Trail Of Light.

It's officially cold season. My first cold of the autumn has arrived and it feels...horrible haha! No surprises there! But as an MS sufferer it's a bit of a drag on the old immune system. It's an achy body x10 compared to the average Joe and it is literally an effort to stay awake. However, not all is terrible and I see this as a chance to practice some much needed self-compassion and self-care. I push myself into overdrive most of the time. Between working, exercising, volunteering and travelling around and about, I don't really leave much time to just chill out. Actually, it was something I had to schedule into my diary last Sunday, but I managed to find other things I really needed to do. This is probably most of us, not really slowing down until we really have to and even then, kind of ignoring our needs to the point of crumbling. This was a real exercise of knowing my boundaries and  think this time I'll commend myself for cutting the gym and sentencing myself ...

There is nothing more that I enjoy (other than eating cake) more than exercising. I love it, no joke. I get such a buzz from working hard and pushing my body to the limits. Seeing yourself being able to go that extra distance and lift heavier weights over time is a real achievement. I feel like keeping active has become more important for me since diagnosis. I realised that if I kept strong for all the time I was well, then if something was to happen I could recover more quickly. From a mental health perspective, that gave me a sense of being able to control, to some extent, my own condition. Ok, so I can't decide when I'll relapse or how it will last for, but I have the power to keep physically strong and battle through. With exercise, it's really not about doing loads. It's about listening to your body and doing what feels right for you. For some time, I got so down about the fact that I couldn't feel my arm that it was hard to stay motivated. But actually, the ...

As we all get back to routine after balmy long summer days of peach sunsets, it's easy to end up getting bogged down being back at work. For me, it's hard not to get down about the end of summer, I wait for it all year. After all, days are longer, the necessity for a billion layers no longer stands and watermelon and ice cream is all that is on the agenda. To say I spend to time looking back at summer snapshots and basking in the nostalgia of vaguely warm weather would be an understatement. The question to be asked here, is what to do when getting back into routine of working stresses and keep myself healthy and happy? Well here's the thing, I did a series of amazing workshops at work around mindfulness and resilience and how we can keep our "bags light" when we seem to be going uphill. It changed my perspective on how well I actually look after myself and what I do in terms of emotional/mental self-care. With the busy lives we lead and days drawing to a sh...