Happy Girl Winter: How to Overcome Seasonal Depressive Disorder
‘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…
‘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…
Unwanted Advice, Assumptions and Grief: Surviving an Early Loss Miscarriage
It was an early loss. I was out doing the day job of taming everybody else’s brain weasels (I’m a therapist). I doctored my language around my loss, terrified to appear less pro-life, of triggering my sisters who’d made difficult decisions or offending those who’d been empowered in accessing a stigmatised form of healthcare. I felt as though it was my duty to take on the complexities of issues that weren’t comparable, like I was responsible for making everything ok. In my professional life, I’d call that a maladaptive coping mechanism…