This last 6 months has been really hard. I keep telling myself it’s not been that long, that I’m just in a little flare that will pass. In reality, it’s more like my symptoms have held a summit, discussed a new strategy, and re-deployed their efforts in a new configuration. .
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My first experience of chronic pain was #vulvodynia, which sucks enough on its own. Over time, my whole body sensitised and I developed #fibromyalgia/ #chronicwidespreadpainsyndrome. About 18 months ago, I began experiencing huge fatigue crashes, consistent with #chronicfatigue. And now the IBS that has always been a minor inconvenience has become downright debilitating. I’m back at square one, fighting for doctors to understand and take my experience seriously. Meanwhile, it’s Dr Google, a hot water bottle, and a whole lot of swearing. .
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BUT in five days I’m off to New York with this sexy ass (I can call her that because in this photo we are dressed as the beneficiaries of @mydadwrotea’s Asses and Donkeys Trust). I’m exceptionally nervous because travelling with #chronicpain / #chronicillness is very daunting. But I’ve been dreaming of this trip since childhood and I am going, even if it means @lily.parham has to push me round in a shopping trolley. (Sorry, Lil.)
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#travellingwithchronicillness #chronicpainawareness #chronicillnesswarrior #lifewithchronicillness #chronicwidespreadpain #unexplainedillness #spoonielife #spoonieproblems #spooniewarrior
Last but not least - fave book 10 of 10: ANGELS IN AMERICA by Tony Kushner. 📖
‘The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word 'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean. I live in America, that’s hard enough, I don’t have to love it. You do that. Everybody’s got to love something.’
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Anyone who’s ever had coffee with me will no doubt be unsurprised to see this in top spot (even if we only ever went out for coffee that one time). I am nothing short of OBSESSED with this genius work, having watched several live performances and worn out the DVD of HBO’s adaptation for the screen (starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and a host of other stars, all of whom give phenomenal performances). But it’s the writing that initially grabbed me, and the writing which has gripped me ever since, no matter how many times I revisit the familiar - and yet entirely unfamiliar - world Kushner builds, with its cast of complex, humorous, flawed, tragic, uncannily articulate characters. (Incidentally, I have also immensely enjoyed the other works by Kushner that I have managed to source so far; if you like Angels, I’d also recommend ‘Thinking on the Longstanding Problems of Virtue’, or at very least his astounding essay, ‘On Pretentiousness’.)
👼🏻 Next month, @lily.parham and I are off to NYC, and you better believe we’re stopping off at the Bethesda Fountain, so that I can see the angel statue in real life, cry a little, and then buy Lily a coffee to say thank you for putting up with my sentimental nonsense. Prepare the Way! 📚
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#angelsinamerica #angelsinamericamarathon #Angelsinamerica #ntl #nationaltheatrelive #nationaltheatre #tonykushner #tonykushnerismyhero #tonykushnerquote #tonykushnerisbrilliant #tonykushnerrules #tonykushnerisagenius #tonykushnergetsit #tonykushnerlove #tonykushnerplay
Book 9 of 10 on my Favourites list: THE HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSON by Elaine N. Aron. 📚
The subtitle, ‘How to thrive when the world overwhelms you,’ makes it sound like it’s a book only for “weaklings” who are “too soft to cope with real life” (internalised stigma in quote marks). But I believe this book is anything but. It’s a book for those strong enough to look at themselves square in the eyes; to contemplate the ways in which they feel they’ve never fit in; the miniature traumas that may have shaped who they are today. When I found this book, it was as near a Damascus experience as I may ever get. Yes: this book knocked me the f*** off my donkey. I felt like I could understand and accept myself in a way I never could have before.
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Sorry, got a bit evangelical there. But if you’ve gravitated towards books such as Susan Cain’s ‘Quiet’ (about introversion) or indeed, just felt like you’ve always felt things a bit more keenly than your peers, then you are NOT weird, you are NOT broken - you are simply an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person). And once you know that, you can learn how to use these skills, these talents - that you once thought were weaknesses - to their best advantage.
Almost welled up there 😢 But then again - I am Highly Sensitive.
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#hsp #highlysensitiveperson #highlysensitive #highlysensitivepeople #highlysensitivepersontribe #highlysensitivebadass #highlysensitivesoul #highlysensitiveleader #highlysensitivelife #highlysensitiveentrepreneur #highlysensitives #highlysensitivepersonality #highlysensitiveempath #elainenaron #elainearon #empathsofinstagram #empathproblems #empathsbelike #empathsunite #empathstruggles #empatheticbadass #empathsurvivalguide #empathsoul
Fave 8/10: MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert
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‘She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.’
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I read this in second year of university, for a paper entitled ‘Religious Themes in Literature.’ At first blush, it might seem a strange fit for such a paper, but there is actually a ton of socio-theological subtext in MB. Lots of hypocrisy, lots of moralising; LOTS OF NERDY FUN. We had a kick-ass lecturer who scared the bejesus out of most of us, but in a sexy, churlish, academic way. She wore pearls and dusk-coloured skirt-suits, and felt simultaneously acerbic and whip-smart but also fragile somehow, as if at any minute she might combust in a cloud of her own wisdom and disenchanted fury.
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Anyway, Flaubert. His writing is so precisely articulate, getting to the heart of the matter without losing the beauty of the craft; he writes rose and thorn. This has been a good reminder that I should read more of his work! I love the precision of his poetic language, even in translation. And MB is a classic well worthy of the accolade. It’s a story for every woman who’s been sold a fairytale and finds herself unsatisfied no matter where she turns. But clearly the story is far more universalised than that; why else would Flaubert have admitted, ‘Madame Bovary, c’est moi’?
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#favouritebooks #bookchallenge #bookstagram #bookishchallenge #bookishlove #favouritebook #madamebovary #madamebovarycestmoi #gustaveflaubert #flaubert #flaubertquotes #madamebovary📖 #shelfie #shelfiesofinstagram
We now return to your scheduled programming... 📖
Day 7 of my weirdly-extended Favourite Books #bookstagramchallenge! Sort of turning into #mylifeinbooks... Thank you for the inspiration, @dok.sax!
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THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS by C.S. Lewis 📚
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‘Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.’
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As an aspiring Theology student who loved imagination and the craft of writing, it’s fair to say I was quite obsessed with Lewis in my teenage years. This epistolary tale is of a new Christian and the ‘demon’ that is assigned to him, told through the advisory letters from his more experienced Uncle Screwtape. It was one of the first of Lewis’s books I read post-Narnia, and I was completely absorbed by it.
Several years later, I had the immense good fortune to study at @Magdalene College, Cambridge, of which Lewis had been a Fellow; and my Director of Studies let me sit in Lewis’ old comfy chair, complete with the original writing desk. I also once got to sit next to an old bishop at dinner who had been a friend of Lewis’s while he was in Cambridge, and indeed had conducted many of the theological conversations that became pivotal in Lewis’s eventual (albeit ‘reluctant’!) conversion. When the bishop talked of him, he periodically slipped back into habit and referred to him as Jack - a nickname which I knew, as a total Lewis nerd, was reserved for his closest companions. I drank a bit too much wine in my excitement and probably grilled the old bishop with much too much vigour. But he did suffer from short term memory loss, so hopefully he doesn’t remember the strange little girl with a literary crush, drooling over potato dauphinois and memories of her hero.
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#screwtapeletters #cslewis #cslewisscrewtapeletters #magdalenecollege #magdalenecollegecambridge #theologynerd #christiantheology #bookishlove #favouritebooks #toptenbooks
