Michaela's very first marathon challenge

Michaela to run for Parenting Mental Health

This year's Yorkshire Marathon will be Michaela's very first marathon challenge.

A charity close to her heart, PMH is one of the few charities in the UK that specifically helps parents who are supporting a child with mental health challenges and whose needs and impact for positive change are all too often overlooked.

We caught up with Michaela ahead of race day and to find out more about her motivations for running, check it out below. 

"My name is Michaela and I will be running the Yorkshire Marathon for Parenting Mental Health because they helped me through a tough period with my youngest child Alex.

Alex is 16 and the depression came at a time when school is just ramping up for exams, which says a lot about the pressure kids are under. 

Running is my ‘me’ time, where I shut off from emails and stress and I’m loving it. I’ve been injured before so I’m being careful and not overdoing it as I just want to make it to the start line safely.

I didn’t discover PMH until about a year ago through Classic radio's ‘make some noise’ charity fundraiser and it’s the best thing that could have happened.

The founder Suzanne Alderson has written a book called Never Let Go which helped me massively.

The Facebook community on PMH has been so helpful and knew exactly what we were going through. It’s been a year since my child reached crisis point but are thankfully on the road to recovery through the help of CAMHS.

PMH have agreed that I can buy some of the books that helped me to share in the local community in Selby and the rest will go to charity.

My friend has made me a personalised T-shirt to run the marathon in.

I’m currently wearing it on my training runs. I’m hoping I can help other parents out there who haven’t realised there is help for themselves if they want it and that parenting doesn’t have a manual, but when things go wrong it’s ok to seek help.

As parents, we all too often just focus on getting help for our child and we’re too exhausted to be of help ourselves. I’m currently doing their Partnering not parenting course which gives parents/carers the tools to move forward together in a new way. I’ve found it very helpful and the community support is great too.

I’m mostly looking forward to just completing a marathon with lots of people around me with the same goal. The atmosphere sounds fantastic (according to my friend who has done lots of Yorkshire marathons!"

Good luck Michaela, we can't wait to cheer you on at the finish line!