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Shirley Ballas shed a tear after discussing her current challenge in memory of her late brother.
Throughout the week, the 62-year-old Strictly Come Dancing judge will do a Skyathlon challenge, which includes a zipline, a 700-foot wing walk, and a 15,000-foot skydiving.
The Rumba queen revealed that while she was afraid of heights, she was “more terrified of losing another person to suicide.”
Shirley lost her beloved brother David in 2003, when he committed suicide at the age of 44.
During Monday’s BBC Breakfast, she said: ‘I would not want anyone out there to experience what my mother and I have experienced through losing someone to suicide.
‘I just want to do something that’s way out of the comfort zone. I didn’t want to bake a cake or cut grass. So I thought what could I do that people are going to look at and say “she’s totally bonkers” but they understand the cause which I’m doing it.’
She tearfully continued: ‘I’m doing it for everybody out there who’s got somebody living miserably or somebody that has taken their own life… I’m getting all emotional. I’m doing this for all of you.’
Shirley remarked that in the two decades following David’s death, dialogues about mental health have evolved, but that there was still a long way to go.
‘Definitely [it’s improved] from 20 years ago, but it’s not as far as it should be,’ she said.
‘I think it’s getting there, but it’s still something that should involve weekly chats.’
Shirley said that she would want to see some kind of regular programming that encouraged people to check in on, and talk to others about, mental health, citing the abundance of shows available to us at the push of a button to entertain, enlighten, and educate us.
‘Even if we had something on TV that was five or 10 minutes that was checking in on people’s mental health, we may also be able to [keep on] saying things [about our mental wellbeing],’ she considered.
BBC Breakfast airs weekdays at 6am on BBC One.
Source My Celebrity Life.
