Finding HopeRemembering Claire Wineland
Posted on September 8, 2018
I couldn’t not acknowledge that Claire Wineland died on Sunday. I still don’t really know what to say; my emotions are all over the place. But I did want to say this: I might not have known her in the traditional sense – we never met and our relationship consisted of a few interactions on Twitter – but she deeply inspired me and therefore meant a lot to me. I will miss her tremendously and my thoughts are with her friends and family. She was so, so special and her impact is on-going, like the ripples you see when you throw a pebble into a pond.
So, with all of that said, I wanted to share one of her TED talks. She talks about living with Cystic Fibrosis, how hard it is, and how living with an illness can affect your perspective, as well as how people treat you. She’s an amazing speaker.
“You can have a painful life, you can suffer, you can experience what it feels like to be a human being – all those messy and gross emotions – and yet you can make a life for yourself that you are very, very proud of.”
“I wanted to share the fact that you can suffer and be okay. You can suffer and still make something. That the quality of your life isn’t determined by whether you’re healthy or sick or rich or poor. Not at all. It’s determined by what you make out of your experience as a human being, out of the embarrassing moments and the painful moments. It’s what you make and what you give from that place.”
She talks about reading a book by Stephen Hawking as a young teenager and learning about space and suns and black holes. Her enthusiasm makes me laugh out loud (and then cry). And that led her to learning about Stephen Hawking himself and the disease he lived with and all that he contributed to society anyway. He was her first role model.
She talks about how she questioned why she had to work so hard just to stay alive and how she was desperately looking for something to contribute, something to give her life meaning. She wanted more than just surviving. And then, at thirteen, she almost died and went into a coma that no one thought she’d come out of. But she did and she was just blown away by all the support she received. That made her realise that that is not the case in many families living with Cystic Fibrosis and so she created her foundation, The Claire’s Place Foundation, to assist those families.
Six years on, she was struck with the realisation that she’d become the person that she had been looking for, someone to look up to who was sick and still contributing to the world. She was using her experience to give something and she was living a life she was proud of, that thirteen year old her would be proud of.
“And that’s all that we can have in life. Because the truth is, it’s not about being happy, right? Life isn’t about just trying to be happy. Honestly, happiness is a Dopamine in the brain. If I was to sit here and tell you all to just be happy, I’d just tell you all to go smoke a joint and listen to Bob Marley and just call it a day. We don’t need any of this TEDx stuff, you know? Life isn’t about being happy. Life is a rollercoaster of crazy emotions: one second you’re fine and the next second you feel lonely and despair and like nothing’s ever gonna be okay again. It’s not about emotions; it’s not about how you feel second to second. It’s about what you’re making of your life and whether you can find a deep pride in who you are and what you’ve given because that’s so much more impactful, so much deeper than whether you’re happy, or content, or joyful. It’s okay to feel pain. In fact, if you can actually experience it without judgement, without, you know, trying to fix anything. Nothing’s wrong with any of you. Nothing’s wrong with me. I don’t care that I’m sick. At all. Genuinely. If a cure came tomorrow, I wouldn’t care. Because that has not determined the quality of my life. I’m not trying to fix myself. My suffering has given me so much, and I’ve been able to make something and give something to people from it.”
In some ways, it’s hard to watch because it’s devastating to see her so engaged and dynamic and thoughtful and funny and know she’s not here anymore. It’s hard to watch her talk about surviving the odds, surviving the coma she was in at thirteen, knowing that she didn’t survive the odds this time. But at the same time, this video is a tiny piece of proof amongst all the noise that she WAS here, that she WAS so engaged and dynamic and thoughtful and funny.
As I said, I will miss Claire immensely but I’m incredibly grateful to have videos like these to watch on the hardest days.
Introducing Claire Wineland
Posted on July 9, 2018
Posting on a Monday?! What?!
I know my posting schedule has gone out the window recently but I really want to share a couple of videos with you guys.
I’ve talked about Claire Wineland and her videos before and I’ve had this one bookmarked for ages. Claire is twenty-one years old and has Cystic Fibrosis (lots of useful information here). She’s spent most of her life raising awareness about CF and created her own non-profit organisation to support those with CF and their families. She’s incredibly wise and eloquent and even though we’ve had very different experiences of life and of health, I really relate to a lot of what she says. She’s inspired me a lot.
Just over a month ago, she was put on the transplant list for new lungs and she made a video where she talks about how that feels and what it means. And while she’s talking about transplants and new lungs and things that many of us don’t have direct experience of, the way she talks about living is universally relatable. And important.
“Transplant, for me, isn’t really just about getting new lungs. It’s not about being healthy, it’s not about fixing myself. For me, transplant is about what it means to choose to live, not in an ignorant way. I don’t believe that once I get lungs and once I’m better that everything else is gonna be better. I don’t believe that it’s gonna save me or fix me or make me any more of the person that I wanna be. I think that getting new lungs, for me, is like a representation for what it means to choose to be here, on this planet, and to just choose to try, to try to show up and be conscious and to be aware of ourselves and try and actually give something of ourselves, to not spend our whole lives just resentful of being alive, because it’s so easy to be resentful of being alive and I get it. I completely get it. It’s so hard not to fall in the trap of seeing that every single thing you choose to do in life, no matter which way you go and what you choose to do, there’s always just gonna be this… this innate pain in life, you know? There’s always gonna be someone or something that’s gonna come and yank the rug out from under your feet, no matter how healthy you are, no matter how rich you are, no matter how perfect your life may seem, or how much you’ve worked for what you have. There’s always something right around the corner that is going to come and make a fool out of you and that’s life. And it’s terrifying. And one of the things I’ve found that’s the most difficult about choosing to get new lungs is just… It opens up this well of want in me. Like, I want to be alive and I want to have the time and I want to have the energy to actually make something of myself, give something, like, make something I think is genuinely valuable, not just something to make myself feel better… I want to actually give something… and that’s really scary, because once you want something, then it opens you up to just that huge fear of failing. Like, the moment you admit that you want it then you have to admit that you don’t want to fail and you have to look at how painful it would be to lose it. So there’s just so many different layers to this. Like, it’s not just about lungs.”
The stuff about wanting to live and how scary that is really hits home for me at the moment, at this point in my mental health journey – I hate describing it that way because it sounds so quaint (and depression is anything but quaint) but I haven’t found a better word for it yet. Depression can make living feel like a struggle at best and unbearable at worst and I’m just coming out of the worst I’ve ever experienced. And knowing that someone in a different country, in a different situation, with a different life experience feels the same fear that I do… knowing that is comforting. It makes me feel less alone and it makes me feel part of something bigger than just me.
“It’s all very human, and it’s all very real, and it’s all very scary. And I have no idea what’s gonna happen.”
This video and these quotes have been in the back of my mind and on my list to write about for a while now. I just hadn’t gotten around to pulling this post together until Claire posted her most recent video on Saturday night.
I feel for her, so desperately, especially when she talks about how there’s so much more she wants to do. I can only imagine what this is like for her. It makes me so angry and upset that anyone should have to go through such stress while already dealing with such difficult circumstances: illness, treatment and medication, hospital stays, and so on. The gofundme link is here, in case you want to donate or share.
I just wanted to share her videos and her words with you guys. Her perspective on life and living has given me a lot to think about and hopefully it’s the same for you.
And Claire, just on the off chance you see this, thank you. Thank you for your words, thank you for making me feel understood even though you’ve never met me. Thank you for making me laugh and for making me cry. I’m grateful to be able to help, even if it’s in a tiny way and in a tiny amount. I have no doubt that you will continue to do incredible, important things.
A Need For Balance
Posted on June 9, 2018
In this video, Samantha Pena talks about her experience of OCD, what it’s like to live with it, and what she’s gained. Her experience is pretty different to mine but there are definitely parts of this that I strongly relate to, especially the intensity.
Here are some quotes from the video:
- “It’s like being underwater for an extended period of time. You’re holding your breath and it’s scary. And without even thinking about it, your body naturally tells you that bad things will happen if you stay underwater. Your body tells you to fight to get out of that situation. That’s the way my body felt every time I touched something asymmetrically.”
- “OCD is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It’s one of many anxiety disorders and it all starts with the obsessions. The obsessions are the recurring, uncomfortable thoughts and worries that lead to the compulsions. The compulsions are in response to the obsessions, attempting to satisfy them, and it becomes a disorder when your obsessions and compulsions take up so much of your time that you are unable to move through your day ‘normally.’”
- “I avoid door handles because the cold metal sensation takes a lot for me to recuperate from.”
- “Anytime I’m itchy, I’m twice as itchy.”
- “An average day for me means avoiding thirty two different sections of lines on the ground, sixty fixes for any time anyone touches me or bumps into me, mentally preparing for a hundred and twenty four door handles, two hundred and seventy casual encounters anytime I have to touch something, and four hundred and twenty itches. In total, that’s nine hundred and six obsessive-compulsive thoughts that occur within one day. And that’s only symmetry related.”
- “I was so anxious that it hurt. It was easier to deal with my [school] binders than to live my own anxiety.”
- “I always mentally prepare for my day. I always have a plan. I even plan to plan my next plan.”
- “There is an overall understanding within me that life has a need for balance.”
- “I often hear the expression I ‘work better under pressure.’ I have OCD. I am literally always under pressure.”
The Only Make Up Tutorial That Matters
Posted on May 3, 2018
This week has been ridiculously busy and stressful and there have been many ups and downs. I’m feeling more than a little overwhelmed. I haven’t had much time to write and I’m not quite happy with any of the things I’ve already written; I wasn’t even sure I would be posting. But then I remembered this video. I’ve wanted to post it for a while so here we are. I’ve talked about Anna Akana’s videos before (I think she’s great!) but this one really speaks for itself. Just watch it. It’s worth it.
‘How To Feel Pretty’ by Anna Akana
Posted on March 3, 2018
This is a great little video on ‘feeling pretty’. I find it pretty easy to talk about mental health stuff but I really struggle to talk about body image and even more so when it comes to talking about it from my own perspective. Anna Akana is both very eloquent and funny and this video is a great reminder about keeping perspective when it comes to beauty. It’s a good lesson in body image but also in talking about body image: so much advice is inspiring but difficult to put into practice. What struck me about this video was how actively useful it is, as well as being inspiring.
“But above all else, most importantly, please just let yourself feel pretty.”
You can find more of Anna’s videos here. I really, really recommend them!
