• Loving My Body: An Act of Resistance

    I had a realisation in yoga recently, while I was struggling into a pose my newly numbed limbs couldn’t quite reach: I love my body. It doesn’t have to work the right way for me to love it. It doesn’t have to look a certain way. I will love my body and take care of it. I love myself, in fact. Always and always. And I love you, wherever you are in your journey with your body too. However, I have, sadly, spent many years acting like this wasn’t the case, and pushing my beautiful body to go further than she could. I’ve been angry at my perceived ‘failures’, and…

  • In Defense of Doing Nothing

    I feel it too, the passing of time. The frustration of physical limits. Mounting achievements by your friends and loved ones, when simply getting out of bed feels like climbing a mountain to you. I know you want all those good things – love, joy, fulfilment, achievement and that’s why on any good day, in any space, reprieve or opportunity you get, you launch. It feels like you haven’t got the luxury of slow-and-steady so you run at life in any moment you can, pushing, pushing, pushing to achieve those long held goals. Doing is an addiction. (Click to Tweet!) When we are doing we feel momentum, we feel like…

  • Illness Etiquette: What People CAN Say…

    In many illness support groups everyone talks of all the silly things people say to those with illness and disability… :: Will you ever walk again? (Hi, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced, I’m Grace, how do you do?) :: Isn’t it funny. So funny, bodies, aren’t they? (Not wildly, no) :: I wonder when they will find a cure? (I’ve no idea, and in the mean time please don’t report to me what you read in some random health bulletin, it’s not helpful and it’s boring) :: Aren’t you brave? (No. Fighter pilots, yes. Firefighters, yes. Mahatma Ghandi, yes. Me, no) :: What did you do to yourself then? (Would you believe me if I told you…

  • Do You Want to Help Heal a Heart?

    I remember receiving my first diagnosis. I never imagined then, at 18, that there would be a time when I would look back at just one diagnosis in rose-tinted nostalgia. Perhaps it’s better that way, I have a laundry list of diagnoses now, but none of the labels constrain me. The disabilities are just the footnotes, I am the adventure story. But I’m getting ahead of myself, that’s not where I began. In the sterile office, with fading winter light slanting in through the blinds, and the grey institutional carpet under my red ballet shoes, I heard the doctor say those words ‘no cure’. I took the wound to my…

  • Why I Write

    The fabulous Theresa Reed tagged me to share Why I Write. Thanks, Theresa, here it is. (And while you are here, you simply must check out Theresa’s sensational new offering Entrepreneurcast.) What am I working on? Right now, I’m doing some deep healing, and my writing is mostly focussed on journalling and adventures in inner exploration. But I’m also working on: The Phoenix Flight School – for entrepreneurs and would-be-preneurs living with illness, pain and disability on how to run a successful, profitable, sustainable and world-changing business while sick. Refining The Phoenix Fire Academy from the feedback of our lovely beta testers. Look for it to open again in 2015.…