Happy Girl Winter: How to Overcome Seasonal Depressive Disorder
‘Finding the Beauty in Abnormality’: My Diagnosis of Marfan Syndrome
‘Connective tissue disorder’ and ‘aortic dissection’ became regular parts of my vocabulary. Needles, MRIs and hospital gowns became our new normal and, by the time I turned eleven, our differences became more noticeable. My sister was lucky, in a way. At a glance, you wouldn’t know there was anything wrong and her heart was by far the least affected. For my cousin and I, it was different…
‘Grief Comes with Any Long-Term Chronic Illness’: Learning to Slow Down and Live with Autoimmune Disease
I started referring to my time in London as ‘B.C’: before colitis and ‘A.D’: after diagnosis. I mourned for my new life. It was a double-edged sword; I realised that despite my intentions, I practised ableism by default as I’d never had to consider life through the lens of someone chronically ill. I also felt like I didn’t have a right to complain because my invisible illness didn’t totally inhibit my ability to work, socialise and retain my autonomy. I was still deemed ‘productive’ under our capitalist regime…
Happy Girl Winter: How to Overcome Seasonal Depressive Disorder
For many people, it feels like winter comes around faster than any other season. It stays the longest and often makes the most impact on your mental health. The days get shorter, the darkness draws in and it feels impossible to keep up with the routine you mastered during your Hot Girl Summer. This year, I have decided to keep my spirits high and begin my Happy Girl Winter…
How Using a Menstrual Cup Reconnected Me with My Body and Period as a Non-Binary Person
For the past ten years, I’ve accepted periods as a part of my life. I kept track of it in my calendar and was happy to pop a pad in without a second thought, cooling the cramps when they came. But things began to change when I began dating my partner, who is passionate about the environment and has gotten me hooked on everything from composting to sustainable products. I decided to buy a period cup, for its one-time cost and ability to be washed and reused every month…
‘More Than Just Social Connections’: The Power of Female Friendships as a Source of Strength, Empowerment and Understanding
I’ve always considered myself a girls’ girl. It’s always been easy making friends with other females, but it wasn’t until I entered my thirties that I started to reflect on not only the friendships I was fostering in my life, but which ones truly fulfilled me and empowered me – all my girl friends came to mind. Female friendships are more than just social connections; they are a source of strength, empowerment and understanding…
‘I Didn’t Have My Anchor Anymore’: Navigating Parental Loss in your Twenties and the Power of the Present Moment in Processing Grief
Losing my mother in the period of life often referred to as ‘emerging adulthood’ left me feeling like I had to grow up suddenly. I wasn't what I would class as a young adult by any means. I was 27, a few months away from my 28th birthday in fact, but this rudderless feeling that had been sprung upon me left me thinking that I needed to release myself from ‘emerging adulthood’ and become an actual, fully emerged adult…
‘Chronic Pain Does Not Acknowledge Deadlines’: Work-Life Balance and Redefining Success To Accommodate Illness and Disability
Perhaps to truly succeed is not to consistently over-achieve and triumph without consequence, but to flourish and nurture all aspects of your life. To continue to grow and challenge yourself, but at your own pace, and in competition with no one but yourself. Societal comprehensions of productivity and achievement are deeply rooted in able-bodied normativity. It demands consistency and a persistent upward trajectory, which, when you have a chronic illness, is scarcely attainable…
‘Women are More Likely to get Thyroid Disease, Is that Why it’s Overlooked?’ My Experience of Primary Care Mismanagement
Surely above all else, the question should be: what price is too high for women to be able to function at optimum health? Do we not have a right to expect to thrive, to live long healthy lives? Would it not in the long term serve both our National Health Service as well as ourselves to be able to do so?
Did My Peace Lie in Spirituality, Religion or Science? Trying to Cope with the Death of a Friend
Death is an unexpected visitor, and grief is the house guest that just won't leave. Sometimes loss hits you like a train to the gut at 8 am on a sunny Tuesday morning, the recipient and the messenger of the heartbreaking news blubbering on the phone for five minutes in disbelief and pain. My friend was dead. What was I meant to do now?
‘Nobody Deserves To Be Convinced Into Silencing Their Body’s Pain’: My Endometriosis Story
My periods were hot red pokers when I was 16. Until I went on the pill for acne, as my doctor recommended, and it all went away: the pain, the symptoms and the bleeding. I was twenty-three when I decided to come off the pill. The first period after I did was a grasping-the-toilet, puddle-on-the-floor, call-my-mum …mess. I suppose that was the beginning. The first sign. But it was just period pain. Right?
‘My Adolescence was Dictated by Epilepsy’: Looking Back at My Illness and Learning to Face My Fears as an Adult
It definitely didn’t make me popular when I got to university. Even now, it’s hard having to justify to people the reasons why I don’t drink. It’s not anyone’s business but that doesn’t stop them from prying. My medication doesn’t recommend drinking, to which someone will always pipe up and say, ‘I know someone who knows someone who is epileptic and drinks.’ That’s great, thanks for your unnecessary input, but funnily enough we’re not all the same…
‘Complacently May Be Comfortable, But It’s A Trap’: Why Growing Up and Growing Apart Should be Celebrated, Not Side-Stepped
Have you ever heard that famous quote from Theodore Roosevelt, the one about comparison being the thief of joy? Well, if this is true, complacency is a close second. Living a complacent life steals one’s creativity and ambition. It robs you of opportunities for growth. Complacency may be comfortable, but it is a trap. Don’t fall for it. I am telling you now, you deserve more…
‘To Experience New Motherhood is to Experience a Type of Grief’: How The Birth of My Daughter Made Me Think About Death
The first time my daughter grew out of an item of clothing the grief I felt was an aching, bodily grief. The only situation in which I had ever touched time in this way before was in the company of a dying loved one. Nobody can deny a failing body; neither can we deny bags of tiny clothes that no longer fit piling up week after week…
‘I Thought Recovery was Supposed to be Permanent’: Mental Health Is Not Binary, Fixed or Linear
There’s still a stigma around mental health. I had no idea how much until I became aware of how I was relating to myself. Somewhere along the way, I decided that if I ever struggled or needed anyone again, I had failed. I thought that recovery was meant to be permanent and that I should be self-sufficient, that I didn’t deserve any more help or love than I’d already had…
Body, Mind and Soul: Meditations on Authentic Alignment for a Lighter Life
Re-centring the Self with its physical and energetic body brings the mind a sense of presence. It is a reminder not to lose time spent on anything outside of your control. What has (or hasn’t) happened will never be the present moment and all you can control is yourself; living in alignment means living with and in your unique presence. It means living consciously, not on autopilot…
‘Too Female’ for Autism and ADHD: Misdiagnosis, Mistreatment and Misogyny
Any hopes I had of a diagnosis didn’t last. Two weeks after the final appointment, I was told I wasn’t autistic because I didn’t fit the criteria. According to these ancient and outdated guidelines, my hobbies were ‘too female’, my eye contact was ‘far too good’ and I was ‘coping too well to be on the spectrum’…
‘Grief is Like Being in Pitch Darkness’: Navigating the Sudden Death of My Mum
In the days and weeks that followed, I noticed that a fundamental part of me had left with her. I felt a permanent shift at the core of who I was. Like countries that were once together that are now forever set apart. A seismic shift. If I only exist because of her, how can I exist without her? Everything I knew about death seemed so confusing…
‘Detachment and Healing Cannot Coexist’: Reflecting on Trauma Responses After Assault
Things have happened to my body, but not to me. My body has been hurt, but I have not. My body has suffered, but I have not. Except obviously this is not true. It can’t be. And obviously, it does not help. It’s so incomplete. It attempts to eliminate so much mental pain and yet, in skating over such fundamental and heartbreaking truths, it only exacerbates it…
‘Multiple Evanescent White Dot Syndrome, or MEWDS for Short’: My Story of Being Diagnosed with a Rare Eye Disease
The disease develops spontaneously and mostly in young, healthy adult women. It can sometimes be caused by a virus or an autoimmune disease, but for me the cause is unknown. I had about ten vials of blood taken that day and the results were all normal…
‘An Eating Disorder Can Look Different To Everyone’: Recovering From An Eating Disorder I Didn’t Know I Had
An eating disorder is when you stop eating at all or eat too much and then force your body to get rid of it somehow – at least, that’s all I thought it could be. I was absolutely certain I’d never come close to having one. I loved eating and hated throwing up. The problem here, if you haven’t already guessed it, is that that’s not the entire definition of an eating disorder. Not even close…