‘Recognising and recording the individual bravery of those living with chronic illness, one bead at a time’
Welcome to Bravery Bottles!
What is the project about?
At the beginning of 2018 - nearly 6 years into living with chronic illness - I set up a positivity project for those who also have a chronic illness (be that physicsl, mental, emotional, or a combination). That project - Bravery Bottles - has has more interest and success in the 6 months it’s been running than I ever imagined it’d get, and that’s shown in the sheer number of participants taking part today.
If you don’t have a chronic illness, you wouldn’t believe the amount of people who class themselves as ‘chronically ill’, be that physically, mentally or emotionally. There are both a whole array of illnesses and those with an chronic illness - the type, severity, and impact on life differing for each person. 
The focus of Bravery Bottles is on the definition of the word ‘Bravery’ and an award is given from the participant to themselves when they feel that they’ve personally acted ‘bravely’. What the participant classes as brave personally is up to them, but the purpose of the project overall is to redefine ‘bravery’ and those who are considered as ‘brave’ within the chronically ill community. The aim is to include anyone facing any chronic illness, who has challenged their own limits, stepped outside of their own comfort zone, and achieved their own goals, and for this to be recognised and rewarded.
There are some aspects of illness that, by no fault of their own, wouldn’t even enter the minds of those without an illness and generally wouldn’t be given a second thought by the remainder of the chronically ill community, but to you may be the hardest thing in world to face. It’s in those exact situations that individual bravery can be rewarded, irrespective of the opinion of anyone else.
Because of the amount of people who class themselves as chronically unwell and/or disabled (a decision I think only the person in question can and should make), there are so many projects and organisations set up, encouraging positivity and motivation and distracting from illness - whatever that may be. My project is just another example of that. However, unlike most illness-based projects that reward you with (beads, ribbons, cards etc.) for your positivity in hospital, ‘staying strong’ when you’re being blue-lighted to resus, surviving an ITU admission, getting through major surgery (you get the idea), Bravery Bottles puts you in charge of your rewards. You decide when you deserve to be rewarded, what you deserve a reward for. It also allows you to reward yourself whether you’re in hospital or not, and equips you with the means for doing so (beads are the rewards in the first instance in Bravery Bottles - see ‘how the project works’ (which you'll find as a tab at the top of the page) for more information.
How does ‘Bravery Bottles’ differ from other similar projects?
Put simply, the difference between my project and other similar well-known projects is based on the definition of ‘bravery’ within the chronically ill community, in particular who and what is considered as ‘brave’. The majority of other similar projects are aimed at those with an illness that, at times, means lengthy hospital admissions, the need to be blue-lighted to Resus in ambulances, require multiple ITU stays, need regular surgery etc. as their lives are at risk. Having to face ‘acute emergency’ type scenarios like this is, of course, very scary and no doubt deserves recognition and reward - and this project does just that.
As well though, it extends to include the people who still have to face, manage and cope with a chronic illness as part of their daily life, but who don’t necessarily have the ‘acute emergencies’ as mentioned previously as part of their illness. Those who have a ‘stable’ illness, or one that doesn’t require emergency hospital admissions, either because of the nature of their illness, or because they have community care implemented to allow them to be cared for at home when they’re more unwell than usual, are often not considered ‘ill enough’ to take part in these sort of similar projects. Not only is this unfair to the patient, but it also encourages competition within the medical community as to who is the ‘most ill’. Having thought about this, it made me realise that unless you spend a lot of time as an inpatient in hospital, you are almost always forgotten about, and hardly ever, if at all, considered as ‘brave’.
Summary of the message portrayed by the project
