With Epilepsy, you can’t have too much, you can’t have too little, everything has to be just right. Let Jo Mackenzie guide you through the Goldilocks Complex.
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pieces of pottery with gold. It’s a clear metaphor for embracing flaws and accepting imperfections. Don’t panic. This isn’t a sneaky art history seminar (although I encourage you to check out some Kintsugi pieces. It’s stunning.) Kintsugi is part of the wabi-sabi Read more…
The fairy tale is one of those things in life we rely upon to be comfortably predictable. This is epitomised with the much-loved phrase, ‘happily ever after’, or, as it sometimes goes, ‘and they lived happily ever after’. This satisfactory and, above all else, ‘happy’ ending is pleasing for us Read more…
If I wasn’t comfortable in a situation, be it in a job, a relationship or a living arrangement (you name it), I’d run. Anything that meant I’d have to confront something about myself that made me even the slightest bit uneasy, I’d pass. I don’t mean I’ve slowly backed away Read more…
In the BrainAblaze podcast ‘Sleep Till Brooklyn’, host, David Clifford, described just how important sleep is, and, more specifically, how vital it is for people with epilepsy. It had already inspired my post this week, and then, in a (harsh but timely) turn of fate, I had a fall. ‘What Read more…
Okay, I’m going to face this head-on. Unusually, my post the ‘Not Working of Benefits‘ did not finish on the positive note that the others have. That’s because life with (and without) epilepsy is erratic and unpredictable. Throw into that mix a dash of instability, a splash of are-you-kidding-me, and Read more…
Even though, on paper, this is an awesome benefit, it neglects many people. The UK government has put it in place specifically for people with any disability, illness or mental health condition, yet uses the same application process for everyone. Instantly, they’ve stacked the deck against people with invisible disabilities, or mental health conditions.
I’ve written previously about an episode of my life where anger, frustration and immense loathing of my diagnosis caused me to make a terrible (and dangerous) decision. Without medical advice, I stopped taking my medication and lost almost a year of my life, it’s still a blank spot in my Read more…
I’ve had to accept, and it’s taken practice, that my mysterious sojourns from consciousness into the dark might just involve ‘souvenirs’…
I was talking to my mate, G. and he said, do you wanna hear something strange, Goldilocks? Well, I thought. What girl doesn’t want to do something, see something or hear something strange? And, he said: ‘we met about 5 years ago, yet I’ve known you for longer than you’ve Read more…
Like breakfast and brushing my teeth, epilepsy is something I just ‘do’. Some people paint, some people knit, I ‘epilepsy’. This is not to imply this condition defines me, nothing could be further from the truth. This is to state that every now and again I’m taken over by this Read more…