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Beautiful things to do, because
* Play in the snow. Put on long johns and Hunters and dive out. What happens when you throw snowballs in the air and dodge? Can you see any icicles? Snow means curling up inside to me. How about you? * Decorate a window. Add a crystal to catch the sunlight and toss it across the room. What do you want on your windowsill? Perhaps crystals and lillies or maybe clear space and a good view. Look on etsy.com or folksy.co.uk for beautiful things to hang from your windowspace. * Plan your dreams. Use The Desire Map, or Susannah’s amazing guide. But fuel yourself with some exploration and direction. * Watch…
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Awareness, Attitude and Action for Life.
It’s scary, I know. And it hurts too. Illness, chronic pain, disease, struggle, sickness; it often makes for bad days. If we actually think about the statistics and that one in three people in the UK may be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, and that’s just cancer, it’s terrifying. But here’s the thing. We can do something about it. I’m not talking about drinking your body weight in green juice or hoping really, really hard that the issue somehow passes you by. I believe we can all choose to shift the way we view the problem and take action. Let me give you an example, I got a message…
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Beautiful things to do, because
* Make your own zine, make it a radical, vegan, riot grrrrl, feminist zine. And don’t forget to send me a copy (my address is here). * Wear a beautiful necklace all day (my pick is this, or dig out an old favourite. When was the last time you really looked in all your old jewellery boxes, by the way?). * Bake lemon bars, or lemon olive oil biscuits. * Send a real paper birthday card. * Pick up litter when you see it (gloves and hand sanitizer are helpful here). * Phone your grandparents. Or your parents. Or someone, but pick up the phone. * Plan a road trip with…
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Why I don’t support awareness raising.
Here is something I hear all the time, “It’s all about awareness, we just need to raise awareness“. I always just itch to ask, “why?”. Why do you want to raise awareness? What will it do? I mean literally. Yes more people will know about the specific disease but what then? Here’s the thing, there are too many illnesses, we can’t possibly be aware of all of them at once! I don’t know how much you carry around in your head every day but personally, I have a limit, and there are already big sections dedicated to what I’m reading and writing, what Linus is saying (because he is most important…
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New Year, Same You: Chronic Illness and the Turning Year
It’s a new year and we are all so happy, excited, rip-roaring with delight towards all our new plans on our clean plates. Or perhaps not. How does the new year affect you when you are living with chronic illness? Facebook is full of resolutions to exercise every day, eat healthily, drink more water, loose weight, get fit, run a marathon, write a novel or take embark on a daily photography project. * Maybe you can’t get out of your pyjamas. * Maybe you have tried exercising more, and you relapsed. * Maybe you want to be well, to have toned muscles and cheerful thoughts but it’s just not where…
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