Sodit provide mental health support to Women in Sheffield. You are not alone and we can help.
31/07/2025
We had a little stowaway in our Natural Connections group this week! Poppy the kitten took a ride in her Mum’s cat backpack and sneaked into our session!!
I think at first she thought if she stayed really still on the shelf we wouldn’t notice her and she’d look like an ornament - that didn’t last long!!
In no time she was whizzing around the office noseying at everything we were doing and just being extremely cute. She even posed in one of our Sodit bags! ❤️
Amazingly we still managed to get lots of work done with fossils, rocks and modelling clay which I’ll share later but Poppy certainly gave everybody’s mental health an unexpected lift that morning! What a treat! 🐈🥰
30/07/2025
We had a lovely final session of our Wellness Planning course today & planned a BBQ after we finished our last bit of work.
Everybody contributed something - we had home made jerk chicken, rice and peas, halloumi & veg kebabs and tzatziki and flatbreads. It was so wonderful to all bring something and create a beautiful whole just like we’ve been doing in the sessions.
We have worked so hard together over the past months and women have bravely shared their trauma and their mental health struggles as we have worked through the course content. We have connected through our shared lived experience & helped each other think about how the Wellness Planning material can help in individual situations.
I’m so proud of every participant and I hope they will carry everything we have learnt with them as they move forward in life. 💖
And I must just say that everything was delicious!!! I’ve definitely been working with a talented lot in the cooking department!
Time for a short summer break before our next courses start running but I’ll put the info up as soon as we are teaching again. 👍
10/07/2025
Wow - it was a hot one in our community garden and many hours were spent watering before the hosepipe ban hits! We are certainly going to be getting our steps in over the coming weeks running to the tap and back with our watering cans!! 💦
Made a beautiful bouquet out of hydrangeas for our office reception. It’s so lovely hearing people comment on how nice it looks and I like thinking about all the women who have tended to those plants in our nature mental health group. So proud of them all!!
Practised making mini bouquets in old spice jars so we’ll be making these in group on Tuesday and then people have little jars of joy to take home.
I’m excited as our purple peppers are looking very purple and starting to get quite big quite fast so we’ll be trying purple peppers soon. It’s also that lovely time when you start spotting bits of yummy red & orange when you look in the greenhouses - lots of tomatoes to come and produce we can share with all the people when use Sodit’s services. That’s the best bit - seeing somebody enjoy eating something gown by our group (that’s if I can stop eating them as soon as I see them 😬)!
So lots of joyful stuff to share today despite the heat - I hope everybody manages to find some respite from the heat over the coming days and do stay safe if you are venturing out! ❤️
09/07/2025
We were thinking lots about wellbeing in Wellness Planning today. Identifying what we are like on a not too bad day is so important as sometimes we feel like we are never well. Looking at something like this can remind us that we do have days when we feel a bit better and the bad days won’t last forever (even though I know they try their best to make you feel that way!).
We also began work on thinking about Early Warning Signs - all the little behaviours that start to creep in when you are getting poorly and then suddenly collect together and snowball into terrible distress or crisis. We’ll make a plan of action for when we notice those next week.
Wellness planning is so helpful in the self-management of mental ill health as it helps you to know yourself and know your behaviours, it gives you a bit of forewarning you may be getting unwell and gives you chance to put some plans in action.
Mine has helped me many times as I always used to think ‘oh that’ll not happen again, I’ll not get that ill again - I’m better now’ and when the inevitable relapse came I had no plan to fall back on and chaos and distress ensued. Having a plan is one of the best things I’ve ever done for my mental health! ❤️
08/07/2025
Lots of wildlife around us today whilst we were busy with group activities in our Natural Connections session.
A robin who’d just been having a good go at the sunflower seeds, a juvenile great tit getting ready to hit the bird feeder (which is still quite new for him, I think they liked mum feeding them better!), a glowing Comma butterfly skipping around and stopping to energise his body in the sunlight and a beautiful yellow ladybird who is hopefully eating the aphids on our lupins!
What a lift for our mental health it is being surrounded by such beautiful life in the garden we created. I really do think our garden is just a spring of wellbeing - it makes you feel better even if it’s just for a little while. It rejuvenates my soul - but then on hot days like today I get home and it feels like the rejuvenation wears off fairly quickly! 🥵🤣
We have summer places on our Natural Connections course available, open to all woman struggling with their mental health. Drop me a DM, e-mail Chrissy@sodit.org or message 07301 969 668 if you would like some more info and fancy giving a session a try. 💚🌸🌻🪴
06/07/2025
Our Steph is a real life superhero!!! She managed to complete the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge in 11 hours and 15 mins! The gang covered 24 miles and a 5000ft ascent in that time. They had 50 mile an hour winds, buckets of hailstones, lashings of horizontal rain, pea soup mist like you’ve never seen - you name any kind of bad weather - they had it!!!
Everybody who took part is a hero but obviously we are super proud of Steph who put herself through all that to raise money for Sodit so we can continue to help the Women of Sheffield who are struggling with their mental health.
She’s just about recovered - although very limpy as has done her knee in, so very small walks and lots of physio for the foreseeable!
Thank you Steph for all that you do for Sodit, we all value you so much. ❤️❤️❤️❤️
The local giving page is still pinned to the top of our profile so please do contribute if you can spare anything. Every pound helps us to keep on helping others. 🙏
Once again congratulations Steph!!! 🥳🎉🥳🎉👏
01/07/2025
Phew! Bit of a humid one in our garden today but that didn’t stop a couple of our group members getting to work painting our new skip find fences. They did a great job - just look how smart the entrance to the garden looks now! Brilliant! 🤩
Also we had a visit from a Gatekeeper butterfly and a Large Skipper. First time we’ve seen either of those so I was really excited - I just love watching the biodiversity of our garden grow. I can’t wait to see what surprises nature has in store for us next! 🦋💚
29/06/2025
Like many gardeners we are getting worn out by the watering! It’s such hard work keeping our gardens hydrated at the moment. I was watering on Saturday and felt such a sense of pride as my my eyes feasted upon all the colours and made my brain feel so happy.
Every single one of these flowers was sown as a seed or planted as a bulb by somebody who was struggling with their mental health. Somebody who may have been struggling with the concept of there being a tomorrow, somebody who wanted to stay in bed and hide that day, somebody who had to push themselves harder than ever just to get on the tram to get to group. Somebody who had to try so hard when it would have been easier to stay safe in their comfort zone at home.
I’m so proud of everybody in our Natural Connections group who has pushed through things like this, got to group and got growing. And look what they have achieved! Just so wonderful and such a piece of beauty to add to the world. I think we will spend some time on Tuesday taking a moment to stop and admire everything they have achieved and hopefully I’ll be seeing lots of people filled with pride! 💖 🌺 🪴
Sodit have been a part of my life for nearly 30 years and support so many women in Sheffield who experience mental health illness , Physical disabilities and neurodiversity. SODiT has been a life saver for me personally and running the organisation is a privilege , i have seen so many women move on....
26/06/2025
Please give this YouTube vid a watch of me rambling on about how our amazing CEO Steph is doing the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge fundraising for SODIT this Saturday! 24 miles, 12 hours, 3 massive peaks!!! She’s a super hero!
Our Just Giving page is at the top if you would like to support her and support our work helping Women in Sheffield struggling with their mental health. Every pound helps, thank you so much! 🙏❤️
Just giving link is in the comments - thank you for watching! 🥰
26/06/2025
We found some great pieces of wood in a skip yesterday and have been able to use them to create some fabulous entrance fences for our community garden! Super pleased with how they’ve turned out! They’ll be getting painted up next week by the Natural Connections group so will be looking super duper smart & welcoming! 😍
I was also really pleased to find a bit of guttering last week and finally be able to try making a guttering planter. It has radishes in it which I think we’ll be eating very soon given the rate they are germinating!
It’s so wonderful creating something out of other people’s rubbish and we don’t yet receive funding for the garden so finds like this and a bit of imagination are super important! Definitely a big wellbeing boost for the Sodit team today! 💖
25/06/2025
We have beautiful yellow Evening Primrose starting to fill the back borders of our garden and fill the air with a lovely lemony scent as dusk approaches.
I picked an old seed head off a plant in Hillsborough Park two years ago and scattered the seeds hoping something would happen. Look at the results! All for free - I love nature for this. It blesses us with seed heads and if we just try we can have such wonderful results. Also the bees love them which makes me triple happy! 🐝
So if you spot old seed heads in a few months on summer walks, take one and keep it safe in your pocket. Scatter when you get home, then just wait for the year you have a beautiful sea of lemon yellow to enjoy. 💚
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Supporting women in Sheffield who experience depression & mental health distress.
We are a support group for women who have/are suffered/suffering from depression and mental health illness. The overall aims are set out in our charitable papers but the main ones are - Empowering and supporting all women from the community who have experienced mental health distress - to educate the wider public in mental health issues relating to women and across all society - provide safe locations for meetings which have a friendly environment - to engage with all women regardless of inequalities.
Why the community needs us
Survivors of depression is all about giving women a chance to move on from their illness or period of life which has been very straining on family life and personal life. We have seen many women now who have managed to move on from the group towards a happy and fulfilling life. This is at the heart of what we do, and also what the government’s reform agenda in Health is about. We are very passionate about supporting women in Sheffield, and have been only funding on a very ad hoc basis.
Our impact on the community
We are a small Survivor and user lead women's organisation based in Sheffield who have been running for over 20 years. We support women who experience mental health distress by the use of peer support, one to one talking therapy, campaigning, mental health awareness training, and telephone support as well as other activities. We are 100% run by volunteers and have been awarded region and national awards for out work locally in Sheffield for conferences we have held.
