A Million Blankets is coming to South Shields' Customs House

Richie Bow-Grace, the creator of A Million Blankets, speaks about bringing the show to South Shields.

Transcript

00:00So, A Million Blankets basically is a show that I put together about taking your blanket off.

00:04We all carry around loads of blankets about our life and life lessons that we learn and things like that.

00:08But I got diagnosed with autism when I was 34 and for 34 years I felt different from everybody

00:13and I've masked a lot of my needs and that's why it took so long.

00:17But I also have a thing called an attachment disorder and it's something I got before when I was adopted.

00:21So I decided when I got to 40 that would be a good time to do a show called A Million Blankets

00:25about taking off the blankets, showing people who we are and basically trying to share my mental health journey

00:30through my eyes, through autism, attachment disorder, anxiety, depression and mental health.

00:36It's very nerve-wracking, it's very scary. I think I'm going to have to take a little bit of time off after the show

00:41because basically we're going to be doing a story about a little boy from being adopted from 2 and a half

00:45all the way up to the age of 40 and all of that consists of adoptive parents.

00:49When we get into our teenage years about how hard we are to cause things like anxiety and mental health

00:55and I did over a decade worth of therapy on myself to try and change my life around

00:58but one thing that I've never been able to cope with is a thing called an attachment disorder.

01:02So obviously you've got Gracie here which is my tool that I use personally to try and cope with this understanding

01:07of having a full bath but having a tiny little bit of neglect empties that bath dead quick

01:11and how that goes on every single day no matter what I do and how much I talk about it, it never goes away.

01:16So it's going to be a very big story but one of the cool reasons that I would like to do this story

01:20is because I was in the newspaper in 1986 and it says on here, a toddler's hair fell out in Tufts

01:26and it's all about how my story of being adopted all came around and what happened after being adopted

01:32and why I got put into an adoption circle but this is what caused this kind of attachment disorder

01:37and what kind of started off my journey of mental health and I just basically depreciated over the years

01:42until it got out of control and I did a few things like self-harming and gambling and a couple of suicide attempts

01:46but basically one of the key messages for Million Blankets is the importance of sharing mental health with other people

01:53and if you don't have a lot of people around you then go into the GP and talk with them

01:56because talking about mental health kind of really saved my life.

01:59I feel like I'm in a journey of my life now where I can give back to the community to try and help the community

02:04understand mental health because there is big weights in the NHS and there's a lot going on.

02:08I think sometimes even voicing to other people is really scary so that's kind of why we decided to do

02:14a Million Blankets which is on in February, 15th February at Customs House in South Shields and started out by 7.

02:21We've got singers, we've got dancers, we've got a Big Bang, we've got like, you know, there's lots in there

02:26and it's all about a show about the boys' bedroom and what that kind of thing is and what they did to hide their autism

02:31and hide their attachment disorder and it's a journey through that person's life right till the end

02:35and how we all bring that together and put it into a suitcase of putting all of our mental health and voicing it.

02:40So it's a funny one because it helps me with my mental health by doing these types of shows

02:44but in return can help a lot of other people see that they're not alone.