Book Release
Audley Enough: A Portrait of Triumph and Recovery in the Face of Mania and Depression
Montreal, Quebec, January 24, 2022 – For Immediate Release – Tellwell Talent has published the release of the second edition of Audley Enough: A Portrait of Triumph and Recovery in the Face of Mania and Depression, penned by Lesley Whyte Reford (in 2013) and updated in this second edition by Patricia Lavoie (in 2021).
This new edition includes Mr. Audley Coley’s continued success with his battle against mental health challenges, including his five-year stint as a friend of Bell Media’s Bell Let’s Talk campaign.
Currently aged sixty-three, Coley was diagnosed with manic depressive disorder at twenty-seven in 1983. Since then, he has found ways to combat this condition and has made it his life’s mission to educate others with techniques and strategies that can help them cope with their mental health issues or help guide families with a loved one they are concerned about. Coley likes to lead by example, and this book, as well as his many speaking engagements, have helped thousands of Montrealers succeed in combatting mental health obstacles.
“I am absolutely thrilled to have this additional opportunity to continue to tell the story of my personal success in managing my mental health challenges and to give examples of how I have been able to help and inspire others,” enthuses Mr. Coley. “I continue to enjoy incredible support from organizations such as Bell Let’s Talk as well as L’Oréal Canada,” he continues.
Co-author of this second edition, Patricia Lavoie, highlights this passage from the new edition as a key moment within Mr. Coley’s new life chapters:
“Contemplating the resilience of the Invictus athletes had been an ‘aha!’ moment for Audley. He was overcome with admiration for athletes who shoot hoops from a wheelchair or strap-on prosthetics to compete in a road cycling race or track events, among the many other competitive sports. How could he possibly complain? But he realized as well that mental health had to be understood in a new way. Mental issues are an invisible adversity and are difficult for people to comprehend. Audley had been trying for years to articulate what went on ‘inside’ someone who is bipolar. There are no amputations or wheelchairs that bear witness to the infirmity. There is just intangible suffering. How to get the message out?… Enter Bell Canada.”
Audley Coley’s book launch was held on November 18, 2021, at The Atwater Club in Montreal. He donated the proceeds from the sales of his book that evening, $3,000.00, to the Douglas Hospital Foundation. “I chose to highlight and support the Douglas Hospital Foundation this evening due to their leading-edge research and programs dedicated to mental health for those on the Island of Montreal and in the entire province at large. As providers of important in-patient and out-patient programs essential to treating those suffering from related diseases, I really wanted to bring attention to their foundation and would encourage others to follow my lead in supporting them,” offers Coley.
About Audley Coley
Mr. Audley Coley is a motivational speaker, fitness instructor, and certified Toastmaster, having won the 2004 Table Topic and Humour Championship Competition, where he represented the Sunlife Group. He later became the subject of the book Audley Enough: You CAN Soar Above Mental Illness by Lesley Whyte Redford. In 2018, Coley was asked to be a Bell Media representative for the Bell Let’s Talk campaign and has been re-invited every year since. In 2019, Coley was honoured with the Community Leadership award from Montreal Cares. Other awards included “Most Promising Dancer” from the Rolland & Romaine School of Dance in Toronto in 1978.
At age nineteen, Coley migrated north, where he started the first dance program in Frobisher Bay (1979), now known as Iqaluit. Afterward, he returned to Montreal to complete his formal training in Jazz and Ballet. Audley graduated from Concordia University with a BA in Fine Arts, specializing in Dance, in 1984.
Coley has dabbled in the entertainment industry, having performed with René Simard in the 1987 CBC TV special Escale à Memphis, with Normand Braithwaite in 1989 in a CBC Christmas Special, and in 1992 in He Shoots He Scores.
Ultimately Coley decided to pursue his interest in the fitness industry. He completed his Certified Fitness Instructor certificate with IDEA World Fitness in 1985. Coley has worked at The Atwater Club for the last twenty years, which has provided him with the routine he needed to cope with his mental illness. His core group of students, the “Yummy Mummies” (a group of fit women over the age of fifty), has been the key to his success.
In 2018, Coley was invited to Iqaluit as a speaker for Suicide Prevention Month. In 2019 he worked with Les Grands Ballet in their dance therapy program. Coley was also a speaker in the Mental Health Program of the Jamaican Association in 2020. Just before COVID impacted our lives, Coley was working regularly with the dance therapy program at the Montreal General Hospital.
During the COVID lockdown, he has given interviews on radio in St. Kitts, with the Jamaican Association, and CBC’s One Full Circle on how to cope with COVID and mental illness. You can also see his interview on CBC’s national TV show, You Can’t Ask That, recorded live on Friday, October 9, 2020. In October 2020, Coley was the first speaker in the L’Oréal Canada Mental Health Program, designed to assist their employees in coping with the challenges of working during the COVID lockdown.
Coley’s abundance of life experiences, including living in several different cultural environments such as Jamaica, Toronto, Iqaluit, and finally Montreal (where he has made his home), has provided him with a wealth of personal experience and cross-cultural skills which he has utilized to reach out and touch various people and communities. Coley’s life story is all documented in Audley Enough: A Portrait of Triumph and Recovery in the Face of Mania and Depression (2021), available on Amazon now.
For your review copy of the book or to contact Audley Coley:
T: 514-451-9077 / audleycoley@gmail.com
Website: https://audleycoley.ca/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/audley_coley
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/audley.coley
My Bodacious Blog 