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  • Why So Sad? Scotland, Summer 2025

    Gull Skater pushing onwards through life, Freehand by Jon Horner

    The last time I was in Scotland had been 2022. During that trip, Sam, from Skateboard Scotland helped organize an event in partnership with The Loading Bay skatepark in Glasgow.

    Early in 2025, I have another trip planned to visit Scotland. Should I pull back the hammer and launch the pinball of a Why So Sad? event? I want to, but hesitate. It’s a lot, to organize and pull off an event.

    Is it even worth it?

    Why So Sad? That dumb simple question remains dumb and simple but it still feels like a worthy question — a perennial question that no matter how many times we ask it, there’s always some new knot of an answer to untwist.

    When we take it as a serious question…

    (because we are in such a dire emotional state that we need to, or because we have arrived, even-keeled, at a junction in the labyrinth, and we have the capacity to soberly consider our path)

    …when we follow that question’s thread, we find it has an inevitable follow-up:

    “And, what are we going to do about it?”

    Ok. Sleep. Breath. One step at a time. Start with some minor research. A Whatsapp message to an old friend:

    “What are our options for getting a wee event space to put up a set of posters and host a little talk?”

    “Jon’s the GM at Peacock Print Studios now. I’m sure he’d be down to help if they have the space available.”

    And that was it. Decision made to continue…

    So, I put together a talk, with slides as visual aids to guide the points I wanted to make.

    The talk went something like this: years ago, in my twenties, I thought I had things figured out, but then I lost my sister and realized that I didn’t know shit.

    Since then, I’ve spent time and energy learning. First by reading the work of people who have cut through the jungle ahead to form a path, and then by looking for their lessons in my own experience of this thing called the human condition.

    A critical piece of the puzzle I have been fascinated by is the fact that ‘mental health’ as an idea feels elusive, immaterial, hard to grasp hold of, ghost-like, BUT it is entirely physical. Our mental and emotional experience is the interplay of our brain taking its inputs from our nervous, hormonal, vascular, and other physical systems and firing back commands to those same systems.

    It happens at lightning speed, and much of it requires practiced skill to notice in the moment, and gain some agency over, but this knowledge provides us solid ground to finally stand on.

    When it comes to understanding ourselves, how we function, how emotions work, how they drive us for better and worse—here is an image showing a selection of books I’ve found immense value in:

    Honorable mentions to How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett and The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

    As with events I’ve pulled together in Scotland before, my cousin Liam who works in Suicide Prevention with Scottish Action for Mental Health attended.

    Along with his colleague Justine, they provided some valuable info for services available in the North East of Scotland.

    Below you can find links to that info as well as some of the bits and pieces covered in the talk and the event:

    Scottish Action for Mental Health

    The Original ‘Why So Sad?’ Comic

    Your Brain on Sport | A Comic for Coaches

    Audio – Flight Response | Me Banging on About Stuff I Find Interesting 

    Mental Health First Aid

    Through a multi-week campaign as well as tickets and sales at the event we got Jon Horner up to Aberdeen, and raised a respectable chunk of change for both The Ben Raemers Foundation and for Push to Heal my friend Joel’s initiative under Hull Services in Calgary Canada; a great model that we’ll hopefully begin to see replicated. 

    A final thought for now: If life is excruciating right now that is because life can be excruciating. This too shall pass.

    You can get through.

    🔄 ❤️ 💔 ❤️‍🩹 ❤️ 🔄 

  • Flight Response Episode 2

    Flight Response with John Rattray
    Flight Response with John Rattray
    Episode 2 | Childhood Lasts a Lifetime
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    In this episode I revisit a conversation I had with, photographer, journalist and trainee clinical psychologist, Alex Irvine.
    The conversation was to accompany a skate career retrospective (my skate career) in Free Skate Mag.
    Rather than a standard Q and A, I sent Alex a couple of thought starters and then we let the conversation flow from there.
    The thought starters were the statement, “Childhood Lasts a Lifetime” and the question, “Is skateboarding a form of self-harm?”
    I hope you find it helpful and/or informative.

  • Flight Response Episode 1

    Episode 1 | Giving Up Alcohol for Once

  • Why So Sad? x The Ben Raemers Foundation

    We shot this short film during our time in Glasgow in the summer of 2022.

    I had organized an event in partnership with The Ben Raemers Foundation and the Scottish Association for Mental Health. Nike SB provided support and got team rider Chris Jones—who is also studying to become a certified counselor—up for the day.
    The Loading Bay Glasgow were amazing hosts.

    A few of us rode bikes around Glasgow, we met up at the Loading Bay and skated. Then, we stopped and everyone gathered on the big steps by the bowl. Chris and I spoke on personal experience and learnings so far, Susie—representing The Raemers Foundation— and Liam and Robert—from the Scottish Association for Mental health—spoke about the work they do and the services they provide.

    After that, I sat down with Rob Mathieson and we recorded the conversation around which this video is structured.

    Hopefully it helps you to get some perspective on how the events we experience in our lives shape us and how understanding some of those processes can give us a bit more direction, a bit more of a map, when it comes to navigating these shifting seas we call emotions.

    I’ve heard it said that, “Childhood lasts a lifetime.”

    If you or someone you know is struggling emotionally please connect with a health care professional for support and guidance. The family doctor can be a good starting point.

    Alternatively, or for crises, you can reach out to one of the resources listed on the support page at the Ben Raemers Foundation

    Further learning:

    Adversity & Development:

  • A Front Rock and Four Books

    Front Rock:

    Mariners stadium in Seattle, Photo by Ben Wall

    John Rattray frontside roack and rolls on a mini-ramp at the Seattle Mariners baseball stadium

    Our friends up at 35th North in Seattle partnered with their local baseball team as well as the ever-awesome Skate Like a Girl and Nike SB. The result was this ramp plus in-stadium skate lessons for kiddos.

    With that, here are four books with great potential to expand your worldview.

    Book One:

    What Happened to You? by Dr Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D and Oprah Winfrey (more…)

  • Why So Sad? Comic | What’s Up With the Trees that Illustrate Our Emotional States?

    The part of the comic where I got a couple of questions are the Trees.

    The trees show where our brains are most active based on how we’re feeling.

    The emotions we feel arise based on our circumstance—the external and internal stressors we’re encountering.

    How we feel, and what associated thoughts accompany those feelings, can be different for different folks depending on what you experienced growing up—what your auto-brain came to expect to encounter in this world.

    Auto-brain works very fast, rapid-response style.

    First—healthy green tree: When we are calm the auto-systems plus the Cortex* are active.

    *Cortex = the rational, planning, creative part of the brain—the part that is most uniquely human. (Worth noting for the Neuroscience students out there, we’re using ‘Cortex and ‘Neocortex’ interchangeably here)

    Scan to the second tree: Stress causes our brain to move energy (fueled by glucose) away from the Cortex towards more base-level fawn-freeze, fight-flight systems. When this response is triggered we have less access to our Cortex and are less able to think clearly. Our decision-making capabilities begin to suffer.
    Here, in the Limbic System, to be regulated we need to feel connected to a trusted group. That need for connection boils down basic survival. Humans did not flourish as lone-wolves (neither did wolves for that matter) We did so in cooperating groups: tribes & villages.

    To feel disconnected for any reason can—at its most extreme—trigger full existential terror. To be alone in the wilderness is not a recipe for success. It induces more fear. Depression itself drives a sense of alienation and disconnection. When this state is chronic the thought that we will never be useful again can arise and thoughts of suicide can emerge.

    If we are experiencing thoughts of self-destruction, we in dangerous territory. Asking for and getting some help is vital. (more…)

  • Why So Sad? x Taquería Los Puñales

    David and Brian from taquería los puñales in Portland

    I sat down with my friends David and Brian, the owners, and operators of my favorite Taquería. We talked about opening a restaurant at the onset of a global pandemic, what it means to run a business serving a community, how our childhood traumas affect our adult brains and how we find a path to healing from the pain those rough experiences imbued on us.

    This interview took place in June 2022 right around the same time we worked together with Brian, David & the Los Puñales Taquería crew, as well as Portland recycled skateboard experts, MapleXO, to raise some $s for Quest Integrative Health as part of the “Why So Sad?” mission and the Taquería’s 2nd anniversary.

    John:

    Los Puñales is two! How does it feel so far and what would you say are the biggest lessons you’ve learned while you’ve been building the brand and business within the Portland community?

    Brian:

    I can’t believe we’ve made it two years. We opened in June 2020, three or four months into the Pandemic. It was a really tough time and we just said, “Let’s do this. Let’s see how this goes.” Somehow it worked out.

    We went into it thinking something like, well, we’re the only new restaurant in a market where everything is closing. So, that seemed like an opportunity that the pandemic provided, and it worked out.

    In the last two years, the learnings are that when you make food for yourself that you put love into because it’s food you want to eat, nothing else matters, everything will fall into place as long as you do that. (more…)

  • Why So Sad? Glasgow 2022 Event

    Why So Sad? Glasgow 2022 Event

    On August 6, a few of us rode around Glasgow hitting a couple of parks and spots on our way to…

    Chris Jones and Neil from Science versus Life riding along the Kelvin River Path in Glasgow

    …The Loading Bay Skatepark where we had a fun little jam session…

    Various skate action shots from the Loading Bay skatepark Why So Sad event in August of 2022

    …followed by a panel discussion with The Ben Raemers Foundation and The Scottish Association for Mental Health.

    John Rattray addresses the audience at Loading Bay Skatepark, wide shot.

    John Rattray addresses the audience at the Why So Sad? Glasgow 2022 event

    My main point is that this subject is not as scary as we once thought. There’s a lot we’ve learned over the last few years and some of it I have found really valuable in managing my own emotional wellbeing. (more…)