• 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…

  • 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…

  • Dear Grace Q & A: 7 Steps To Your Business Comeback After Chronic Illness

    How do you move forward when you’ve had to take a break from business because of illness? I’m so happy to answer this! Let’s break it down, shall we? 1. Listen to what’s underlying. Ask yourself questions to really dig into how you’re feeling and what your greatest fears are. Are you worried people have forgotten you? Think you are unreliable, unprofessional? Do you feel guilty about needing a break in the first place? Where is your fear coming from? Whose voice is it? When you pinpoint your underlying worries, it’s far easier to acknowledge them and then, take the actions necessary to alleviate them. 2. “Turn your setback into…

  • Non-Hippy Happy: Building the Happiness Habit

    Firstly, full disclosure, I am pretty hippy. Not in a tie-dyed, groovy maaaan, recreational drugs, ‘drop in any time it’s an open house’ way. Not at all. I can’t stand tie-dye. I certainly don’t speak like that. I’m as square about drugs as its possible to be without actually being law enforcement personnel and if you try and come to my house without an invitation I won’t answer the door. I like block colours, received pronunciation, virgin drinks, appointments, and actually being dressed when you arrive. But in terms of happiness, wellness and emotional health – I’m a meditating, affirmation reciting, mantra chanting, mandala wearing, yoga class attending, flower-crown loving and therapy advocating hippy. But I was…

  • He Liked It so He Put a Mitten on It

    If you a get an email from me this week, it will probably be short, there may very well be typos, and capital letters? Forget it, that’s way beyond me at the moment. Why? Because I have a new friend/enemy – the computer mitten. You want to know the story? Here we go…Since I first became ill, I’ve had issues with my right side. It always hurt more and it didn’t feel as strong. Both my arm and leg, it was all on the right side. But when I found a new massage therapist recently, her work astounded me. After a massage I had so much more movement and less…