life lately
So it’s been a minute. And rather than posting some form of informative blog… I’ve decided to take a more personal route. Let’s chat the NHS, autoimmune diseases and surrender.
After my stint in Dubai I came home with a fire in my belly and a passion for the direction I am heading in. I have plans, I have movement, I have people and I have a vision. I had two weeks of a bug upon landing but assumed this was the illness that always follows a stressful event or situation. I took rest but continued on a trajectory of hustle and thrive that would free me into the world without any self doubt. I was so very sure I was riding a wave of instinct and intuition… not adrenaline and fear. I saw a few of my loved ones, re-established connections, planned work and rebranded myself.
I returned to work at StretchLAB, started new movement classes in Essex and streamlined myself. I returned to my beloved London-based calisthenics studio and training in aerial. All of these elements ground me in a purpose and direction. Movement is my medicine, it is my therapy… but of course, anything to an excess can become poison. I had overly attached myself to all the things I could “do” rather than taking the time to sit with who I can “be”. I was losing sense of presence by squeezing the time out of every single day. Overpacking it with jobs, people and training. I was angry, upset and hurting.
I had definitely taken a turn during that turning point week. I saw many signs that my body and spirit was becoming exhausted, but I had made arrangements and commitments that I intended to keep. My stubborn self didn’t want to let anyone down and to be completely honest, I’m so bad at reading whether I’m just tired or about to overdo it and cause a flare up. Call it ego or ignorance, you don’t know what you don’t know… but you’ll soon be shown right?!
I’d attended my first silks class back in London on the Thursday evening, making it super clear to my coach I would take it nice and slow. I mean it when I say, in my own way I thought I was being tentative. Sitting out of many movements, taking my time to move with as much awareness as I could. But alas, I did a drop that ended up wrapping around my waist (not the hips as I said I would avoid those) and pop! I felt something like a little release and later assumed it was my period come early. That evening I fell asleep on the train home from exhaustion, being awoken by a kind stranger wanting to know what my stop was.
The next morning I awoke at my usual time of 5am, stood up and noticed some pretty intense stabbing, burning and ripping pain that only intensified as each moment passed. Within a few minutes my abdomen was rock hard and had distended out in ways I had never previously experienced. After about 10 minutes I was crying in pain and had phoned 111. I had no idea what was wrong, having never experienced pain like this… not even period pains! (Sorry girls I’m one of those people). My dad came home and took me to a&e.
Cut a long story short, I spent the day in hospital and was sent home to kinda just heal on my own. They gave me no instructions, no further information or follow up care. I was told I’d be fine in a few days. Now… I understand the NHS is under a great deal of pressure, but I’m saddened at the fact they pretty much dismissed my autoimmune condition.
Doctor: “so you have no health conditions right?”
Me: “actually I have inflammatory spondyloarthropathy”
Doctor: “oh that’s the bones right”
Me: “yeah it’s all my joints, digestive system, eyes, skin”
Doctor: “yeah so not related, totally different"“
… if you aren’t rolling your eyes already, please do so now. In that moment I knew I was watching a red flag, it was like the universe was adding pressure by antagonising me. Instead of me taking the space to push back and say “HEY DOCTOR IT’S ALL RELATED AND I BET IMMA HAVE A DAMNED FLARE UP IF YOU KNEW YOUR SHIT THEN YOU WOULD KNOW TRIGGERS ARE STRESS, ILLNESS AND INJURY” but no instead I simply said “yeah”.
Fast forward a few weeks, I was in full flare up. My joints would cease up each night, I’d wake doing a perfect rolling-t-rex impression whimpering as I moved. My stress levels were high and my energy levels were zapped low. I was fatigued, emotional and in pain.
So this is where this idea of surrender and rest comes up. I would have a day or two of battle. I would try to plan my life, view rooms, post classes… and then the plans would fall apart and I would be left in the ruins wondering how I can’t surrender to this. I would yo-yo between what I thought was rest and actual rest.
Why do we find it so hard to slow down in this modern hustle-culture world? Why can’t I read my body signals of fatigue vs laziness?
I soon realised that the work I thought I had done on dismantling the bond between my ability to achieve and succeed as directly correlating to my idea of self worth had been disguised. In fact it had been festering under the surface, eating away at my self perception the entire time… I had just been riding on a high.
“I thought I loved myself better than that”
“I thought I unconditionally loved myself”
In terms of my health flares and the ruptured cyst, I followed up by contacting the doctor who has booked me in for another scan. During the aftermath of the flare I have developed a twitching left eye which has now begun to cause pain, redness and swelling… so rather than easing off, something tells me this is just the beginning.
I would like to highlight a major flaw in our society. The NHS. Yes, it’s free healthcare that we pay taxes for, but it’s also the only establishment that makes the users feel like an inconvenience. I’m sorry I’m here waiting to be seen with my list of symptoms but… isn’t that the whole point of the NHS existing?! The NHS, or at least our doctors, can be so very quick to dismiss that the body and the symptoms of imbalance are all related. We cannot separate different areas of the body when WE KNOW each of the systems are directly reliant on one another. If one body system starts to malfunction then it will affect all others.
Fact is the NHS is a symptom of the underlying philosophy that sits beneath the surface of the UK making everyone sicker “keep calm and carry on”. The NHS gaslights its patients left, right and centre. They wait for diseases to manifest to such a crude level that they are constantly on a worse-case-scenario line… dismissing anyone with warning sign symptoms.
So if you pair my own internalised hustle-boss-bish-thrive-or-die-toxic-masculinity with the NHS happy-go-gaslighty then you can see why I’ve been struggling with an internal war of validating my sickness and disease… vs telling myself it’s not that big of a deal and I need to just get on with it.
Reality it… what time are we wasting? To whose schedule? What are we keeping up with?
Part of me is so hurt by the way we live life currently that my internal magical fairy wishes to fly away and immerse myself in philosophies of love and connectedness with nature… part of me wants to stay with my loved ones and work together to carve a brighter future because WE ALL KNOW THIS TRUTH AND WE ALL FEEL IT.
There is a collective disease in the minds of us all and it’s hurting us so deeply individually, and yet we aren’t talking about it. We want to work to keep up but who's driving the momentum?
I am so in love with this world and with mother nature, that I often look around and think… how did we get here? I think I was born at the wrong time because this isn’t the Earth I remember and I don’t want to live like this. Our world and the human race is magnificent. We have the capacity to create the most incredible worlds for ourselves, we just need to release old paradigms of separation that truly no longer serves us. We need to work collectively to heal the individual, we need to work as an individual to heal the collective.
We need to hold safe space for hurt and safe space for healing, with the awareness that through the golden threads that tie us all together the work will ripple out to us all.
I’m starting to enjoy the slowness of living but the internal battle is still underway, albeit happening with far less frequency.
We all need a secure sense of grounding to feel safe, and so when this slips through our fingers the impact is felt so deeply the fear rocks my body threatening to return to an old state of separation. It would be easy to slip back into familiar old ways but the lesson would return, only greater next time.
So I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m listening to instinct, I’m sinking into my intuition and feelings, and I’m holding my own space.
I’m softening, meditating into new depths of myself and my creativity is reawakening. I’m using these tools instead of my body.
Is this the rise of my feminine?
As I regain my energy and start to move better, I move forward with a greater sensitivity to myself and others. I want to create transparency with our lived experience and not just highlight perceived successful hustle. Learning to unwind the invalidation of pain.
Let’s all move a little closer to felt-ness.
A