Category: Resilience
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Ghosting, coasting, or boasting: chronic-pain-friends (PART 3)
Over the last couple of weeks, I have written about how chronic pain can affect friendships. First, I addressed the not-so-fun issue of ‘ghosting’ and then I wrote about those cruisy ‘coasting’ friends, with a reminder that you have to keep up your end of the friendship-bargain so they don’t…
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#shadesformigraine
I know I said I wasn’t going to ‘show my face’ here again for a while, but I forgot about the initiative that is always run on the 21st of June by migraine advocates around the world. They pick this date because it is the summer solstice; the longest, sunniest,…
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Ghosting, coasting, or boasting: chronic-pain-friends (PART 2)
Last week I wrote about friends ‘ghosting’ people with chronic pain, and how much it hurts. Today I want to talk about a different friendship arrangement; ‘coasting’. For me, I would suggest that most of my friendships fall into this category. My friends are ‘cruisy’. They’re low-maintenance. We don’t make…
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Gaining awareness: intentionality versus randomness
It’s Migraine Awareness Month, as previously mentioned, and I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘awareness’ versus ‘information overload’. When I first started trying to understand my diagnosis of chronic migraine, I went looking in multiple places to try to find as much information as I could. I was particularly open…
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Ghosting, coasting, or boasting: chronic-pain-friends (PART 1)
This post started out VERY long in its first draft. Whilst I try to do my best to minimize how much I write in one go, (because I’m trying to save my pain-brain and yours too much effort), the issue of chronic-pain-friends is a subject that really deserves a decent…
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Dirty dishwater revelations: what your sink is trying to tell you
OK, so head’s up, this is by far the weirdest post I’ve ever made. After I had done the breakfast dishes and a few random items I’d found floating around downstairs (kids!), I went to let the plug out of the kitchen sink. I wasn’t in a good mood or…
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Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – for healing
In the year 1943, American psychologist Abraham Maslow published a theory about how humans address their needs in the form of hierarchical stages. (Curiously, Maslow himself apparently didn’t come up with the ever-present triangular graphic that we associate with his theory). You’ve probably seen the graphic, but here’s a copy of it…
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Pessimism: is it realistic or wrong?
My daughters listen to a musician named Alec Benjamin. He suited my mood last year as he tends to sing angsty woe-is-me songs. This year, however, I’m trying to ‘lean into’ a more sunshine-and-happiness version of myself in order to heal. There is, nonetheless, one song of his that sometimes…
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Tarot cards for pain
When I was at university, in my early twenties, I lived in a big share house. I can’t remember what prompted us, but one of my friends and I began to practice telling fortunes. She got very good at remembering what all the cards in the Tarot deck meant, whilst…
The Mindful Migraine 