• 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…

  • Fridge poetry for pain

    Fridge poetry for pain

    Chances are you know someone who has Fridge Poetry; those little magnetic words that you can arrange and rearrange to make poems on your fridge. I used to have an irrational jealousy of people who owned them. Why I never went out and bought my own set, I don’t know……

  • Ghosting, coasting, or boasting: chronic-pain-friends (PART 3)

    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…

  • #shadesformigraine

    #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,…

  • Make a healing mandala

    Make a healing mandala

    When I first started my holistic healing journey just over a year ago, I woke up and decided I was sick of being sick, and it was time to take things into my own hands so I could get better.  The first thing I did was to write a program…

  • Ghosting, coasting, or boasting: chronic-pain-friends (PART 2)

    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…

  • Gaining awareness: intentionality versus randomness

    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…

  • Angel Number 5

    Angel Number 5

    For those of you who are new to my blog, there’s a little habit that I have gotten into, which is celebrating my ‘inchstones’ (as opposed to ‘milestones’). All those little baby-steps that are helping me heal are recognized, including my monthly anniversaries of blogging (which I started on January…

  • Ghosting, coasting, or boasting: chronic-pain-friends (PART 1)

    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…