Author: The Mindful Migraine Blog

  • It’s time to take out the trash (talk)

    It’s time to take out the trash (talk)

    Most of my internet-time is spent in blog-land; writing my blogposts and visiting as many other people’s blogs as I can to keep myself and other writers motivated. I also spend a little bit of time on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter-X and LinkedIn to post links back to my blog. Sometimes…

  • Winning, even when dreams don’t come true

    Winning, even when dreams don’t come true

    A while ago I wrote about the Boston Marathon and Mount Everest being common (im)possible dreams. I noted in that post that my neurologist had done the Boston Marathon (I think), and that my friend and I ‘mostly’ made it up the Nepalese mountain to reach Annapurna base camp, when…

  • The rising tide of patient advocacy

    The rising tide of patient advocacy

    Today is the 4th of July, which in the United States of America is called Independence Day. I don’t know enough about the history to talk about it here, but I did spend a bit of time brainstorming the notion of ‘independence’. I was always bought up to be an…

  • Can nightmares trigger migraines?

    Can nightmares trigger migraines?

    I’ve been doing pretty well with managing my migraines during the day.  I stay hydrated and mind my mindset.  I’m quite proud of how far I’ve come.  Nighttime, however, is a different story.  For some reason, up to two or three times a week, I wake up in the middle…

  • Menopause and migraines

    Menopause and migraines

    Heads up team: today’s post is a summary of notes from the wonderful and ever-giving Migraine World Summit, from the presentation by Dr Christine Lay, a professor of Neurology in Toronto.  It refers to menstruation – frequently – so feel free to give it a miss if it’s not for…

  • Being provocatively polarizing… or not.

    Being provocatively polarizing… or not.

    As well as blogging about my healing journey to reduce my migraine-days and increase joy in my life, I am also (hopefully) in my final year of completing a PhD, I’m the primary contact for my daughters’ school communication, AND I sometimes help my husband with things to do with…

  • ChatGPT: what do you know about me?

    ChatGPT: what do you know about me?

    ChatGPT is often accused of being ‘derivative’ – everything it writes comes from other people’s texts. Weirdly though, humans are not that different. We often write about what other people say, or about other people’s stories and successes and so on. Today’s blog, for instance is inspired by something someone…

  • Vincent van Gogh’s pain

    Vincent van Gogh’s pain

    There are rumors going around the internet that several ‘alternative’ artists from the past, suffered from migraines with visual-auras. We’ll never know for sure, but I’m skeptical that an artist could have migraines on a regular basis, and no one would record them as being ‘poorly’ in their biographical notes.…

  • Migraines, by the book

    Migraines, by the book

    I recently borrowed a book from the library called “Migraines” by Mary E. Williams (2011).  It started with a spot-on quote from Andrew Levy’s migraine-memoir, ‘A Brain Wider than the Sky’ (2009): “There is no line between migraine and worrying about migraine…” In the opening section of the book I…