see what happens, but yeah, but it, it's a delicate balance, isn't it? You know how, how you, how, how you, you approach someone you know, dealing with, with difficult issues.
Liz Bentley
I get really frustrated with, with the counselling profession as well, and psychotherapy profession, with some of its training, or how new therapists come out of training is that they're kind of like left to feel inadequate a lot of the time because some of the basics of therapy is just sitting and listening and giving that safe space and self-disclosure, which is, I mean this, this consultant. I'm remembering something else that he said to me now he's self-disclosed about something to me. No, no, no, no, no, no, you listen and you do what is relevant to your profession. I mean, there is the sense of that. There is that fine line between lived experience and the wounded healer. So, a client might, for example, know what I do outside, because they can Google me. But when, when someone's in the room, it's like, this is their, this is absolutely, this is, this is about you.
Colin Hambrook
It's client space, isn't it? Going back to the book and each chapter is, is kind of begins with an epigraph, and in the introduction, you say that they are your creative understanding of aspects of the psychoanalytical process. It’s an, it's an intriguing framing of the book. I think it works. But it kind, of it takes a little while to get used to. You have to, kind of read and go, you have to go back and read, read those epigraphs again. What? How did you come to that point of deciding to use that framing?
Liz Bentley
I can't even remember, it might have been Rosie. It might be both of us. I have fun with it. And you know what? It's a bit of a piss take of labels, in some ways, part of it is like, I want to feel clever, and I was looking at them then, because I haven't I, I've got to read not I've got to the proof copy, the hard copy proof is coming next week, so I will need to read, re read the book again for the however, many’th time. So, I'll be revisiting some of these. But I honestly think part of it is like that sort of imposter syndrome that everybody's got that like I am a psychotherapist, and even though I came up out of school with pretty much nothing I did end up doing my diploma in my 20s to be a therapist and I did end up doing a master's degree at Goldsmith only because I was lecturing on the course, and the convener said, well, look, you know, you can snuck in on the on the year three, even though I didn't have a degree or a levels or anything, or pretty much. So, it's, it's, it's almost like a piss take in some ways. Now those epigraphs, they're, they're me looking at the chapter and thinking, what shall I call this? Let's, let's diagnose this. I'm going to diagnose this as So one of them, I mean, I, I was looking at them. I'll see if I can find it. If I can't, it's, um, it's quite funny. One I one of them is death instinct. And one of the words I use is, now I can't, I don't even know how to pronounce this, Colin. Help me. It's called analogous, a, n, a, l, o, g, o, u, s, analogous, that's it. Thank you. Analogous, which means, do you know what it means?
Colin Hambrook
It's something that's like something else.
Liz Bentley
Yes, yeah, you got it. You got it. You're an educated man. Colin, clearly, and I couldn't remember what it was, and had to look it up again. But what was, what is really funny about this is that the one of the Lorraine from Survivors Voices, who's been helping with the book massively, when they were doing another sort of edit, of edit of it. And in order, we're having to split up some of the words because of how the layout for dyslexic people. So, it's not, I can't remember the technicals for anyway, blah, blah, but the word, and that's, I can't even pronounce it again, analogous. Analogous had been split up with anal This is the joys of publishing. And she was telling me this, and we were just in hoots about this, because it was like, thank goodness you've spotted that, and we'll make sure that it's like, but ironically, it could have it just goes with the humour and the comedy of it all, Colin, really. And there was, there was a point at which one of my readers, before I got to Survivors Voices, one of my readers, I think it was when I was I'd signed with Confer actually, and they were sort of questioning the whether to have them in or not. And at one point I was going to get rid of them, but, yeah, who cares? It's like you can read them if you want. You can, you can perhaps learn something or not, or you could just skip them. It's, it doesn't really matter.
Colin Hambrook
I think, I think they do work because they the flow of the narrative. And without revealing anything. It kind of, it takes you through sort of the chronology of your various times in your life, and it leads to a specific point. And I think those epigraphs kind of, they, they do help drive that narrative. I love the idea that they're there for a bit of fun.
Liz Bentley
Yeah, well, I think, I think it's all got to be a bit of fun. Otherwise, trauma becomes, I mean, going back to your question about humour, I think trauma becomes too laden when it's when, when you can't you've got to laugh at yourself. You've got to laugh at yourself. Yeah, because it's ridiculous. Some of the things that have happened to me. I mean, even promiscuity, for example, that that writing about it. I mean some of it, you know, realistically, was really traumatic and abusive and all the rest of it. But, oh my goodness, the fun, stroke knee, some of these. And there are some incidents in the book that I've decided to use. There's a lot more of them. But when you're writing a book, I've learned, which is why I say that the therapists and the boyfriends and the friends have been amalgamated. Otherwise, there's too many people all over the place. You have to kind of pin things down a little bit to make it more cohesive.
Colin Hambrook
I have to, I have to say, Liz, you've, you've always been a really important voice for me within the Disability Arts world, within the Disability Arts community. I think, I think it was the first time I saw you perform was at Liberty in Trafalgar Square, and in about 2004 maybe I was blown away when I found out that you were a psychotherapist. At that point, I'd been in the Disability Arts world for just over 10 years, I think, and talking about impairment, talking about chronic illness, talking about conditions. It was, it was, it was really so forbidden within the Disability Arts world, I could obviously see the reasons for that, because there was, there was a strong resistance to the medical model, and we don't want to be cured. We're okay as we are. And that was that that was a really, really important kind of precept, or whatever, to, you know, to stand by in counterpoint to the medical model and the charity model, wanting to kind of see you as an object that, yeah, need of a cure, in need of in being this perfect being. But when, when you came in, into the Disability Arts world, I wondered how that was for you, because there's a tension there, I think, between being a therapist in a world where therapy is kind of seen very much as something that's dangerous or something that is oppressive.
Liz Bentley
Well, I suppose I've always felt like an outsider. So, no matter what group I'm part of, I've never necessarily felt really part of it. If that makes sense, there were aspects where I really did feel good about the Disability Arts, because it was, well, a, it was really accessible and B, it was a way to show my work, and in mainstream I was coming up. It wasn't so easy, although I did, and I think that's I think that's changing now, because I think the younger generation, the art out there and the performance is extraordinary. It's exciting. But I think back then, I think it was much more of a struggle. I mean, what was I doing? Colin, my stuff was so, so out there. And I mean, when I mean, I can't, some of the, some of the poems that I used to read out that were about me, my experience, I can't, I couldn't even read them out now. That's what I liked about Disability Arts, is because you could do whatever you wanted, everything was acceptable, even to the point when I did DaDa festival and I was reading one of my famous poems out, the thank you less poem where I say something that's like, I look back and I think, I don't think I could say that anymore, because of where we are, I would get, what's the word? They say, barracked, barracked. Yes, something like that. I like that. Barracked. I'd be barracked, yeah, and, but, but back then you could do it, and I would have one person walk out because they hated it, and one person say That was genius. But that didn't matter, because there was someone, there was somewhere else for that person that hated it to go to, and that other person might become a fan or bought a copy of the book that that poem was in, for example, but it didn't really matter. And I think that's there's a little bit of sort of touchiness now that that's slightly tricky. And I've always had to say, I'm writing about me. This isn't about my clients. I'm writing about the human condition that that sometimes mimics my clients, but it's about, it's my experience, and I can laugh about my own. But of course, if it touches somebody, which it might do in a completely different way. I mean, for example, I used to do a song about it was called recurring miscarriage clinic, because I had three miscarriages. And then after three miscarriages you get, you go off to the recurring miscarriage clinic, and it was so traumatic Colin. I remember going back to my friend's house and being really upset, and she just got me, she got me a piece of paper and pen and said, write a song about it. And I did, and I wrote the ‘didn't we have a wonderful time the recurring’ anyway, because it was my only way of dealing with it at the time was to make it so jolly. It was so happy. I had a wonderful time. But even that song, I didn't get empathy from this particular audience member for having had recurring miscarriage. I got told off because I was lucky to have got pregnant in the first place, because this particular person had fertility issues. So, this is an example of whatever you say, and this is the competitiveness, in a way, of whatever you say. Somebody's got it worse. This is a tricky, a tricky kind of line to walk along.
Colin Hambrook
The whole kind of thing around offense and being offended. We haven't, we haven't sort of come to as a safe or, or maybe there isn't a safe point really, at which we kind of challenge offensiveness, and we can all be offended, but we in a world where we value free speech, you know, the whole sort of cancel culture and shutting people down, I don't think that's healthy at all. It's a difficult balance, isn't it?
Liz Bentley
It's a really tricky balance, and I think there has to be the support there in the first place to allow somebody that's experienced any kind of disability and trauma, childhood trauma, to have that support in order to gain that responsibility. But you can't do that one without the other one if that makes sense. I mean, I'm triggered by the most craziest of things, and they're not the sort of things that would be a trigger warning on the BBC, let's say. And I can be furious about something I'm watching that everyone thinks funny or whatever. So, I mean, I, you know, I'm a product of my own criticism, or whatever you call that. You know, there's like, I it is a really tricky, tricky line, which I think the conversation has to be open.
Colin Hambrook
And going back to the book, I think the moments of humour that happened through the book really, actually kind of helped to put that line in the sand in many respects. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of sadness and a lot of grief that's expressed through the book, but the way you tell those stories, the humour that they're that they're kind of that they release, they give it another flavour, really, I think. We need to so slowly bring this to a close. It's been, it's been an absolute delight to have you on the podcast, Liz, and we could, we could chat forever about this stuff, really, it's, it's something that's very dear to my heart, and, you know, dealing with my own mental health issues and being able to talk about that openly, and it's a really important thing to do, and it's really, really great to hear about Survivors Voices. And I wish you all the best with the book.
Liz Bentley
Can I just also mention just some of the people that have just been alongside? Firstly, thank you, Colin, because you've just been so supportive with this journey. Also, Professor Brett Kahr, who also, who also writes a testimonial. Without him in the early days, I would never have got this far. Joan Elliot, who's from another publisher that didn't go, which is a long story. Joan Elliot, and also Tricia Wennell, who's also written a survivor's book. It didn't stop when it ended. There are people like this that have been alongside me on this journey, and, of course, Survivors Voices now, the team there that have been incredible, and I couldn't have done it without you and them. And I'm sure there's other people along the way, like my psychotherapist and my supervisor that, and my husband. You know, it's endless, that have been along this journey. So, I really appreciate this time with you Colin, thank you.
Colin Hambrook
It's been a real pleasure to finally have the book and to be able to read it. And I'm so pleased that we've, after five years or more, we've got to this. We finally got to the book being, being out.
Liz Bentley
Well, first of April. I think, I'm not sure when this will be put out, but I think it's first of April now.
Colin Hambrook
So, yeah, so do Google the book on Survivors Voices press, and it's been, it's been lovely having you on the show Liz, and a big thank you also to all of our listeners, and hope you've enjoyed this podcast. I'll sign out with a big thank you to the rest of the team at Disability Arts Online as well, and bye for now.
Outro
We do hope you've enjoyed listening to this episode of Disability and... further episodes of Disability and… can be found on the Disability Arts Online website at disabilityarts.online.