• Reflections on the UK Election From A Disabled Entrepreneur

    Something big is happening. Something seismic that may affect me, and everyone I love. With the exception of a postal vote, I have no say in how it will shake out. Perhaps you’re in the same boat, feeling helpless, unheard, unnoticed, unsafe – often disrespected – by a system of government set to vote on issues central to your wellbeing. Your life. I generally don’t write about politics here. But there is so much fear at the moment. And I’ve never been one to ignore the difficult parts. It takes a certain type of privilege to be able to cut funding and support for those with disability and illness. The…

  • 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…

  • Diagnosis: A New View

    It is the moment which changes your life. Sometimes it feels like it is the moment which ends it. The life you knew is gone, you are AD – After Diagnosis, your own new millennium. Diagnosis can feel like your carefully planned and treasured life burning up around you. That you can see things changing, feel them shifting, but are helpless to stop it. Diagnosis feels like a fire moving through our lives, consuming all we hold dear, burning our very selves, our image, who we are, and leaving us with little but pain and ash – where there used to be hopes, plans and a maybe not perfect, but…