Today’s post is a bit of a downer I’m afraid, so if you’re not up to it, I won’t take offence if you come back tomorrow.
I’ve had migraines for decades. My first migraine occurred when I was 11 on a school excursion, and my worst ever migraine happened a couple of years ago when I broke 3 of my teeth clenching through the pain. I’d prefer not to think how many migraine attacks there have been in between…
That said, most of those migraines were “attacks” which fell into short, sharp, terrible moments in time (a day to 3 days long) and then they dissapeared as if nothing had happend.
For as long as I can remember, my eyebrow aching is one of the most obvious ways I can tell a full-blown-migraine (as opposed to a tension headache) is coming. My right eyebrow feels as if someone is trying to push the eyebrow back into my skin and out the other side of my head… strange but true.
Occasionally, the pressure manifests in my right eye instead, and feels like someone has their thumb pressed into the eyeball, sometimes gently, sometimes hard enough that you’d worry your eyeball might pop if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s no real pressure on it at all.
Traditionally, when the ache starts, then I know that my time before I need to lie down is limited; the pain-train has left the station as it were, and I need to get myself somewhere dark and quiet and pop some pills, and hope like crazy that the migraine will pass me by as gently and quickly as possible.
For decades it’s been like that.
And then, on a Sunday in the middle of June 2022 (was the Sunday of the long weekend for Queen Elizabeth’s birthday) I noticed a shift. I was standing on the doorstep of my house talking to a neighbor who wanted to leave her daughter with mine while she went to the shops. “Of course,” I said, “but I’ll be honest, I have a pain in my eyebrow which usually means I’m going to get a migraine… so the kids might have to just stay in front of the TV while you’re gone if that’s ok.” No problem, she replied, and off she went.
As she drove off, I realized I had told a bit of a white lie – the pain in my eyebrow had actually been there for a couple of days and no migraine had turned up. I hadn’t really recognized the gentle pain of this new truth until I spoke the words out loud and focused my attention on my eyebrow.
Huh.
“Sore eyebrow = migraine coming” suddenly wasn’t true anymore.
For whatever reason, I made a note of it in my diary so I could mention it to my doctor next time I went.
When I woke up the next day, and the next, I realized that the pain was now in my right eye. Day after day the pain was there, until eventually a full-blown migraine arrived. I slept and medicated and slept some more, and the brain-pain went away – but the eye pain did not.
Me being me, it suddenly occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that this eye pain has been going on 24/7 for more than 2 years. More than 2.5 years even. That’s at least 30 months of unrelenting nuisance.
So, I ran the numbers through the computer, and to my horror – the distance between Sunday the 12th of June 2022 and Saturday the 8th of March 2025, is… 1,000 days.
1,000 days of pain.
Now, to be fair, not every day is terrible. The first 365-ish days were grim, with pain levels on my chronic-pain-scale often sitting fairly constantly between the 3-7 mark. After my neurologist gave me a reminder that “more medicine doesn’t equal less pain – you need to change your life and your attitude”, I took up mindfulness and things started to get a lot better. For most of 2025, the pain has been around a 1 or 2 – and for the last two weeks there have been days of 0.5 (where it’s easy to forget the pain altogether). But, that’s still not zero.
So, whilst it is legitimately 1,000 days of constant pain, it has NOT been 1,000 days of misery.
The distinction matters.
As I use more and more episodes of mindfulness, I’m getting better all the time. I’m eating better, sleeping better, stressing less, being kinder to myself and refusing to shoulder the intense amounts of guilt and shame that I carried for that first year when I couldn’t perform at the level of functionality I was used to.
1,000 days of pain is bad – no doubt – but I’m not actually as mortified as I perhaps could be, because I feel like I’m ALMOST out the other side.
I’m manifesting the idea that my tour through darkness is nearly over, and I’m just wading the last leg back to the shore, so I can get on with a new chapter of my life… mixed metaphors galore – but hopefully you get the idea of the mental image I’m trying to create!
This is a brand NEW chapter I’m moving towards – NOT a return to the old ways of doing things – I mourned the old me, and what she could do – and then I let her go – and with the passing of enough time, I don’t miss that version of me anymore. In fact, I quite like the new version of me – she’s tougher and braver and more resilient than the old me realized. She knows her limitations (and her super-powers) and how to protect her boundaries and her time. I’m still a recovering “people-pleaser” but nowhere near the “yes-of-course-straight-away” gal that I used to be.
So, take heart – if I can get better – so can you.
If I can weather a 1,000 day storm, so can you.
We’ve got this.
(Reach out to me below or on the CONTACT page if you feel like you “don’t got this” and need a personalized pep talk.)
Take care taking care people, I’m so proud of all of you for weathering whatever life throws at you, Linda xx
PS – to prove that my 1,000 days has a few silver linings, the lovely Amber (who is a fellow migraine patient) invited me to visit her for a chat – you can listen here: Overcoming guilt & shame with Linda X – thanks Amber for the amazing opportunity and for being such a star in helping people like me feel better!
The Mindful Migraine 
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