Mental wellbeing and a positive outlook are important factors to a healthy lifestyle, whether you’re a professional athlete or a primary school pupil. But how to achieve these goals can be tricky for anyone facing life’s challenges.
Former Crusader and wellness advocate Tim Bateman is hoping the two kids books he’s written might create solutions and normalise emotions associated with sadness and loneliness.
The Sad Banana and The Lonely Lemon have been for sale for a few months, and are now available through the Crusaders Shop with support from the Crusaders’ own Crusade With Heart Foundation.
For every book sold through the shop, Crusade With Heart will donate one book to a worthy school or community group, the idea being they either pass it on to a child who they think would benefit from them, or have them as a resource to share with the community.
Tim and the Crusaders players have embarked on a school visit programme to read the books to kids and get them talking about mental wellbeing and their emotional reaction to situations.
The Sad Banana helped kids to process feelings of sadness and how to control your response to those emotions, while The Lonely Lemon is about loneliness and finding connection to get through those hard times.
“We are trying to get across those key messages in these books, and normalise those feelings. Sadness and loneliness are things we all experience, even big strong guys like the Crusaders,” Tim said after a productive sharing session at Somerfield Primary School.
Tim played 51 games for the Crusaders between ’07 and ’19 and 52 games for Canterbury at NPC level. He also played for the Hurricanes and spent some time playing in Japan before retiring. He opened O-Studio in 2020, a wellness and fitness centre in central Christchurch.
“I learned a lot through 17 years of professional rugby, dealing with missing out on teams or selection, injuries and performance,” he said.
“I absolutely had times in my career where I felt alone or upset, and always tried to focus on how to get through those things and those are the messages that have hopefully come across in the books – how do I control my response.”
Somerfield Primary School principal Denise Torrey said the books were a useful resource to help explain potentially complicated emotional reactions to kids who may otherwise find it hard to talk about them.
“What I really liked about Tim’s books was that he was able to put those messages in kids-speak so they understood the messages really clearly and that even the big guys, the Crusaders, have emotions and they were able to explain to the children what that was like for them,” Torrey said.
“We’re very fortunate that he’s gifted us a couple of those books and we’re looking forward to sharing those across the school.”
One of the core focuses of Crusade With Heart is improving the mental wellbeing of our community, and part of this is championing people or causes who are making strides in this field. Tim Bateman is a classic example of someone who is crusading with heart and working to make their community better. We’re really proud of him as a former Crusader and a hugely positive influence on our Crusaders whanau.