I have to be honest, I am a creature of habit and I love when I know where I am and what is happening. Building a routine for mental health has been such an incredible part of my dealing with my illnesses. So lets talk about it and hopefully help one another. I have struggled with chronic depression and generalised anxiety disorder for most of my life. This has made living my life extremely challenging and has caused me to…
I think so many of us, disabled or not, think that rest is wasting time or not being productive enough. I felt the same for a long time, but I have found rethinking it as rest is self care really helps stop me feeling guilty. If you follow me on Instagram, you will know that just yesterday was a bad fatigue flare day. I had also been feeling rubbish for a few days before so I knew that something was…
I think we have all had times when pacing goes wrong and end up doing so much more than you meant. It is part of living with chronic illnesses that cause fatigue, and so is the guilt! So I thought it was time we talk about this. Monday was a good day, they are rare and usually I take my time and do little jobs that are usually too much. I was good, I paced and managed a little yoga,…
I think I can safely say you are not alone in doing these things, I am as guilty of it as you are. But disabled community stop doing this in 2021 please? Can we move forward with a collective agreement to try and not do these things? I think we are all guilty of feeling like a burden, of feeling guilt or worrying too much what other people think. It is not something we do alone, but these things are…
It can be so hard to think of ways to practice everyday sacred self-care. We all know what self-care is, and that we should do it, but everyday? Today I wanted to speak more about how to bring the ritual into the mundane things we do daily. A few days ago I released a video on my You Tube talking about how it is important to do sacred self care at the end of the year. This time of the…
Last week I was contacted by Ashley Oman on Instagram, they asked if I could help promote a chronic illness photography study. They are a university student working with two nursing students. Aiming to look into the lived experience of duel disasters and and a chronic health condition. This very much interested me, because as we are all living through Covid-19 pandemic, other disasters such as fire or hurricanes for example still happen. Discovering how these stressful situations affect us…
Exercise has been important to me for many years now and for a long time I did yoga every day. Looking after my joints and muscles helps my pain and protects my hypermobile joints. But with increased fatigue, and moving house that changed and getting back to exercise has become a priority. I have found since moving and helping my mom, that my own pain and fatigue have increased. This was of course expected, but meant that a lot of…
Moving house is always stressful and difficult, even if you don’t have chronic illnesses it can take it’s toll. When fatigue flares it can leave you feeling frustrated and annoyed, or trying to push through so you can get things done. Weeks of packing followed by moving in and becoming a carer have left me struggling for energy. I live my life walking a tightrope between those things every day at the moment, frustrated and seeing how much I can…
As you know, if you have been following recent blog posts and you tube videos, I have moved with my husband to be a carer for my mother. This obviously caused a lot of worry, stress and change to my precious routine that helps calm my anxiety disorder. Finding a rhythm has not been easy for all three of us as we have tried to navigate this change. The dogs, Dexter and Gizmo, on the other hand have loved the…
Stress is something we all deal with from time to time, especially when you have chronic illnesses that make every day feel like a rollercoaster. But right now I am moving house while we are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, and to be honest dealing with stress has lasted a while. I am not alone in this though, lets be honest ever since March when this whole Covid 19 virus ramped up we have all been stressed. It…