• 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…

  • Dear Grace Q & A: Building a Life with Disability

    Question: “What can people do, who don’t feel they can start their own business or aren’t able to work in their circumstances? What kind of projects could they get involved with? What kind of things can they build their life around, if they currently lack focus? What kinds of hobbies can ill and disabled people take up?” Answer: The real answer, of course, is to find your passion and then make it accessible. Just as you’d build a life without a disability. What do you want to do? What do you love? If you don’t know what you love, can you explore? But I do have a list of accessible options and…

  • Bed-bound to Business Bombshell

    I was 21, two weeks a bride and desperately, dangerously sick. Bed bound and hurting, letters became my link to the outside world. Until you are sick and imprisoned in your own home, in your own body, it is hard to understand exactly how important post/mail is. I lived for letters; that contact with the outside I could only just remember, something to focus on and hope for. We made up Healing Boxes – gifts of information, support and healing goodies for friends and family. We tried to buy healing gift boxes for friends and found none in the UK. So we just continued to make our own and more…