Ableism.

​If there is one thing that really gets my back up, it would be ableism. This weird belief that by being disabled, it somehow diminishes our need for anything that can actively make our lives easier or less of a painful slog. I’ve had my illness for a long time and as it’s progressed, I’ve seen more and more discriminating behaviour. Whether it was people pushing past to get their buggies on the bus before I could get my wheelchair in or someone actually deliberately nudging my wheel while waiting in a bank queue. Yeah. That happened. I had to learn very quickly how to “self advocate” and hold my ground against anyone who thought they were more entitled than I was to something.

Ableism is a harmful thing. Like any kind of prejudice. It’s difficult and it can be extremely cruel. No one wants to be disabled or unable to take care of themselves or do things they used to love. It’s hard enough to live with any kind of disease, whether it’s physical or mental, but when we have to spend time explaining ourselves to people who don’t have the capacity to just accept that some people just can’t do what they expect of us.

My journey through going from a somewhat normal life, just having to take inhaler and being able to live my life as I wanted to, to what my life is now hasn’t been easy. Not being able to feel the wind in my hair while riding my bike or being able to sing as much as I want or play the flute. These are things I miss. I look at old pictures of myself 10+ years ago and I feel sad. Like that girl in the pictures was a completely different person and I’ve been almost grieving for that person. 

It’s hard enough to feel like I’ve lost that person and in a lot of ways my freedom. I don’t need to spend time explaining to someone why I’m in a wheelchair or on oxygen. Being told by an elderly lady about how she didn’t need anything to help her get around at 84 while on a bus was nothing short of insulting. If you see someone who has either a visible illness or a more obvious disability, please remember, we are trying to keep ourselves going and don’t need to be treated like a freak or be questioned and shoved aside. We just need people to accept us and treat us like equals.

That’s all everyone really wants deep down.

Til all are one.

Wendy xx

I'm back.

Sorry I've not been as active as I'd like to have been over the last few months. After finishing my psychotherapy, a really bad infection and a load of other things in between, I've just needed to centre myself and get my mind back in to some kind of order and figure out where to take this journey through my life and what kind of role the blog plays within that. I didn't think for a moment about giving up, this is, and always has been, my place for my thoughts, my worries and everything else in between. I remember back where I started this and where I was both physically and mentally. It's astonishing how much has changed and even when I was at my lowest ebbs, how there has always been a learning curve and I've drawn wisdom from experience. It's something that I've always done and my therapist even said it was such a unique, astute ability to learn to get back up and try again. It's my armour. 

I think I've probably had the best Christmas and New Year period in a long time. I'd never even realised how bogged down with things I was until I'd done my psychotherapy and allowed myself to finally accept a few things. The most important was that there isn't always a logical reasoning behind everything, no matter how hard we search for it. Sometimes it's OK to just shut out the world from the world outside and just focus on the world inside you. Listen to your heart beating. Just emptying your mind and just trusting your instincts and get that sense of "Clear Mind."

For those who don't understand what I'm referring to, in the Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds anime, the main character Yusei is struggling to overcome something that happened and he spends a lot of time trying to face the problems that he was having with trying to beat a particular opponent and it ate away at him until he was shown the way to this state of "Clear Mind" in which he was able to accomplish his final goal, the Shooting Star Dragon. There a line he uses when he finally manages to just let go and let the wind guide him. "All my fears, all my worries. They're all just Stardust." How this relates to me is that like Yusei, I had to just let everything go from my mind and just keep moving forwards. It's amazing how that feeling of clarity can really change things. Maybe it's just a case of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture.

Not everything in life is going to make sense. I've spent most of my life asking "why" and trying to work on fixing the things I thought I'd done wrong or caused, some of those were things that I couldn't have had any say or part of what happened or how people behaved towards me. Learning that it was more to do with them. For me, I'm just taking it all as a learning curve. Regardless of what happens, I've always taken it as an experience and a chance to learn and grow. I often found situations where there wasn't a clear explanation difficult to understand and that was frustrating.

I've always been a user of divination, sometimes that can give you some guidance. I did a reading recently with my runes and tarot. I've done them for years as they can give me guidance and insight to what's going on, my thoughts and situations. I'm still working on trying to improve things, even trying to get some problems sorted that have been going on for some time. Biggest thing right now is getting my rather uncomfortable and sizable hernia repaired. When we first found it, just weeks before Covid-19 started, it was the size of an acorn. Just looked like my belly button had popped out and it only hurt sometimes. Now it's about the size of a small melon, it's very uncomfortable. I'm currently undergoing tests to determine how to sort this safely. I'm hopeful that things will be sorted soon and I trust the hands of the doctors helping me.

I'm still fighting. And that's not going to change any time soon. 

So, I'm hoping you are all keeping well and that 2022 is going to be a better year going forward.

Till all are one

Wendy xx