Have you ever not felt accepted somewhere?

This can be so true when you’re feeling low or lonely. I have experienced this.

Have you ever not felt accepted somewhere, maybe at a party, in the office or even in your family? Maybe you’ve walked into a room and everyone stopped talking?

Our new column is especially for anyone who has ever felt rejected or unsure of their place in the world, who wants to worry less about things like not being accepted by others. We want it to be a celebration of what life has to offer.

Hi, I am Adam and I am IN LOVE! I also tell jokes, sometimes even funny ones.

I work in the Co-Op, I study dreams and can eat scarily hot curries. Of course there is more to me than this, which I would like to share with you, but for now we will stick with this.

When the Dorset Echo said me and my friends could write for Voices, it didn’t take us a second to say “yes”. We quickly promised to have our first article ready in five weeks’ time.

That was August 2014. Since then my friends and I have met several times. All we did was go round in circles, wondering what to write and ripping up bits of paper. Not good for us or the environment. We knew what kind of stories we wanted to share but nothing we wrote felt like ‘us’.

It all seemed so flat. Even we were bored reading it. Finally we’ve decided to just bite the bullet and tell you about our journey so far. We aren’t sure what we will have to say next week – you’ll have to read again to find out! It’s a familiar problem though isn’t it, how to put an idea into practice?

You know what you want to do, but how do you start? Maybe you think about it too much, get scared of getting it wrong, then ever begin it at all?

Not us, at least this time, as we have finally submitted our article!

We want to use this column to share our stories and hear about yours. We want to inspire and be inspired. However, our word count is already up, so it’s time for us to stop for this week.

Please catch up with us again next Saturday.

By the way, I forgot to mention – my friends and I all have a learning disability of some kind.

A final thought for you: we don’t think it’s our disability that stops us doing what we want, but the fear of what we can do with our ability.

•  This article was written by William Parmiter and Adam Kelly, supported by The Friendship Club The Friendship Club supports adults with learning disabilities to attend events in the community, promoting friendships and social inclusion. It is part of the charity People First Dorset.

For more information please contact laura@dorsetpeoplefirst.co.uk or call 07970 240555.