I’ve spent my life watching society ignore childhood sexual abuse (CSA) or use it as a political football to flick the responsibility from one party to another.
Category: Personal essays
I Have Had PTSD Retriggered And It’s Very Real
Watching Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s explanation of how the Capitol riots impacted her mental well-being and compounded the trauma of a previous sexual assault felt like watching my own life on replay. Not because the Capitol riots personally affected me, but because I am a survivor of multiple traumas and I understand exactly how it feels to have PTSD retriggered.
In response to her raw testimony, many have cast doubts on the validity of Ocasio-Cortez’s retriggered trauma, some even disbelieving her experience of sexual assault outright. Despite what some people may think, retriggered complex post-traumatic stress disorder is very real and sadly not uncommon.
I’m a disabled and chronically ill digital nomad who travels the world solo.
I took my mom to Thailand’s ‘Party Island’ for 2 weeks
Travelling Full-Time Is A Joy, But I Never Anticipated Its Impact On Body Image
Before departing England to become a digital nomad, my body confidence was at an all-time high.
As a teenager, I developed a distorted relationship with food, bouncing between starvation, binge eating and vomiting, with over-exercising dominating my daily routine. Until my early 20s, I tore my body to shreds every second of the day, hating every scrap of skin.
After discovering the body neutrality and acceptance movements and accessing counseling, I threw off the trappings of diet culture and embraced my body. I still had hang-ups, as we all do, but my self-confidence was stronger and fiercer than ever before. I never anticipated that traveling full-time in South East Asia would threaten that.
I’m a Digital Nomad: Here are the Highs and Lows
Travelling the globe is an adventure I will never regret but when you’re taking it on solo, an unwelcome passenger sometimes makes an appearance: loneliness.
While I constantly meet new people travelling full-time as a digital nomad, it is no easy feat to make and keep friends on the road.
I have been lucky enough to meet people that I see staying in my life forever, encountered plenty that left little to no mark and felt incredible joy surrounded by utter strangers who would soon become friends.
Using Music to Manage Chronic Pain
“It’s helpful to realize there is no silver bullet treatment or one-size-fits-all therapeutic approach to pain,” says Dr. Jacob Hascalovici, chief medical officer for Clearing. This is one of those nuggets of advice that, for people living with chronic pain, is frustrating and healing in equal measure.
There is no magical cure for chronic pain, with which 50 million people live in the United States, according to a 2022 study. Every day, scores of people are navigating the medical and holistic worlds to figure out how to live with this unwieldy monster.
Ancient ableism lives on
For anyone born visibly disabled in ancient Rome, being stoned to death was a very real possibility.
According to the Twelve Tables – the foundation of Roman law – anyone with a ‘visible deformity’ was better off stoned to death before their life impacted the livelihood of other citizens.
We open and close our relationship based on feelings
“I should tell you, I’m not great with monogamy, so I only do open relationships now,” read the WhatsApp message. Frozen in my once tranquil place on the sofa, I flicked away the notification as if its disappearance could erase the message’s existence. “What on earth does that mean?” I thought.
Why I chose to have an abortion abroad
“Your boobs are huge,” my partner quipped from the hotel bed as I wiggled into my swimming costume.
I laughed it off and jiggled them in his face before taking one last swim on our holiday in the Dominican Republic, trying to quiet that voice in the back of my head, whispering, “What if you are pregnant?”
