Our house is a little dark, with the dark wooden floors, dark furniture and the overcast day outside all contributing to that sense of a lazy, slow morning. The kind of morning where nobody is in a hurry to do anything. Dad puts on music through our tried-and-true sound system and old country songs join the chorus of birds outside the window. A slightly different collection to the songs we would have played at the parties, back in the days when this house was regularly full of people and occasionally questionable decisions.

These mornings aren’t really a tradition, exactly, after all my father was a pilot so its not like we always had weekends at home. They are simply a combination of all the things that make up our home. The twang of the music mixed with all the familiar Fiji birds (a number of which aren’t even native to Fiji) chirps outside. The breeze blowing through the palm trees. The feel of the smooth wooden floors inside giving way to the grooved wooden decking outside, where we sit enjoying the cool trade winds as we eat Sunday brunch. The sounds of my parents voices, their laughs, the eye rolls between us at silly stories. It is so ordinary, and somehow that makes it feel incredibly important.

I’m taking in these moments, absorbing them… Letting them take up space in my memory because the reality is, I don’t know when I will get to do this again. My life has been pulling more and more in different directions, and I hate it. There is a deeply ingrained cultural and Catholic guilt in me that keeps reminding me that I should be here, spending time with my family as they get older. That I should be making the most of this time. That I should be around more. Yet that sits in direct conflict with the rest of my life, which is insisting that I need to exist in a world beyond where I am now. That I have outgrown the life I lived in this home.

For now though… for now I will simply sit here my bare feet sink into the wooden decking, leaving its imprint on my feet in much the same way this home has left its imprint on my soul.

I am acutely aware of the weight hanging over all of this. The knowledge that we are creeping towards a time when this home will have to go, and that breaks my heart a little. This is the home I came home to from the hospital when I was born. The home that has held so many versions of me. However this trip, particularly after Mum’s fall, has also been a reminder that this home was built for another version of my life, one that I simply didn’t get, and for another time in my parents’ lives.

If I had done what everyone expected, or perhaps if I am being totally honest… wanted, and found a man, built a life and had a family, this home would be the ideal place to raise a child, or two. Four bedrooms, four bathrooms and a huge open-plan kitchen designed for hosting gatherings and bringing people together. Where playing outside is still normal, and they could climb the mango tree that is currently booming in the front yard as the clusters of flowers turn to the juiciest mangoes. Except that isn’t the path I chose, and I think there is something quite confronting about standing in a house that was so perfectly designed for a future I simply didn’t end up having.

These rooms are filled with memories of times gone by. Of sharing food and drinks with people who have passed away in what feels like an insanely small window of time over the last few years. Those memories are things I will slowly have to bid farewell to as well. The parties are still engraved into this house in little ways. The scratches from heels across the wooden floors. The mismatched sets of wine and champagne glasses that are no longer complete because some were lost to a good night. The kind of night where beers around the BBQ turned into wine with dinner, which turned into whisk(e)y and dancing. The nights where I sat at the bar helping mix shots for the really good parties. And those were just the parties my parents threw.

Let’s not even start on the nights I spent mixing cocktails and punch for my own friends here. There are an absurd number of memories contained within these walls, and all of them seem to be sitting particularly close to the surface lately. Like some part of me knows I need to farewell that time. Those nights spent in this house. My childhood home. A life preserved, in so many ways, within these four walls. The days of sitting around as friends played guitars and we would taki copious amounts of ice cold beer to combat the warm endless summer evenings.

That isn’t who I am anymore. Seeing friends on this trip, I know it isn’t really who most of them are anymore either. Time is moving all of us on, whether we like it or not, and this beautiful home I was raised in is slowly becoming more and more impractical for the life I am actually living. Which is a strange thing to grieve, because I don’t think I am grieving the house itself. I think I am grieving all the versions of myself that existed inside it.

The girl who came home from school and walked through these doors without ever wondering whether she would still have them in ten years. The girl who raced to have some peanut butter on toast before jetting off to swim training. The teenager who thought the biggest problem in life was probably something dramatic and deeply important that, in retrospect, was absolutely not, unless you count the insane hours spent up in the middle of the night working on projects from hell (Thanks IB). The girl in her late teens/early twenties who filled these rooms with friends, music, food, alcohol and far too much confidence in her ability to function the next morning. The version of me who came home from the hospital and found comfort in the fact that, no matter what had changed outside these walls, or even within my body… this place was still here, a constant in the storm.

For now, I am just home. There is no big moment happening. Nothing particularly profound is being said. It is just one of those completely ordinary mornings that, years from now, I suspect I will remember in ridiculous detail.

Maybe thats what I am trying to hold onto. Not the house, necessarily, because after all houses can be sold and lives can change and, let’s be honest here… four bedrooms and four bathrooms is frankly a ridiculous amount of house for one person anyway. Particularly for the chronically ill version of me who is NOT a happy camper doing deep cleaning. I am trying to hold onto this feeling of being home, surrounded by the sounds and people and tiny details that have made this place home for so much of my life.

I’m not sure when I will be back here next. I don’t know what this house will look like the next time I am here, or whether it will still be ours at all. I don’t know what version of my life will exist when I walk through these doors again. Where life will have taken me in the time between now and then. Especially after seeing the house be slowly cleaned out in recent weeks, cupboards being cleared out, trash being removed and copious amounts of textbooks from my fathers lifetime of learning being farewelled.

But for now, I am here. My feet are on the wooden deck, my coffee is beside me, Mum and Dad are talking, the birds are STILL making an obscene amount of noise around us, and the trade winds are reminding me why its ok to not be out on the boat right now… the view in front of the house has changed more times than I have changed job and now as the next chapter across the river from us is beginning… I am waiting to see what is next on this side of the river.

For now, I will just sit here and let myself be home…

For better or worse.

xxx

Chronically Bex

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I’ve been coming here for literal decades. They’ve moved locations a few times, opened other branches, reinvented themselves more than once, you name it, they’ve probably done it… and every single time, I’ve followed them. I went to school with the owner’s youngest son. I still recognise the staff. The owner still knows my face. Family friends drift in and out. On paper, this place should feel like slipping into a favourite jumper. Hell I have photos from being inducted into Rotaract in their old location, this place was once a launching pad for me.

Somehow I have found my way back and I’m sitting here writing a blog that none of them will ever read because these aren’t those kinds of connections. They’re the people who know your parents, remember what school you went to and ask how long you’re in town for. They’re not the people who subscribe to your Substack or know the inside jokes your internet friends do (thank you to each and everyone of you).

Yet, there is something overwhelming inside me that wants to explain myself to every single one of them. I want to explain the extra weight. The exhaustion they can apparently spot from across the café clearly etched across my face. The fact that I now enter a room walking stick first that seems to cause a collective “Oh...” from people who haven’t seen me in years, which always hits me wrong because excuse me… disability advocate over here and yet we’re still doing this.

Don’t get me wrong. If the last time you saw me I was twenty-two, a size 10, and operating under the wildly optimistic assumption that my body and I were on the same team, then yes... there’s some adjusting to do. Frankly, I’m still adjusting too. My body has been on what I can only describe as an unauthorised software update for the better part of a decade.

But I am so incredibly tired of feeling like I owe people an explanation for what happened to that version of me.

I know this is a me problem. I’ve spent enough hours in therapy to know exactly which shelf this particular emotional baggage belongs on. I know these people aren’t judging me nearly as much as my brain thinks they are. I know that once I leave this café, I probably won’t think about them again for another ten years or until we inevitably bump into each other at the supermarket while I’m buying snacks that my endocrinologist would probably describe as “an interesting choice.”

Logically… I know this, I am fully aware of this… and yet emotionally… well
Logic meet anxiety… you two are going to be at war for a while.

The reality of becoming visibly different in a town that remembers you as someone else is exhausting. Sometimes I don’t want to explain chronic illness. I don’t want to explain mobility aids or medications or thyroids that have apparently chosen chaos as a personality trait, hearts that don’t function, joints that take creative license with the directions they move. I want to turn around and say to people, that even if I hadn’t got sick, almost a decade has passed and looking like the 22year old me at 31 would be WEIRD.

I’m homesick for a time.

For a version of life where everyone I loved lived within a 15min drive. Before chronic illness became part of every introduction to myself. Before home became somewhere I visit instead of somewhere I return to. That version of home doesn’t exist anymore.

That’s the grief I keep tripping over.

So, for now, I will simply sit here, typing away furiously onto this laptop and pretending that I don’t feel the eyes, that the comments and pointed stares don’t exist, that the repeated whispers of “isa” aren’t being heard everytime someone else I recognise comes up to say hi… I will be here.

With my coffee,
Listening to the soundtrack in my own head, which continues to be equal parts existential crisis and stand-up comedy.
Embracing the absurdity that, despite everything, this place is still home...

Even if I’m still working out what that word means.

xxx

A Slightly Out of Place,

Chronically Bex

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Writing a goddamn will.

I am home at the moment, dealing with a number of things that come with taking care of a parent who has had an accident and is dealing with a loss of movement (hopefully only temporarily). Some of the less charming things that keep coming up are will writing, aligning what end-of-life care might look like, talking through accidents, organ donation... you name it. Honestly, it is an exhausting process.

I have spent my life knowing that this chapter would roll around eventually, and yes, it is practical to make sure everything is in order. After all, I am an only child. Eventually, all of this will fall on my shoulders, and mine alone. In some ways, it always has.

The two cousins who cared as much about the island as I do have both passed away before their mother, so I am one of the four grandchildren left with a deep soul tie to the island. I come home to that land, and it is the place where I find peace. Even though right now, what I find is family obligations, repairs, and stress because, once again, everyone else involved with the island, or at least our little corner of it, is 69 years old and up. So hey, look at that... it’s going to become a me problem.

This is not the first time I have thought about writing a will for myself. That actually happened almost a decade ago while I was sitting in the high dependency unit as a 22-year-old in severe heart failure. I began thinking about the things that mattered to me, the things I still wanted to do, the things I wanted to leave behind, and where my belongings would go.

I was young. I didn’t have many physical things to leave to people. But having packed up my cousin’s life when he died at 27, I knew that a young person dying wasn’t any easier on the people left behind. Even then, I thought about what I would want. I thought about funeral arrangements, letters I wanted to write to the people I loved most in the world. Hell, I even thought about the possibility of starting a charity in my memory to support the medical system in Fiji.

Twenty-two-year-old Bex was dark and twisty, but in a... I still give a fuck kind of way. The many jokes my friends have made over the years about “The Becky Foundation” are not lost on me, especially because most of them don’t know that story.

So here we are, almost a decade later, doing all the will writing, life planning, and other awful things that come with being an adult.

And you know what?

I fucking hate it.

I don’t want to plan for saying goodbye to my parents. I really don’t. And I really don’t enjoy being pulled back into thinking about the time in my life when I was writing letters to family and friends to leave tucked inside my diary for after I was gone.

I have been on the receiving end of those letters after losing people I loved.

They suck.

But they are also something to hold onto.

So, my darling readers, care to step into Dark and Twisty Bex with me for a second?

Here are some honest-to-goodness things I have thought through...

• I would like to be laid to rest on Nananu-i-Ra.

• I would like The Galilee Song played at my funeral.

• There will be booze. Beer, wine, and whisk(e)y.

• There will be a full meal, Fiji style. None of this picky little sandwich business. I want the food.

• I want to be brought back to the island the way we have done for others, accompanied by a fleet of boats. I have found peace at sea throughout my life, and I would like that in death too.

But that’s enough of that for now, because here’s the thing.

For every dark and twisty thought that comes with the list above, there is also beauty.

Nananu-i-Ra is the island where my grandmother was born, where my parents met and fell in love after my dad’s family bought land there and, quite literally, he became the boy next door.

The Galilee Song is one that has brought me comfort at so many funerals throughout my life. I still remember the first time I heard our church choir sing it so beautifully that it sent chills down my spine, despite standing in the warmth of a Fiji afternoon.

After Nananu funerals, I have spent countless hours sitting with friends and family, sharing a drink, telling stories, laughing, and simply being together.

My humans are foodies, and I know there will be ridiculous stories shared over good food. Especially because, here in the islands, if you’re doing a lovo, it means the community has come together. People sit together, sing, tell stories, scrape coconuts, cook, laugh, and spend time with one another.

And that is what matters in those moments.

Time.

The sight of a fleet of boats entering Nananu Bay to bring someone home for their final rest is one of the most moving things I have ever witnessed. My grandfather passed away on the boat to the mainland, and I remember so clearly his final journey home.

It was beautiful in a way I will never quite have the words to explain.

I guess what I am trying to say is this...

Right now, where I am and what I am doing to prepare for what will one day be a heartbreaking goodbye feels morbid and awful.

But I also find a strange sense of comfort in knowing that what my family wants and what I want, is being written down. That future heartbreak might be made just a little easier because someone won’t have to guess. Someone won’t have to wonder if they made the right decision.

I have seen what happens when these conversations aren’t had.

I have lived through watching paperwork drag on for years… sometimes decades.

I want none of that for the people I love.

So, as much as I fucking hate thinking about wills...

That is what is on the agenda in my life right now.

xxx

A fairly morbid

Chronically Bex

P.S no, it is not lost on me that I have friends planning wedding playlists while I write out hymns for funerals.

If this happens to be the post you find me by…

My usual posts aren’t typically this dark.

1. I am a life long avid reader and have never gone too long without a book of some type, but it has been a few years since I would lose myself entirely in a book or series and stay up all night reading.

2. I will not be mentioning the specific books that have brought me so squarely and intensely back to the world of fantasy… Mostly because I live in a world where the BookTok generation of readers are complaining about the “difficulty” of language in books while simultaneously admitting they only read the dialogue and skip the rest. That particular corner of the internet builds more rage than I have room for in my body, and the books I’ve fallen in love with are very much adjacent to that crowd’s joy. I choose peace. Or at least the illusion of it.

Now back to the fantasy worlds I am reading. I have found myself lost in these worlds with a sense of childish glee. I have quite honestly had laugh out loud, giggle behind the book and have little legs in the air running moments (I don’t honestly know how to describe these, if you know you know) but none the less my glee has been loud, and yes I have also cried like a heart broken teen seeing the beloved side characters meet less than pleasant ends. However there is one thing that I can’t seem to escape from.

These books that are capturing my heart again are reminding me of things that I fell in love with in all worlds I would lose myself in growing up. The ability to be able to read stories where people are willing to fight for a better world, sometimes it’s simply watching characters choose hope when the easier option would be to give up.

I think what gets me every single time is that these worlds never pretend everything is fine. They acknowledge the darkness. They don’t shy away from grief or loss or cruelty. But they still dare to imagine that ordinary people can make a difference, that love is worth protecting, and that rebuilding is possible. So yes tears are a fairly common occurrence too.

I guess what I am saying at the heart of it

Every time I turn on the news, every time I read an article, or catch up with my friends who work in vulnerable communities or on the front lines, I am reminded that there are horrors here in this world, right now, its not something we can hide from or escape and honestly for the amount that I am seeing and hearing about right now…

Because if we’re expected to navigate pandemics, wars, climate disasters, political chaos, cost-of-living crises, and the general dumpster fire that seems to be the human experience at the moment, the least the universe could do is let one of us stumble across a magical forest and discover we’re the long-lost heir to some ancient kingdom.

I’m not asking for much.

Just a dragon.

Perhaps a decent MMC who isnt a walking red flag?

Maybe a sword.

Definitely universal healthcare… hopefully with a couple of doctors who wont dismiss us all…?

But mostly the dragon.

xxx

A sadly Dragon-less

Chronically Bex

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I have come back to Fiji to help take care of my mum while she recovers from a fall and multiple breaks in her right foot. I am exhausted, sad and yet happy all at the same time.

My body is trying to process that in the last month I have been in Taipei, Thailand, New Zealand and I am now back in Fiji. I feel like my body barely had a moment to breath in Auckland before I started packing to come back here. If I am being honest with myself my damn suitcase wasn’t even entirely unpacked before I started packing again I am so tired I feel like my body is screaming, but its because all of the adrenaline that I have been going along with is finally weaing off. I thought it had in Auckland but I fell like maybe I just turned it down a level.

It was walking down open air path to the terminal at Nadi airport and I could feel my body actually thawing out. The cold from the flight and the chilly day I had left behind in Auckland finally was leaving my body and I feel like part of my soul was thawing out too, I will get around to a full medical update in another post but its safe to say the last few months have been a bit of a joke honestly. Between appointments, hot and cold medical madness and the sense that everything that I do seems to lead to one more problem I need to fix, its easy to see that my body has been taking some serious hits, even if I have numbed it from the fact that I haven’t felt safe to feel it all.

That went out the window in a series of moments after getting off that flight.

The first being walking out and seeing my dad waiting to pick me up in the airport. Do you know that Insta (and I am assuming TikTok) audio that talks about how no one is coming to save you and different people have done different takes on it. Well my Dad is one of the people worthy of me doing a take on that. Because while there is breath and strength in that man if I need help he would move heaven and earth to be there for me, and probably try drive me a little crazy along the way. But walking into that hug was something I didn’t know I needed.

Much like getting home and rushing to find my mum sitting on the couch waiting for me, my heart broke wide open seeing her sitting there so stuck in one place with her foot elevated and bending down to hug her and feeling the weight she has lost in the last few weeks hurt.

I am home, I am with the two people that love me most in the world. My best friend and her kiddos have catchups coming this week. I can’t wrap my head around it all but I am home….

So my body is doing its things where it unlocks all the pain its been fighting through, because I suddenly feel safe and I feel like I have been slapped in the face with it all, but its fine, I’m home… but this time its to be a caregiver and this is where we get into the… I am home and not ready for this season.

My parents had me later in life. I was the much wanted child who arrived when they were in their late 30s (literally dad turned 40 a few weeks after I was born). So I have grown up knowing that I would not get to have them around for as much of my life as a lot of my friends would get to have theirs for. I have known this all my life and I have also known that as an only child their loss would be something I will face alone.

So while I am so grateful to be here and feeling so fully present in my mind and body being here, I have this awful sense that this trip, is the one that marks the dramatic shift in my life into caregiver for elder parents. Seeing mum seem so frail this week has been hard, even though she has a fighting spirit and I full hope that she will be up and moving again soon, there is an undeniable dark cloud in the air. This fall being the one that shifts how they look at the house I grew up in. Their hobbies (boating, fishing, cooking, walking, gardening etc) are being evaluated too. The days of my mum and I being the very capable deck hands on our 28ft 2tonne boat is looking like one that might have a limited number of days. My recent medical misadventures aren’t helping with that either.

So while it all feels a little real, heavy and overwhelming at times, I am also incredibly grateful for this time, for the ability to live in this moment and be present with my parents. I feel grateful to have such a wonderful relationship with both my parents and know that they are so happy to have me home. I am grateful for being able to still be employed, if only parttime, while I am here. This time… that I am so not ready for, is one that I know I will look back on fondly, so I will continue to make all the memories, take all the silly photos and for now here is one from our boating adventures earlier this year and I will pretend I am not mentally exhausted from having conversations about wills and the number of people we know who have died in the last year, or the fact that my godfathers one year (death) anniversary is coming up.

xxx

An EXTREAMLY

Directionally Overstimulated

Chronically Bex

It’s one of those months that has always felt deeply personal to me, not just because I live with disability, but because I work within the disability community as well. I’ve spent years advocating for accessibility, inclusion and the idea that disabled people deserve to exist in the world without constantly having to justify our existence. I genuinely believe Disability Pride Month matters because our community is so often pushed into the background. We’re expected to adapt quietly, advocate politely and be grateful for access that should have existed in the first place.

More than anything, though, I love that Disability Pride Month reminds people of something they often forget.

Disability isn’t a niche community that belongs to someone else.

It’s the only minority group that anyone can become part of at any point in their life.

Life doesn’t discriminate.

Accidents happen.

Bodies change.

Illness arrives without invitation.

A diagnosis doesn’t care about your age, your career plans, how fit you are or how many mountains you’ve climbed. One conversation with a specialist, one unexpected scan result, or one moment that changes everything, and suddenly you’re navigating a world that was never designed with you in mind.

I’ve known that intellectually for years.

I’ve lived it for almost a decade.

But this year feels different.

Not because I’ve suddenly become disabled.

I’ve been disabled for a long time.

This year feels different because my disability has become visible.

For almost nine years, I have occupied a particular corner of the disability community: invisible disability. My heart failure wasn’t something people could see. Neither was the chronic pain, the fatigue, the endocrine chaos, or the joints that seem to believe anatomy is merely a recommendation rather than a rule.

If you met me, you probably saw someone who travelled constantly, volunteered too much, hiked whenever she could, disappeared overseas every few months and somehow always seemed to have another project on the go.

The reality underneath that was a lot less glamorous.

Medication.

Compression garments.

Blood tests.

Careful calculations about how much energy I had left.

Pain.

Recovery days that nobody saw because they happened after everyone else had gone home.

Invisible disability is a strange thing to carry because you spend so much of your life deciding whether today is worth explaining yourself. You become accustomed to hearing, “But you don’t look sick.” You become skilled at masking symptoms because it’s often easier than educating strangers. You learn that if people can’t see your disability, they’ll usually assume you’re healthy, and then quietly judge you when your body can’t keep up with the expectations they’ve created.

It’s exhausting.

But it also became familiar.

Then, a couple of months ago, I started using mobility aids.

The first thing I noticed wasn’t how they changed my body.
It was how they changed everyone else’s perception of it.
It’s remarkable how one small object can completely change the story people tell themselves about you.

The walking stick hasn’t changed the amount of pain I’m in.
The wheelchair at airports hasn’t suddenly made my heart work differently.
None of my diagnoses are new.
The only thing that’s really changed is that other people can now see a tiny fraction of what my body has been dealing with all along.
And I’m watching people recalibrate in real time.

Not maliciously.
Not even consciously.
Just... differently.
I could almost see it happening.

People slowing down the way they spoke to me.
Offering help before I’d decided whether I needed it.
Looking at me with concern instead of confidence.
Seeing the walking stick before they saw me.
That has been confronting in ways I wasn’t prepared for.

Not because I believe mobility aids are something to be ashamed of.

I don’t.

In fact, I’ve spent years encouraging people to use whatever tools allow them to participate more fully in life. I have celebrated friends getting their first wheelchair because I knew it meant freedom. I’ve championed accessible design because independence doesn’t always look like doing everything yourself. I’ve had conversations about dignity, autonomy and adaptive equipment more times than I can count.

So why does it feel different now?

I’ve spent a long time sitting with that question over the last few weeks because, if I’m honest, I didn’t like the answers that immediately came to mind. My first instinct was to tell myself I was simply adjusting. That this was a new season and I’d find my rhythm again. That, given enough time, picking up a walking stick would become as automatic as taking my medication or remembering my compression socks before a flight.

But that answer felt too simple.

The more I sat with it, the more I realised this wasn’t really about the walking stick at all.

It wasn’t about the wheelchair waiting for me at airports. It wasn’t about moving a little slower, asking for a seat, or accepting help carrying a bag. Those things are practical. They’re solutions. They’re tools that quite literally allow me to continue doing the things I love.

What has been much harder to come to terms with is what those tools represent in a world that still doesn’t quite know how to see disabled people.

I’ve spent thirty-one years living in the same society as everyone else. A society that celebrates independence as though it’s the ultimate marker of success. A society that praises people for pushing through, for persevering, for being busy, productive and endlessly capable. We admire the person who does it all. We applaud the person who never asks for help. We quietly equate needing support with losing something, even if we’d never admit it out loud.

I’ve spent years actively challenging those ideas.

Professionally, I challenge them every day. Personally, I’ve encouraged friends to use mobility aids without hesitation because I’ve seen the freedom they can create. I’ve celebrated people finding the support they need because I’ve always believed accessibility isn’t about limitation it’s about participation. A walking stick isn’t giving up on walking. A wheelchair isn’t surrendering your independence. They’re simply different ways of moving through the world, and I have genuinely believed that for as long as I’ve been part of this community.

So discovering that it somehow felt different when it became my turn has been deeply uncomfortable.

I find them remarkable. They extend my world. They allow me to keep travelling, keep working, keep saying yes to opportunities that I would otherwise have to decline. They don’t make my world smaller; they stop it from shrinking.

So why did my stomach knot the first few times I walked into a room holding a walking stick? Why did I find myself wondering whether people would see me differently? Why did I suddenly become aware of strangers looking just a little bit longer than they used to?

The answer, I think, has very little to do with disability and almost everything to do with being human.

Knowing something intellectually and believing it emotionally are two entirely different things.

I know my worth isn’t measured by my productivity. I know using a mobility aid isn’t a failure. I know slowing down isn’t the same as giving up. I know that accepting support doesn’t make me less capable, and I know that interdependence has always been a far healthier goal than the impossible standard of complete independence.

I know all of those things.

And yet I still caught myself grieving.

Not because I wished I wasn’t disabled. That ship sailed a long time ago.

I was grieving the way I thought the world saw me.

For years I occupied this strange middle ground where my disability was always present, but rarely visible. I could choose when to explain it. I could decide whether someone needed to know. If people saw me speaking on stages, hiking, travelling internationally or running around conferences, they naturally built an image of me based on those moments. They saw the highlight reel because the recovery happened quietly, behind closed doors. They didn’t see the medication, the pain, the days spent horizontal afterwards, or the calculations happening in my head every time I committed to another event.

Now, those private calculations have become just a little more public.

The walking stick enters the room before I do.

The wheelchair tells part of my story before I’ve opened my mouth.

People aren’t wrong for noticing it. I’d probably notice it too.

But it has forced me to confront something I wasn’t expecting.

I realised I wasn’t only adjusting to a mobility aid.

I was adjusting to becoming visibly disabled.

Those aren’t the same thing.

It’s one thing to know your body has changed.

It’s another thing to realise the world has changed the way it looks at you, even though, from your perspective, you’re still the same person you were three months ago. I still laugh too loudly. I still overcommit to projects. I still collect passport stamps like they’re Pokémon cards. I still find ridiculous joy in sitting by the ocean with a fresh coconut in my hand or saying yes to adventures that probably require more planning than they should.

The walking stick didn’t replace any of those things.

It simply joined them.

And maybe that’s where I’ve been getting stuck.

I’ve been treating this as though I have to choose between identities, when the reality is that identity has never worked that way. Becoming visibly disabled doesn’t erase the traveller, the volunteer, the leader or the friend. It doesn’t suddenly rewrite the last thirty-one years of my life. It simply adds another layer to a person who was already whole.

Perhaps that’s why this Disability Pride Month feels different.

Not because I have less pride than I did before, but because pride is asking something different of me this year.

For years, pride looked like advocating for a community that the world too often overlooked. This year, pride is becoming much quieter and much more personal. It looks like extending the same compassion to myself that I so freely offer everyone else. It looks like noticing the internalised expectations I’ve absorbed over a lifetime and gently questioning whether they deserve to stay. It looks like allowing myself to grieve without assuming that grief is the opposite of acceptance.

Because maybe it isn’t.

Maybe grief is simply what happens when your identity expands faster than your heart has had time to catch up.

And if that’s true, then perhaps I don’t need to rush this process at all.

Perhaps this year, Disability Pride doesn’t need me to have all the answers.

Perhaps it simply needs me to keep showing up honestly enough that, one day, picking up my walking stick feels no more remarkable than picking up my keys.

As always I am a work in progress and this is just part of the journey

xxx

Chronically Bex

No, really.

How are you?

I’ve found myself asking that question a lot lately, and not in the polite way we’ve all become accustomed to asking it as we pass each other in the hallway or finish a phone call. I mean really asking it. Asking because I genuinely want to know the answer. Asking because everywhere I look at the moment, people seem to be carrying more than they’re letting on, and I can’t quite shake the feeling that so many of us are quietly running ourselves into the ground while insisting we’re fine. Maybe it’s just the circles I move in, or maybe I’m noticing it because my own capacity has been feeling a little fragile lately, but whatever the reason, I keep finding myself wondering about the people I care about and how they’re actually doing beneath the automatic “good thanks” we’ve all become so fluent in.

If that isn’t you, if you’re in a season where you’ve still got a little space left to hold someone else, then can I ask you something?

Would you please check in on your people?

Not because they’ve posted something heartbreaking on Facebook. Not because they’ve shared an emotional Instagram story or suddenly started talking about how hard life has become. We all know how to respond to those moments, or at least we try to. They ask something of us. They invite us in. They’re visible. What I’ve been wondering about today are the moments that don’t announce themselves quite so loudly. The people whose lives don’t suddenly become public, but who quietly drift a little further into themselves without anybody really noticing.

The thought has been sitting with me ever since I received a message this afternoon from a friend.

We’re not the sort of friends who speak every day. In fact, I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time we managed to catch up in person. Life has a habit of doing what life does. Careers become busy, families grow, responsibilities multiply, calendars somehow fill themselves before we’ve had a chance to think about whether we’ve actually left room for the people we love. I’ve never taken offence to that because, if I’m honest, I’m just as guilty of it as everyone else. Friendship doesn’t always have to mean constant communication. Some of the strongest friendships in my life are the ones that can pick up exactly where they left off, whether that’s been two weeks or two months.

So when their message came through today, I assumed they must have read something I’d written or some dark humor meme on instagram that prompted a wellness check

Sometimes that’s enough.

That’s why today’s message caught me so off guard.

It had nothing to do with anything I’d written.

Instead, my friend told me they’d realised they hadn’t heard from me since my doctor’s appointment last week.

That was it.

There wasn’t a dramatic reason for reaching out. There wasn’t a social media post that prompted concern. There wasn’t some obvious signal that I’d been struggling.

They’d simply noticed that I had gone quiet.

I’ve been turning that over in my head ever since because I don’t actually think it was the message itself that stayed with me. It was the fact that somebody had noticed there was a message missing. They weren’t responding to something I’d said. They were responding to something I hadn’t. Somehow, in the middle of their own busy life, they’d noticed that my usual rhythm had changed, and for reasons I still can’t quite explain, that felt profoundly significant.

The more I’ve sat with it this afternoon, the more I’ve realised how much of our attention naturally gravitates towards noise. We notice the obvious things because, well, they’re obvious. We notice when someone tells us they’re struggling, when their world visibly falls apart, when they finally admit they’re overwhelmed, when their grief spills out into the open. Those moments matter, and I hope the people in our lives continue to meet them with kindness and compassion. But I can’t help wondering whether we’re sometimes so focused on responding to the loud moments that we forget to pay attention to the quiet ones.

Because not everybody gets louder when life becomes difficult.

Some people slowly become quieter.

I don’t even know if that’s a conscious decision. Perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps it’s simply that surviving whatever is happening right in front of you takes so much energy that keeping conversations going begins to feel like another task on an already impossible list. Maybe you stop replying because you don’t quite know how to explain what you’re feeling. Maybe you convince yourself you’ll respond tomorrow, and then tomorrow quietly turns into next week. Maybe there isn’t even anything particularly wrong. Maybe you’re simply tired in a way that doesn’t have language yet.

I’ve certainly been there.

I wonder if most of us have.

Which is why I keep coming back to that message.

Not because it fixed anything. It didn’t need to.

Not because it changed whatever kind of week I was having.

It simply reminded me that somebody had noticed I wasn’t quite moving through the world in the way I usually do.

And perhaps that’s what touched me so deeply.

I’ve been wondering all afternoon what it actually means to notice another person because, the more I’ve replayed that message in my mind, the more I’ve realised my friend didn’t really notice anything extraordinary. They simply noticed something had changed. Somewhere amongst the noise of their own life, they realised I wasn’t moving through the world in quite the way I normally do, and they paused long enough to wonder why. That feels like such a small thing when I write it down, but I don’t think it is. In a world that seems to reward us for moving faster and carrying more, noticing that somebody’s rhythm has changed might be one of the kindest things we can do for each other.

Life has a remarkable way of narrowing our focus. We become consumed by deadlines, school pickups, doctor’s appointments, grocery shopping, overflowing inboxes and the endless list of things that need our attention before we finally collapse into bed and promise ourselves we’ll do better tomorrow. I don’t say that with judgement because I know exactly what it feels like to live inside those seasons. There have been times where I’ve become so preoccupied with simply getting through my own week that I’ve looked up months later and realised I’ve accidentally let friendships drift a little further than I ever intended. It wasn’t because I loved those people any less. It was because capacity is a finite thing, and sometimes surviving your own life quietly consumes every last piece of it.

So where do the quiet ones go?

The dependable ones.

The people who always seem to have it together.

The friend who checks in first, remembers birthdays, organises the catch-up and somehow always finds the emotional energy to ask everyone else how they’re doing before they’ve even considered talking about themselves. The colleague who never misses a deadline. The sibling who quietly holds the family together. The person everyone instinctively leans on because they’ve always been strong enough to carry a little extra.

I wonder if those are the very people we’re most likely to stop seeing.

Not because we don’t care about them, but because consistency has a funny way of becoming invisible. We stop noticing the people who are always there in much the same way we stop noticing the furniture in our own homes. It isn’t that it has disappeared. It’s simply become so familiar that our brains no longer ask us to pay attention to it.

But people aren’t furniture.

Even the strongest people become tired.

Even the people we rely on have moments where they wonder who would notice if they quietly stepped back for a while.

Even our rocks erode.

Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just slowly enough that if you’re looking at them every day, you almost don’t notice the edges changing until one day they don’t quite look the same anymore.

I don’t know if that’s why my friend’s message affected me so deeply, but I suspect it’s part of it. It reminded me that somebody had noticed a small shift before it became a crisis. They didn’t wait until I’d written an emotional post or disappeared completely. They simply recognised that my usual rhythm had changed and decided that was reason enough to ask if I was okay.

That has stayed with me because, if I’m honest, I don’t think we ever really know what another person is carrying.

I know this concept has been around forever but sometimes I find myself wishing we all walked around wearing jumpers that simply told the truth about whatever we were processing that day. Not because I think the world needs more labels, but because I wonder what would happen if the invisible parts of our lives became visible, even just for a moment. As someone who works in a sector where being up front about whats going on would be a game changer… it kinda sticks with ya…

Maybe mine would simply read:

Directionally overstimulated and in pain.

I can think of another friend whose jumper would probably say:

Burnt out.

Someone else’s might read:

Waiting for biopsy results.

Or...

Dad’s dying.

Trying to hold my marriage together.

Recovering from a miscarriage that hardly anyone knows about.

Just lost my job.

Trying to work out how I’m going to pay the mortgage.

My antidepressants have stopped working.

I’m so lonely it physically hurts.

The thing is, none of those people would necessarily look any different if you passed them in the supermarket tomorrow. They’d probably still smile politely. They’d ask how your weekend was. They’d apologise if their trolley got in your way. They’d continue moving through the world wearing the same face they’ve always worn because that’s what most of us do. We become incredibly good at carrying invisible things while trying not to make anyone else uncomfortable with the weight of them.

And I can’t help wondering whether we’d move through the world differently if those jumpers were real.

Would we be a little more patient with the distracted cashier who accidentally scanned our groceries twice? Would we assume a little less and ask a few more questions before deciding someone was being distant? Would we interpret a delayed reply as evidence that life had become heavy rather than evidence that someone didn’t care? Would we stop expecting people to earn compassion by first proving they’re struggling badly enough to deserve it?

I don’t actually know the answer.

Part of me likes to believe we’d all become gentler with one another overnight. Another part of me wonders whether we’d simply become overwhelmed by the sheer number of invisible battles unfolding around us every single day. Maybe both things are true. Maybe compassion was never supposed to depend on certainty in the first place. I know compassion burn out first hand… so maybe that isnt the answer.

What I do know is that today’s message has quietly changed the way I’m thinking about the people in my own life. It’s made me wonder whose rhythm I’ve stopped paying attention to because life has been noisy. It’s made me think about the friends I assume are okay because they’re usually okay. It’s reminded me that silence isn’t always an absence of need. Sometimes it’s simply an absence of capacity, and those are two very different things.

So I suppose that’s the question I’ve been left with today.

Not whether we’re checking in often enough.

Not whether we’ve mastered the art of knowing exactly what to say.

Simply this.

Who in your life has become quiet enough that you’ve stopped noticing the silence?

Because sometimes the greatest gift we can offer another person isn’t solving their problem or finding the perfect words. Sometimes it’s letting them know that, in a world moving at a relentless pace, someone still noticed when their rhythm changed.

And perhaps, on the days when life feels impossibly heavy, being noticed is enough to remind someone they don’t have to carry it quite so alone.

xxx

Chronically Bex

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I’m getting ready for another trip.

Not tomorrow. Not next week. In two weeks’ time.

Which feels completely ridiculous considering I was only just talking about how grateful I was to be back in my little house. Back in my own space. Back to sleeping in my own bed, drinking coffee out of my favourite mug and settling into a routine that didn’t involve airports, conference schedules and wondering whether I’d remembered to pack a phone charger. I’d been looking forward to being home. To staying home.

Apparently my life had other ideas.

The suitcase is still sitting by the front door.

Not because I’m exceptionally organised or incredibly efficient. Quite the opposite, actually. It never really got unpacked. The dirty clothes came out as soon as I got home because they absolutely had to. They’ve been washed, folded and put away. But tucked neatly inside the suitcase are jackets that still need to make their way to the dry cleaners because, quite frankly, I haven’t had the energy. There are gifts that came home with me from the last trip waiting to make their way to their intended recipients.

Somewhere along the way, my suitcase stopped being luggage and became a rather inefficient storage system.

So this evening I found myself mentally preparing to pack again. Making lists. Thinking through what I’d need. Working out what could stay in the suitcase and what needed to come back out. It’s become a strangely familiar ritual, one that always starts the same way.

Medication.

Long before clothes are folded or toiletries are packed, I sit down with bottles, blister packs and prescriptions. I count tablets. Then I count them again because I’d rather be certain. I work out exactly how many days I’ll be away, add a few extra because delayed flights happen, and carefully separate everything into the little containers that make travelling possible. It’s a routine I’ve repeated so many times now that I barely think about it.

Except tonight I did.

As I sat there counting tablets into little compartments, I caught myself thinking about how extraordinary it is that something so small has such a profound impact on my life. These medications keep my heart beating. They keep my blood pressure high enough that standing upright remains a realistic goal. They manage pain well enough that I can board a plane, walk through airports, carry luggage and say yes to opportunities that, a few years ago, I wouldn’t have been physically capable of saying yes to.

Those medications let me live.

And that’s an important distinction, because they aren’t actually what keep me alive.

The bottles and packets are the gateway. They’re the bridge between surviving and everything that comes afterwards. Without them, so much of my world would become impossibly small. Because of them, I get to board a plane bound for the people I love who need me to be there right now. I get to feel the familiar excitement of seeing loved ones waiting at arrivals. I get to collapse into hugs that somehow make the months apart disappear in an instant.

I get to stand on the bow of a boat, tipping my face towards the sun while warm salt air rushes past and the ocean stretches endlessly ahead. I get to dive overboard and feel that first glorious moment where cool water wraps around me, quieting a body that spends so much of its time demanding my attention. I get to sit on the beach outside the home I grew up in with a fresh coconut in my hands, listening to waves I’ve known my entire life. I get to eat meals that taste like childhood, family and home all at once; spices layered so perfectly that no recipe could ever fully explain them because they were never really measured in the first place.

The medication gives me access to all of that.

It gives me access to life.

But the things that keep me alive don’t come in childproof bottles.

They look like the people waiting on the other side of my flight. They sound like laughter echoing around a dinner table where everyone is talking over each other. They feel like hugs that last a little longer than expected, sunshine warming my skin after months of winter, music filling the background while conversations drift effortlessly from one topic to another. They are friendships that have survived distance and time zones, family who somehow know exactly when I need them, memories that make me laugh long after they’ve happened, and the quiet hope that there are still so many experiences I haven’t had yet.

Living with chronic illness means spending a lot of time thinking about medication. Refills become calendar events. Blood tests become routine. Specialist appointments become part of the rhythm of your year. It’s very easy to start believing that those things are life itself.

They’re not.

They’re what make life possible.

There’s a difference.

The tablets don’t create joy. They create the possibility of experiencing it.

They don’t manufacture love. They give me the chance to spend time with the people I love.

They don’t create memories. They make it possible for me to be present while those memories are being made.

Maybe that’s why I never really resent packing them.

They’re not a reminder of everything that’s wrong with my body.

They’re a reminder of everything my body still allows me to experience.

So yes, over the next couple of weeks I’ll repack the suitcase that never really got unpacked. The jackets will hopefully have made it to the dry cleaners. I’ll count my tablets two or three times because that’s just who I am now, zip everything into place and head off on another adventure.

Not because medication keeps me alive.

Because it gives me the chance to spend time with the things that do.

A special thank you to for inspiring me this evening. His vacation reminder was a perfectly timed reminder that we are collecting memories and being able to do just that is a gift, even if there is a tad bit of life admin along the way

xxx

Chronically Bex

It gets better Bex.

I know you spent days, weeks, months, even years... struggling to manage the rollercoaster twists and turns of life. You spent hours on end alone, not just in hospitals, but living through pain, stress, heartbreak, loss. You took the time, you did the work and you grew.

It gets better.

You are loved

You are not alone

You are seen

In the past decade, multiple near death experiences, moments of countless anxiety attacks, fear, stress, time in therapy doing the work you have to because others who hadn't, hurt you in the process.

You have feared losing yourself in the process, the softness that is the heart of who you are, the strength you have gained along the way, it hasn't happened. That doesn't mean it might not in the future, but it hasn't so far and wherever you are when you next need to be reminded of this, I hope you still feel proud that you survived 100% of your worst days and the people who love you, like truly love you, haven't gone anywhere.

The days on your own can often feel like they are going to pull you under, but remember your humans are out there, even if they can’t be down the road right now.

This year, make the commitment to yourself to choose you, to invest in you, to champion you, lord knows you spent the last decade working to live and fighting every wild card thrown at you. So choose you, invest in you the way you pour into other people, the way you offer love, laughter and care to everyone around you, its ok to take time and turn that love inward. To make space for yourself to be the person that chooses you.

You made it this far

You are living a life that the 20year old you couldn’t have dreamed of

You get to spend your days being inspired and taught by incredible people from all around the world

Make space for that to be enough, for this year to simple be for you.

Say no,

Say FUCK IT

Say fuck OFF

Say whatever the hell comes to mind because it is not your job to be likeable.

Its not your responsibility to make everyone else feel like you and your pain, your joy is too much.

This birthday isn’t going to change everything and it wont suddenly get easier, but you did the work to set yourself up and surround yourself with the kind of people you choose and who choose you.

That the beauty of this decade, and god willing the ones that follow, the fake friends get to show themselves out.

Have fun, break shit and laugh, because you know that those moments are what we spend hours enjoying and looking back on, during the hard days.

This year in gonna be intense, the next 18months hold some of the biggest things you have ever worked on, go hard, have fun and don’t forget to take the damn photo, make the stupid reel, create the visual diary of your life for you.

Don’t ever stop, dancing it out.

xxx

30year old

Chronically Bex

…

The 31year old version of myself looking back on this now… post all the madness that came in those 18 months… she is pretty damn tired, but still here and even more than ever, saying FUCK OFF and FUCK NO.

xxx

Chronically Bex (July 2026)

If I’m completely honest, I’d spent most of the day trying not to think too hard about how my body was feeling. It has become a bit of an unfortunate skill over the years. You learn how to compartmentalise just enough to get through the thing you’ve already committed to. You tell yourself you’ll deal with it later, that tomorrow can be tomorrow’s problem, and that for now you just need to get dressed, gather the various medications, mobility aids and contingency plans that seem to accompany me everywhere these days, and go be a human for a few hours.

The event itself was lovely. A friend of mine was being recognised, and there wasn’t really a version of this story where I wasn’t going to be there cheering her on. She is one of those people who quietly pours so much into everyone around her that seeing her celebrated felt important. What I wasn’t expecting was for her to turn around and honour me. She presented me with an award that recognised a lot of the work I do behind the scenes, the conversations that never make it onto social media, the things I rarely stop to acknowledge because they’re simply part of who I am. It was deeply humbling, made even more meaningful because it came from her, and it’s a moment I’ll treasure for a very long time.

Strangely though, that’s not the thing I’ve been replaying in my head.

It was the drive home, somewhere in the middle of a conversation with a friend, something shifted. I wasn’t talking about the award anymore. I wasn’t even really talking about the event. I was talking about Convention, about how incredible it had been and how much I was still physically paying for it, when I heard myself say something I hadn’t consciously realised until that moment.

“I think I’m grieving.”

The words caught me by surprise because they felt true before I’d even had a chance to examine them. You know those moments where your mouth seems to know something before your brain has caught up? This was one of them. I sat there for a second after saying it, letting it hang in the air between us, and the more I turned it over, the more it explained everything I’d been feeling since I’d unpacked my suitcase.

Convention was extraordinary. I don’t want that to get lost in anything I’m about to write because the last thing I want is for this post to sound like regret. It wasn’t regret. I laughed until my face hurt. I hugged people I’d been counting down the days to see. I had conversations that reminded me exactly why I continue to invest so much of myself into the communities I’m privileged to be part of. I watched incredible people share incredible ideas, I celebrated friends, I spent time with my E-Club family in person, and I came home with a heart that somehow felt fuller than it had in months.

It was everything I’d hoped it would be.

Before I left, I’d made a conscious decision with myself. I’ve written about it here, actually. I was going to stop trying to control every single variable and simply be as present as I possibly could. For years, I’ve become so accustomed to viewing every event through the lens of risk management that somewhere along the way I’d forgotten what it felt like to simply experience something. Every decision becomes a calculation when you live with chronic illness. How long can I stand? When should I sit? Can I afford this conversation if it means I might miss the next one? If I go to dinner tonight, what will tomorrow morning look like? I was tired of constantly trying to outsmart my body, so I decided that this time I would choose presence instead.

Or at least I would try.

Looking back now, I realise that’s probably where the grief begins.

Because I did choose presence. I genuinely did. I stayed longer than I normally would. I had conversations I might otherwise have cut short. I laughed instead of checking the time. I hugged people instead of worrying about how much energy I had left in the tank. I let myself get caught up in the joy of the experience instead of trying to perfectly preserve enough of myself for the following day. Yet even in that I felt I wasn't as present as I should be, I put walls between myself and the world and that devastated me to do even though it was for my own good.

And my body has absolutely let me know what it thought about that decision. I seem to have failed on both accounts.

I’ve been home for days now, and it still feels like my body is collecting payment. The fatigue has lingered. The pain has lingered. The recovery has taken far longer than I’d hoped, and that’s frustrating in itself, but if I’m honest, that’s not actually what’s been weighing on me.

The heavier part has been replaying the memories.

When I think back to Convention, I don’t just remember the laughter. I remember the pain that sat beside it. I remember quietly scanning rooms for somewhere to sit while still trying to stay engaged in the conversation I was having. I remember mentally calculating whether I had enough energy left to make it to the next session. I remember smiling at people while another part of my brain was trying to work out whether my body was about to tap out completely.

That’s the strange thing about chronic illness. It has an incredible ability to become an uninvited narrator in memories that deserved to belong entirely to joy.

The joy is still there. I need to be really clear about that because I can almost hear someone reading this and assuming I’m saying it wasn’t worth going. It was worth every hug, every conversation, every moment of connection. If you offered me the chance to go back tomorrow knowing exactly how sore I’d be afterwards, I honestly don’t know that I’d make a different decision.

The joy was real.

So is the grief.

I’m trying to understand how both of those things could exist at the same time. How could I come home feeling so incredibly grateful for the experience while also feeling this overwhelming heaviness that I couldn’t quite put my finger on? Gratitude and grief felt like opposing emotions, as though acknowledging one somehow diminished the other. Tonight, sitting in the car talking it through with a friend, I finally realised they aren’t opposites at all.

They’re companions.

The grief only exists because the experience mattered so much.

I think what I’m grieving isn’t that Convention wasn’t everything I’d hoped it would be. It was. I’m grieving the fact that even after all these years, chronic illness still managed to insert itself into moments I desperately wanted to experience without it. It demanded a percentage of my attention the entire time. Even while I was choosing presence, even while I was consciously trying to stop overthinking every decision, some part of my brain was still busy negotiating with my body.

That was the part I couldn’t escape.

And I think that’s why this hurts more than I expected.

I’ve spent almost a decade learning how to live with chronic illness. I’ve learnt to advocate for myself. I’ve learnt to ask for help. I’ve learnt that mobility aids don’t represent failure; they represent freedom. I’ve learnt to rest before I absolutely have to. I’ve learnt to set boundaries, to protect my energy, to stop apologising for the body I happen to live in. I’ve done the work. So much work, in fact, that somewhere along the way I think I quietly convinced myself that eventually I’d become... good at this.

Not cured.

Not magically healthy.

Just... experienced enough that it wouldn’t keep catching me off guard.

I don’t think I realised I was carrying that belief until tonight, but once I did, everything suddenly made sense. I think part of me genuinely believed that if I became good enough at being chronically ill, I’d eventually stop having to grieve what it costs me.

I thought there would come a point where experience would somehow protect me from loss. Where I’d know my body so well that I’d always make the right decision. Where I’d perfectly balance rest and presence, joy and recovery, living fully and paying the price afterwards.

I think I’ve been waiting for a version of myself that doesn’t exist.

Because the truth is, there isn’t always a right decision. Sometimes staying home hurts because you miss the memories. Sometimes going hurts because your body demands repayment afterwards. Sometimes you pace yourself beautifully and still discover that pain has quietly stolen part of your attention anyway. Sometimes you throw caution to the wind and embrace the moment, only to discover you were never fully free to lose yourself in it because your body was whispering in your ear the entire time.

I don’t think that’s failure.

I think that’s grief.

And perhaps the hardest part of all is accepting that grief isn’t evidence that I’m doing chronic illness badly. It’s evidence that there are still things it takes from me, no matter how much experience I have living alongside it.

That’s a truth I wasn’t expecting to discover on the drive home from an annual event on a rainy Saturday night.

But now that I’ve found it, I don’t think I want to rush away from it.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from spending years helping other people navigate change, it’s that grief rarely responds well to being hurried. It certainly doesn’t respond well to being wrapped in toxic positivity before it’s had a chance to breathe. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for ourselves is simply acknowledge what’s there without immediately trying to transform it into a lesson.

I suspect my writing is going to shift a little over the coming weeks.

Not because I’ve lost hope. Not because I’ve suddenly become pessimistic. If anything, Convention reminded me just how much joy still exists in my life, how many remarkable people I get to share it with and how lucky I am to belong to communities that continue to show up for one another so generously.

But I also think it’s time I made space for this part of the story.

The part where I admit that I can be overwhelmingly grateful for a beautiful experience while simultaneously grieving what it cost me. The part where I stop pretending that years of acceptance mean I no longer have moments where this life feels profoundly unfair. The part where I acknowledge that after almost a decade of living with chronic illness, I still sometimes wish I could attend something extraordinary without needing to dedicate part of my attention to surviving it.

Maybe there will be a lesson in all of this eventually.

Historically, there usually is.

Today isn’t about that.

Today is simply about naming what I’ve been carrying.

It’s grief.

And for the first time in weeks, having a name for it somehow feels like the most honest place I could possibly begin.

Xxx

Chronically Bex

Not just the physical weight of pain, although that’s certainly making itself known. I mean the kind of heaviness that settles somewhere behind your ribs and quietly follows you through every part of your day.

It’s the weight of uncertainty.

The weight of living in a body that seems determined to keep asking more questions than it answers. The weight of blood tests that somehow manage to generate even more blood tests.

Every time I think I’ve reached the front of the queue, someone politely informs me that actually this queue joins another queue, which eventually leads to a specialist, who may or may not have another queue. It’s less “healthcare journey” and more “theme park designed by Satan.”

It’s exhausting.

But if I’m really honest...

I don’t actually think that’s what’s been weighing on me the most.

Because alongside everything happening in my own little corner of the world, I’ve found myself carrying something much bigger.

Like so many of us, I feel deeply connected to what’s happening beyond my own front door. Every day I see families torn apart by war, communities devastated by disasters, people fighting battles they never asked for, watching governments have pissing contests over things that people lives depend on. Stories of unimaginable grief arrive in the palm of my hand before I’ve even finished my morning coffee.

And I don’t want to stop feeling that.
I don’t want to become the kind of person who scrolls past suffering because it’s uncomfortable.
I don’t want to harden myself against the realities of the world simply because they’re too painful to hold.
Empathy is one of the things I value most about myself…

I never want to lose it.

But somewhere along the way, I’ve started confusing empathy with obligation.

I’ve somehow convinced myself that if the world is hurting... then joy should wait.

That laughing too hard, dancing in my kitchen, planning a ridiculous midwinter Christmas or standing on the bow of a boat with the wind in my hair is somehow disrespectful to the people who don’t get those moments.

I don’t think the problem is that I can’t find joy.

The problem is that I haven’t known how to hold it without guilt.

Those are two very different things.

Because joy is still everywhere.

It’s sitting on the bow of our boat, feeling the rhythm of the waves beneath me as the ocean stretches endlessly ahead. It’s letting my hair out and laughing as the wind immediately turns it into what can only be described as “seagull nesting material.”

It’s the warmth of the sun on my skin.

The hum of the engine.

The kind of silence that only exists when you’re surrounded by the people who know every version of you and love you anyway.

It’s going home.

It’s picking up my niece and dancing around the lounge until we’re both breathless from laughing.

It’s hoping my godchildren remember me as their slightly unhinged Auntie BB the one who always said yes to one more dance, one more cuddle, one more ridiculous game.

It’s cooking beside Mum in the kitchen where I first learnt that recipes are really just strongly worded suggestions.

It’s wandering through fruit and vegetable markets looking at beautifully imperfect produce and thinking, Honestly? Same.

It’s sitting on the beach where I learnt to swim and remembering that before I was a patient, before I was navigating specialists and pathology reports and autoimmune plot twists, I was simply a kid who loved the ocean.

None of those moments erase the awful.

They don’t make wars disappear.

They don’t fix chronic illness.

They don’t magically produce blood results that don’t immediately prompt another phone call from a doctor.

They don’t stop grief from existing.

But maybe they’re not supposed to.

Maybe I’ve been asking joy to do something it was never meant to do.

Joy isn’t the absence of suffering.

It’s what reminds us why suffering matters.

It’s what reminds us what we’re trying to protect.

I don’t want to become numb.

Not to the pain in my own body.

Not to the pain in other people’s lives.

Not to the realities of the world.

I want my heart to stay exactly as open as it is.

I just don’t want that openness to rob me of the ability to fully inhabit the beautiful moments when they arrive.

Because they still arrive.

Sometimes quietly.
Sometimes unexpectedly.
Sometimes in the middle of everything else.

I’ve realised lately that I’ve become incredibly good at surviving.

I know how to adapt.
I know how to keep going.
I know how to make contingency plans for my contingency plans.
I’ve become fluent in disappointment.
I can pivot with the best of them.

But surviving has quietly become my default setting.

And that’s not the same as living.

So I think this next season of my life is going to look a little different.

Not because I suddenly have answers.
Not because my body has decided to cooperate.
Let’s not get carried away.

But because I want to intentionally collect joy again.

Not to escape reality.

To remain fully human within it.

I want more dancing.
More ocean.
More dinners that go too long because nobody noticed the time.
More music in the kitchen.
More hugs.
More wind in my hair.
More home.
More laughter that catches me completely off guard.

Not because I have stopped caring.

Because I care too much to let suffering become the only lens through which I experience being alive.

Maybe that’s the balance I’ve been looking for all along.

Not less empathy.

Not less awareness.

Not less grief.

Just enough room for joy to sit beside them.

Without guilt.

Without apology.

Because refusing to become numb doesn’t just mean allowing myself to feel heartbreak.

It also means allowing myself to feel wonder.

And I think both are essential if I’m going to keep showing up for myself, for the people I love, and for a world that desperately needs people who can hold both.

So the next few weeks are gonna look a little different, I am also about to head off again to be present for the people I love, because acts of service is my love language and I want to be able to do this.

I am going through some MASSIVE changes at work as I step away from a lot of my role, into some new spaces, which makes me scared and excited… so wish me luck.

I hope you stick around for the ride.

xxx

Chronically Bex

So, here we are. Welcome back to Chronically Bex.

The last few weeks have been filled with moments I know I'll spend months unpacking. I stood on stages I never imagined I'd walk onto. I found myself surrounded by people I love, people I admire, and people who somehow make the world feel a little smaller in the best possible way. I was completely present for it. Every conversation, every session, every laugh, every ridiculous hour of sleep I sacrificed because there was another memory waiting to be made.

And I don't regret a second of it.

But chronic illness has a funny way of reminding you that while you might occasionally forget your body, it never forgets you.

I came home to some of the worst blood test results I've had in a long time.

It genuinely broke my heart. Pun entirely unintended... but unfortunately impossible to avoid.

My thyroid has decided that after years of causing chaos one way, it would quite like to try the complete opposite. I've gone from battling hyperthyroidism to now sitting firmly in hypothyroid territory, despite already being medicated. My medical team isn't thrilled, and honestly neither am I.

That puffiness you've probably noticed in photos? The giant screens at convention certainly didn't miss it. The swelling in my feet and my hands? We finally have an explanation. The exhaustion that I've been trying to laugh my way through? Apparently my blood work would like everyone to know that wasn't just me being dramatic after international travel.

And my iron?

Let's just say my iron stores saw three weeks of an endometriosis flare, looked around, and quietly packed their bags.

The frustrating part is that none of this is particularly surprising.

Do you know what happens when you're travelling, your routine disappears, you're eating whatever is available because you simply need to get food into your body, you're running on adrenaline, surviving on less sleep than you should, and pouring every ounce of energy into simply being present?

Your body notices.

It notices every shortcut you had to take.

It notices every medication taken at a slightly different time because time zones don't care about prescription schedules.

It notices every meal that wasn't quite what your body normally needs.

It notices the stress, the excitement, the lack of recovery, the constant stimulation.

And eventually it sits you down and says, "Right. My turn."

For almost nine years, I have worked incredibly hard to keep this body functioning as well as it possibly can. My health isn't something I think about occasionally. It is woven into almost every decision I make. Every routine, every appointment, every blood test, every medication adjustment, every calculation about whether I have enough energy to do one thing without sacrificing another.

That isn't me being overly cautious.

That's simply what surviving with multiple chronic conditions looks like.

This time, though, I took my eye off the ball.

Not because I stopped caring.

Not because I became reckless.

Certainly not because I suddenly discovered a secret nightlife involving tequila shots and poor decisions.

I took my eye off the ball because, for once, I wanted to be completely immersed in life.

I wanted to stop analysing every spoon I had left and simply spend them.

I wanted to be present.

Fully, unapologetically present.

And apparently my body has decided to invoice me for that decision.

The reality is that this is the part of chronic illness people don't always see. Sometimes there isn't a bad decision to point to. Sometimes you didn't push through because you were trying to prove something. Sometimes you were simply living your life. Sometimes the consequence isn't punishment for doing the wrong thing; it's simply the cost of doing a beautiful thing while living in a body that has far less margin for error than everyone else's.

That doesn't make it fair.

It just makes it real.

The next few months are already looking medically busy. There are specialist appointments ahead, including a spinal specialist I've been waiting to see. There are referrals sitting in the system that may or may not ever become appointments. There are more questions than answers in a healthcare system that increasingly asks people to be patient while their bodies refuse to wait.

Some of it will be straightforward.

Some of it won't.

Some of it may require finding entirely new specialists because that's simply the reality of navigating healthcare right now.

And yes, that's exhausting before you've even walked into the appointment.

But here's the thing I keep coming back to.

I know how to do this.

I know how to rebuild my routines. I know how to listen when my body starts shouting instead of whispering. I know how to slowly bring myself back to baseline, even if that baseline shifts from time to time. I've done it before, and if I have to do it again, then that's exactly what I'll do.

So if the next little while feels quieter, or if my writing becomes a little more focused on rebuilding instead of adventuring, you'll know why.

You might occasionally see me asking for a few extra hugs, a few good thoughts, or if that's your thing, a prayer or two.

Not because I'm giving up.

Quite the opposite.

Because this body has carried me through almost a decade of things it was never designed to carry, and I think it's earned the right to have me pay attention again.

If there's one thing I hope you take away from this, it's this.

Pay attention to your body.

Get the blood test.

Book the appointment.

Don't ignore the symptom because you're too busy living.

We only get one body, and whether we listen to it or not, it is telling our story every single day.

Mine just happened to tell its story in black ink on a pathology report.

Now it's my turn to write the next chapter.

Xxx

Chronically Bex

Since I became President of my Rotary club.

Two years.

Since I was last in Taipei.

Three years.

Since I joined the Rotary International Convention Committee.

Four years.

Since I joined my Rotary club.

Five years.

Since Becky Shark somehow escaped containment and became a joke with far greater international reach than it ever deserved.

Six years.

Since I became part of a world of Rotaractors.

Twelve years.

Since I first joined Rotaract at nineteen.

The funny thing about timelines is that they look neat when you write them down. A tidy collection of milestones, numbers, roles, titles and achievements. The sort of things people place neatly into biographies, introductions and conference programmes. Looking at them on a page, you could almost convince yourself that life unfolds in a logical sequence, with one chapter ending before another begins and one version of yourself neatly handing over to the next.

The reality is considerably messier.

Because all of those years arrived in Taipei with me. Every title, every responsibility, every friendship, every expectation and every chapter of my adult life somehow converged in one city, in one week, all at once. Perhaps that was part of what felt so overwhelming. Not because I become a different person in different spaces. I don’t. The woman standing on a stage speaking to a room full of people is the same woman who has cried in airport lounges, sat beside friends through heartbreak and grief, laughed until she couldn’t breathe over jokes that should never have survived a group chat, and spent years trying to figure out where she belongs in the world.

The difference isn’t who I am. The difference is how people met me.

Over twelve years, people have come to know me through very different parts of my life. They know different chapters of my story woven through different layers of vulnerability. The woman they know is the same woman. The circumstances under which we met are what differ.

That became increasingly obvious as the week unfolded. Amongst those thirty-seven thousand people were individuals connected to almost every chapter of my adult life. People who mentored me, challenged me, opened doors I didn’t know existed and watched me grow up despite entire oceans sitting between us. They are people who have celebrated my victories, witnessed my failures, sat with me through impossible moments and helped shape the woman I eventually became.

Objectively, it should have made absolutely no sense.

And honestly, sometimes it didn’t.

Perhaps that is what twelve years of community eventually becomes. A collection of people who have each witnessed a different paragraph of your life somehow finding themselves in the same room.

The challenge was that while all these people had arrived in Taipei, the version of me I had hoped would experience it never quite made it.

I had spent years working towards this convention. Not simply attending it. Working towards it. Three years on the Convention Committee. Countless meetings (usually between 1am-3am), planning sessions, discussions and emails. The kind of work that largely happens behind the scenes until suddenly thousands of people arrive and everything springs to life around you. I wasn’t there by accident. I was there because I had a role to play. Several, actually.

I arrived as a Convention Committee member, a club president, a speaker, a event host, a representative, a friend, a Rotarian and a Rotaractor. At one point during the week I shared a stage with the Rotary International President and the rest of our committe because of work I had spent years helping deliver. At another point I was hosting the Asian Cultural Festival. Later I was speaking in breakout sessions. These weren’t obligations forced upon me. They were opportunities I had worked hard for and responsibilities I was genuinely proud to carry.

The problem wasn’t the roles.

The problem was that I was carrying them while feeling increasingly like a shell of the person I had hoped would be there.

There is a particular kind of grief that comes from arriving at something you have spent years building towards only to discover your body had entirely different plans. Chronic pain has absolutely no respect for timing. It doesn’t care how important something is. It doesn’t care how many years you’ve worked for it. It doesn’t care that you’ve crossed countries to be there, that you’ve spent years imagining these reunions or that this particular week sits amongst the most meaningful experiences of your life. It simply arrives and demands attention anyway.

Convention week arrived at full speed. Every day began with somewhere to be and ended long after common sense suggested it should. Meetings, sessions, responsibilities, cultural events, photos, conversations, reunions and commitments stacked on top of one another from morning until night. By the end of the week I felt less like an attendee and more like I had been physically struck by the Taipei MRT.

Repeatedly.

Efficiently.

Entirely according to schedule.

The irony was that some of the most meaningful moments of my life were unfolding simultaneously.

I was finally hugging people who had previously only existed in tiny rectangles on a screen. I was sharing meals across tables instead of Zoom calls. I was watching members of our online Rotary club gather together in person. I was seeing friends from around the world who had somehow become family somewhere along the way. Years of conversations, meetings, projects, messages and time zones had suddenly become tangible.

These were moments I had imagined countless times.

Moments I wanted to savour.

Moments I wanted to sit inside for a little longer.

Instead many of them now feel blurred around the edges. Not because they mattered less, but because they mattered so much and because I was trying to experience them through pain that seemed determined to accompany me everywhere.

That is the contradiction I keep returning to.

I can remember being incredibly happy and in incredible pain at exactly the same time. I can remember standing on stages I had spent years working towards while simultaneously wondering whether my body would forgive me later. I can remember laughing until I cried and crying because I was exhausted. I can remember feeling profoundly grateful and completely overwhelmed within the space of the same afternoon.

The joy was real. The pain was real. The pride was real. The grief was real too. None of those truths cancel each other out; they simply existed alongside one another throughout the week, often within the very same moment.

And perhaps that is what I have been struggling to articulate since coming home.

Because from the outside it looks extraordinary.

And it was.

It was one of the most meaningful weeks of my life.

But underneath the stages, reunions, responsibilities and photographs sits a quieter truth. I spent twelve years becoming all of these things. Rotaractor. Rotarian. Club president. Committee member. Speaker. Leader. Friend. Becky Shark. Every one of those identities arrived in Taipei and every one of them had a place there.

Yet now that it is over, now that the flights have landed, the adrenaline has worn off and the convention centre is no longer dictating my daily step count, I find myself wanting something remarkably small.

I do not want to be known because of a title. I do not want to be acknowledged because of a role. I do not want to be celebrated because I managed to push through. I do not particularly want to be inspiring. I do not want to be resilience personified. I do not want to be the representative, token or otherwise. I certainly do not need Becky Shark to achieve any further international recognition.

After a week where every title, every responsibility and every chapter of my life seemed to collide in one city, I find myself wanting something much quieter.

I want to be Bex.

Just Bex.

Not because I achieved something. Not because I fulfilled a responsibility. Not because I performed well enough. Not because I earned it.

Simply because I exist.

Because somewhere between the convention stages and the reunion hugs, between the committee work and the chronic pain, between the people who knew me as a leader and the people who knew me at my lowest, I found myself wondering whether I have become so accustomed to being useful that I no longer know what to do when usefulness is removed. Whether I have spent so many years collecting titles that I have forgotten how to sit comfortably without one.

Whether Bex, stripped of the introductions, achievements and responsibilities, is enough.

One year.

Two years.

Three years.

Four years.

Five years.

Six years.

Twelve years.

A lifetime measured in service, friendship, leadership, community, belonging, responsibility and one deeply unfortunate shark joke.

And after one of the most extraordinary weeks of my life, the question I carried home feels surprisingly simple.

If I put down every title for a moment...

Would Bex be enough?

xxx

Just… Bex

For the first time in years, I am travelling not to visit family, not within the two countries I call home, not for work, and not for Rotary or Rotaract. I am away because my body decided it needed to be. I'm travelling with a friend who understands the reality I live with, someone who knows that sometimes a successful day is measured not in what I achieve, but in whether I listened when my body whispered before it started screaming.

What has surprised me most is not the destination itself, but the absence of responsibility. I'm not worried about running into anyone I know. I'm not responsible for anyone else's schedule. I'm not coordinating logistics, solving problems, or looking after anyone. And perhaps most surprisingly of all, nobody is looking to me to look after them.

The strange thing is that I'm enjoying it. Immensely.

I just don't quite know what to do with that feeling yet

Because breathing room feels wonderful. Space feels wonderful. Having nowhere I need to be and nothing I need to achieve feels wonderful. Yet my brain keeps checking over its shoulder like I've forgotten something important. Like there should be a task waiting for me, an email I haven't answered, a problem I haven't solved, or a responsibility I've somehow misplaced between airports.

Maybe that's because I've spent most of my life existing inside other people's stories.

I grew up in Fiji. The place people save for all year. The place they escape to when they need rest. The place they visit when they want to forget the world for a little while. As a child, I was the local girl running barefoot and sunburnt down beaches that other people dreamed about from office cubicles thousands of kilometres away.

Later, I became the tan local girl who knew every bartender, every bouncer, every shortcut and every hidden spot worth visiting. I watched thousands of people arrive looking for adventure, freedom, relaxation, healing, excitement, or simply a break from whatever reality they had left behind. Then they would leave with stories.

Somewhere along the way I realised I was forever the local girl in other people's holiday stories.

Then I moved to New Zealand.

Another place people travel halfway across the world to find themselves. The place gap years are built around. The place people come to challenge themselves, reinvent themselves, and collect stories they'll tell for decades. And somehow, once again, I became the local.

The person helping others navigate their adventure. The person explaining, guiding, recommending, connecting and organising. The supporting character in someone else's "best trip of my life" story.

Which isn't a complaint. I've genuinely loved much of it.

I have loved introducing people to places I adore. I've loved watching friends and visitors fall in love with landscapes that had become ordinary to me. There is something special about being able to help people create memories. But somewhere along the way I got very good at making space for everyone else's experiences and very little practice at creating space for my own.

Then add chronic illness. Add caregiving. Add leadership roles. Add work. Add volunteering. Add being the eldest daughter… a role which, as far as I can tell, is a lifetime appointment with absolutely no resignation process.

Suddenly, the idea of spending time, energy and money on myself feels oddly foreign.

Not wrong.

Just unfamiliar.

Because for once I am not here for a purpose. I am not networking. I am not facilitating. I am not hosting. I am not advocating. I am not fixing. I am not helping.

I am simply existing in a place because I wanted to be here.

Or perhaps more accurately, because my body staged what can only be described as an aggressive HR intervention and informed me that annual leave was no longer optional.

It's only day one, but I'm already noticing how often I reach for responsibilities that aren't there. How often I mentally check for fires that nobody asked me to extinguish. How often I search for the next task before remembering there isn't one.

At the same time, alongside that discomfort, there is something else.

Relief.

Joy.

The quiet realisation that I don't actually miss carrying everything quite as much as I thought I would… even if it's all a bit new right now.

So for now, I'm going to keep practising. Practising taking up space. Practising rest. Practising allowing myself to be somewhere without needing to justify why I'm there. Practising being the main character in my own holiday story for what feels like the first time in a very long time.

It's day one.

Here's hoping I get better at it.

Xxx

An Off Duty

Chronically Bex

This week should have been a celebration. Three years of work on my end. Twelve years of work from the Host Organization Committee. Thousands upon thousands of staff hours. Volunteers who gave up evenings, weekends, and whatever scraps of free time they had left. Donors who believed in the vision. Sponsors who backed something so ambitious that, at various points in the planning process, explaining it out loud made it sound completely made up.

The amount of work that went into this event is almost impossible to quantify. Every spreadsheet. Every planning meeting. Every contingency plan. Every problem solved before anyone else even knew it existed. Entire teams of people quietly carrying pieces of something much bigger than themselves.

Then suddenly, after years of preparation, the week arrived.

I think that's the strange thing about projects that consume years of your life. You imagine the finish line as this grand cinematic moment. Triumphant music swells. The camera pans dramatically. Everyone applauds.

Instead, reality looks a lot more like answering emails while sleep deprived, surviving on caffeine and stubbornness, forgetting what day it is, and occasionally staring into the middle distance wondering if you've remembered your own name. Long conversations where you are standing in pain because your body just can't.

One minute you're planning for an event.

The next minute you're standing in the middle of it wondering how on earth that happened.

The week itself was extraordinary.

And I mean that in every possible sense of the word.

Unfortunately, my body also decided it would like to be extraordinary.

Just in a completely different direction.

Because on top of everything else, I have been juggling pain levels that have been nearly all-consuming.

Now don't get me wrong. I enjoy a good whinge from time to time. Complaining is a coping mechanism and frankly one of the few hobbies still available to me when my joints decide they're unionising.

But honestly.

What the actual hell is this body?

Of all the weeks to stage a full-scale rebellion, you picked this one?

This week?

The week involving international travel, long days, thousands of people, endless walking, speaking commitments, networking events, leadership meetings, and enough adrenaline to temporarily power a small city?

And my body apparently looked at all of that and thought:

"You know what would really elevate this experience? Pain."

The audacity.

The confidence.

The commitment to the bit.

I would like to formally file a complaint with whichever department is responsible for quality assurance.

The thing about chronic illness is that it doesn't care.

It doesn't care how important something is.

It doesn't care how much you've prepared.

It doesn't care that you've spent years working towards a particular moment.

Life says, "This matters."

Your body says, "Cool story."

So while everyone else saw the events, the meetings, the photos, the speeches, and the celebrations, there was another full-time job running quietly in the background.

Pain management.

Constant calculations.

How much energy do I have left?

Can I make it through this session?

Is standing worth the cost?

Is sitting worth the cost?

How quickly can I get back to my room if things go sideways?

Can I borrow someone else's skeleton?

Negotiations.

Endless negotiations.

Me begging my body to cooperate.

My body responding with what can only be described as aggressive indifference.

And yet despite all of that, there were moments that made everything worth it.

Moments that reminded me why people do this work.

Why we dedicate years of our lives to service, leadership, community building, and projects that seem completely impossible when they first begin.

The people.

God, the people.

Thank fuck my friends love me enough to put up with me. Because if this week proved anything, it's that chronic illness doesn't just require resilience from the person living with it. It requires patience, flexibility, and a deeply questionable level of commitment from the people around them.

This week involved me regularly announcing my pain levels to whoever happened to be nearby, moving at approximately the speed of continental drift, changing plans at the last minute, disappearing for strategic recovery periods, reappearing with snacks and medication, and generally treating every day like a live-action game of Will Becky Make It Through This?

Somehow my friends continued to show up.

Even if that love occasionally arrived in the form of inflatable sharks following me around convention centres and songs that do my absolute head in.

Apparently when people care about you long enough, they learn your vulnerabilities.

Sometimes they use that information to support you.

Sometimes they weaponise it for entertainment.

This week featured both.

There is something incredibly reassuring about being loved by people who know exactly how exhausted you are and decide that what you need is either a hug, a snack, emotional support, or an inflatable shark.

Sometimes all four.

The older I get, the more I realise friendship isn't always grand gestures.

Sometimes it's someone slowing their pace without making you feel guilty.

Sometimes it's somebody noticing you're reaching your limit before you've admitted it yourself.

Sometimes it's checking in.

Sometimes it's making room.

And sometimes it's a group of people committing to a joke long after it should have died because making you laugh is worth the effort.

What makes this even more ridiculous is that for many of these people, this wasn't a reunion.

It was a first meeting.

We hadn't shared a room before this week.

We hadn't hugged.

We hadn't sat around tables together.

We hadn't wandered convention centres side by side.

And yet none of them felt like strangers.

Because friendships aren't measured by how many times you've occupied the same physical space.

These friendships were forged through Rotaract and Rotary meetings.

Through shared passion projects.

Through endless Zoom calls across impossible time zones.

Through leadership roles.

Through service projects.

Through planning meetings.

Through shared frustrations.

Shared victories.

Shared goals.

And enough hours of laughter to make up for every terrible internet connection we suffered along the way.

Somewhere between the meetings and the projects, between the serious conversations and the completely unhinged ones, friendships formed.

Real friendships.

The kind where someone you've technically never met knows exactly when you're overwhelmed.

The kind where people recognise you're struggling before you've said a word.

The kind where they know when to step in, when to make you laugh, and when to hand you water because you're clearly not making sensible decisions anymore.

So when we finally found ourselves together in the same city after years of talking through screens, it didn't feel like meeting for the first time.

It felt like finally catching up.

The hugs were simply the physical confirmation of something we'd all known for a long time already.

Distance was never the thing holding these friendships together. Geography was just taking its sweet time catching up. At some point, when my brain has returned from whatever emergency backup generator it is currently running on, I will spend hours dissecting this week.

I'll write about finding myself front row for a Nobel Peace Laureate and Leona Lewis in the same week because apparently that's a sentence my life can now produce.

I'll write about the intense moments speaking on stage.

The conversations that will stay with me.

The people I met.

The lessons learned.

The moments that felt impossibly big while they were happening.

I'll probably write about the absurdity of spending three years helping plan something and then suddenly finding yourself standing in the middle of it wondering how reality got this far without somebody stopping it.

There are stories here that deserve more than the handful of functioning brain cells currently available to me.

But right now?

Right now all that's left is exhaustion.

Bone-deep.

All-consuming.

The kind that settles into your bones and signs a long-term lease. Pain that has demanded acknowledgement at every available opportunity.

Love in the form of old friends, new friends, inflatable sharks, terrible songs, hugs, check-ins, and people who somehow made space for me exactly as I am.

And gratitude.

So much gratitude.

Gratitude for every volunteer.

Every staff member.

Every donor.

Every sponsor.

Every leader.

Every person who spent years building something extraordinary.

Gratitude for the opportunity to play a small role in it.

Gratitude for the friendships that carried me through it.

Gratitude for the people who helped bring this event to life.

And gratitude for the people who helped me survive it.

This week was bigger than I currently have words for.

So for now, gratitude will have to do.

The rest of the stories can wait until I've slept for somewhere between six and eight business days.

Xxx

A very done

Chronically Bex

My first reaction was laughter. Not because it was particularly profound, but because a deeply embarrassing part of me immediately thought, “Yes. Exactly that.”

Here’s the thing: I am a romantic. Not in a vague, abstract sense, but in a very real and occasionally inconvenient one. I love happy endings. I cry at weddings. Not just the weddings of people I know particularly well, either. There is something about witnessing two people who love each other stand up in front of the people who matter most to them and choose each other that gets me every time. Watching people I care about find happiness is one of my favourite things in the world.

The same problem extends to books, movies, television shows, and pretty much any form of storytelling. If the grumpy character finally admits they’re in love, I’m emotional. If two people spend an entire story finding their way back to each other, I’m emotional. If somebody writes a genuinely satisfying happy ending, there is a very good chance I’ll be sitting there in tears by the final chapter.

I know life is not a Disney movie. I know Hallmark has probably done irreparable damage to an entire generation’s expectations of romance. I know nobody is running through airports making grand declarations of love. At least, I sincerely hope nobody is, because airport security has become significantly less accommodating than the movies suggested. (That being said I have had my fair share of romantic airport moments in the past just… not at the gate).

And yet, I love romance anyway.

I love flowers. I love thoughtful gifts. I love handwritten notes. I love people paying attention to the details that make somebody feel seen. More importantly, I’ve experienced those things. I’ve been loved in ways that felt thoughtful and intentional. I’ve received flowers for no reason. I’ve received letters. I’ve experienced the kind of care that makes the world feel a little softer at the edges when life gets difficult.

That’s probably why the reel made me laugh. The idea of replacing a lazy request for Snapchat with flowers and love letters appealed to every romantic instinct I possess.

Unfortunately, the laughter only lasted about thirty seconds.

Because the next thought that entered my head was, “Absolutely not. Please do not have my address.”

And that reaction stopped me in my tracks.

The reason it stopped me is because I realised how quickly my brain had moved from romance to risk. Somewhere between appreciating the sentiment and imagining the practical reality, my mind immediately jumped to safety concerns.

Part of that is because I’ve been stalked before.

I’ve experienced what it feels like to have somebody refuse to respect boundaries. I’ve experienced the unsettling reality of being followed across multiple platforms and the anxiety that comes with wondering how much access somebody thinks they’re entitled to. It changes the way you move through the world. It changes the way you think about privacy. It changes the way you think about information that most people would otherwise consider harmless. Here in New Zealand it wasn’t until last month that proper laws were brought in to protect people from stalking and harassment.

Suddenly, the same address that could be used to send flowers is also an address that can be misused by somebody who doesn’t understand the word no.

What struck me wasn’t that my reaction was cautious. The caution is justified. What struck me was the sadness of it.

Because I don’t think I’ve become cynical.

If anything, I remain stubbornly romantic. I still believe in love. I still believe in thoughtful gestures. I still believe that people finding each other is one of the most beautiful things we get to witness as human beings. I still cry at weddings and happy endings and stories about people choosing one another.

What has changed is not my belief in romance. What has changed is my understanding of risk.

The romantic part of me still wants the flowers. She still wants the love letters. She still thinks there is something beautiful about somebody taking the time to express how they feel in a thoughtful and intentional way.

The woman who has lived a little longer simply knows that access and affection are not the same thing.

Maybe that’s what feels so strange about modern dating. It’s not that romance has disappeared. It’s that romance now exists alongside an entirely different set of calculations. We share safety plans before first dates. We text friends when we arrive. We share locations. We assess risk in ways previous generations never had to consider to the same extent.

And while I understand exactly why we do it, part of me still mourns the simplicity of the fantasy.

Not because I think the fantasy was ever entirely real, but because I miss the version of the story where flowers and love letters felt uncomplicated.

These days, I still want the flowers.

It’s the address that feels complicated.

xxx

Chronically Bex

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I am, quite literally, directionally overstimulated.

Not metaphorically. Not in a cute social media kind of way. I mean genuinely overwhelmed to the point of complete and utter exhaustion.

A week before I flew out to Taipei for a conference that I have spent the last three years helping organise, my mother (who lives in Fiji, a three-hour flight away from me) fell down some stairs and broke her foot in three places.

Under normal circumstances that would be stressful enough.

Unfortunately, normal circumstances have never really been my family's thing.

Because of Mum's existing medical conditions, any injury immediately becomes more complicated. And if you've been around here for a while, you'll know my faith in Fiji's healthcare system isn't exactly glowing. This is, after all, the same healthcare system that failed to diagnose me while I was actively in heart failure.

So naturally, as I was trying to finish packing, tie up final convention details, and prepare to welcome 37,000 people from around the world, my brain was already running through every possible scenario from several countries away.

Then, less than a week later, Mum's sister… who lives on an island in another part of Fiji… fell and broke her shoulder and arm.

At this point it was beginning to feel less like a coincidence and more like somebody had accidentally selected "Family Injuries" as a group project.

Then today, while I'm preparing for opening ceremonies, we discover their eldest sister (In Australia) fell last month, broke her hip, and is now moving into aged care. Her daughter reached out to talk about it).

So let's just review the current situation.

One sister has a broken foot.

One sister has a broken shoulder and arm.

One sister has a broken hip.

I have a lumbar sprain.

My joints are making what can only be described as questionable leadership decisions.

Somehow all of this is unfolding while I'm on the other side of the Pacific attending one of the biggest events of my life, where I'm expected to have my shit together…

Universe.

What the fuck is this?

No seriously.

What the actual fuck is this?

I would like to formally unsubscribe from whatever newsletter is responsible for this particular sequence of events.

The thing nobody tells you about being the eldest daughter is that the job description never actually expires.

It doesn't matter that you're an adult.

It doesn't matter that you're in another country.

It doesn't matter that there are literal oceans involved.

Somewhere deep within your nervous system lives a tiny middle manager carrying a clipboard who is absolutely convinced this is somehow your responsibility.

Rationally, I know there is nothing I can do.

Emotionally, I would like to be simultaneously in Taipei, Auckland, mainland Fiji, and on an island in Fiji while coordinating medical care, checking on everyone, organising contingency plans, and reminding people to drink water… and giving my cousin in Aus a hug too.

The logistics are admittedly challenging.

The guilt arrives in waves.

Maybe it's an island thing.

Maybe it's a family thing.

Maybe it's an eldest daughter thing.

Maybe it's all three.

Because the reality is that nobody is asking this of me.

Mum would be horrified if she thought I was spending this trip worrying about her. My aunts would tell me to stop fussing. The pressure isn't coming from them. The pressure is coming from decades of conditioning that somehow convinced me that if enough relatives break themselves simultaneously, I should be able to fix it.

Every time my phone buzzes, there's a split second where my heart stops.

Not because anyone has actually called with bad news. Just because my brain has become convinced that it should be on high alert at all times.

Which, for the record … is exhausting.

Then there is the small matter of my own body.

Because of course there is.

A month ago I managed to sprain my lumbar spine.

A sentence that sounds fake until you discover that apparently even my back likes to be an overachiever.

So while all of this is happening, I am also navigating pain, fatigue, mobility issues, and joints that continue to interpret stability as a polite suggestion rather than a requirement.

The irony is that I spend a lot of time encouraging other people to use the supports available to them.

And now here I am, being forced to take my own advice.

I'm using the mobility aids.

I'm taking the seat.

I'm accepting help.

I'm letting people carry things for me.

I'm allowing friends to show up.

None of those things come naturally.

I would much rather be the person helping than the person being helped.

Unfortunately my body appears to have formed a coalition with the universe and neither consulted me during negotiations.

Tomorrow I will stand on a stage and host an event that is being simultaneously translated into three languages.

Three.

Languages.

Which feels wildly ambitious considering my brain is currently buffering in English.

Somewhere in that room, highly skilled translators will be converting my words into multiple languages for an international audience.

Meanwhile I will be trying not to accidentally introduce myself as "the tired one whose entire family appears to be participating in an international fracture festival."

There is something deeply ridiculous about standing on a stage helping facilitate a global event while running a constant internal operating system called:

What If Everybody I Love Falls Over?

And yet here we are.

Because despite all of it, there is also joy here.

Friends I haven't seen in years.

People I care about from countries all over the world.

Conversations that only happen when thousands of us gather in the same place.

Moments that matter.

Moments I have spent three years helping create.

There is so much I would like to change right now.

I would like my family to stop collecting fractures like they're reward points.

I would like my spine to reconsider its current attitude.

I would like one single week where nobody falls over.

But none of those things are available to me.

What is available to me is this moment.

This convention.

These people.

This experience.

So I'm going to be here.

I'm going to be present.

I'm going to soak up every conversation and every ridiculous moment and every reunion.

I'm going to let people help when I need it.

I'm going to stop apologising for taking up space.

And I'm going to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Carefully…

Given the current family statistics, that feels like the safest strategy.

Wish me luck.

Or bubble wrap.

Honestly, either seems appropriate.

Xxx

A WILDLY OVERSTIMULATED

Chronically Bex

A bear.

Now, for some of you, that may seem like a perfectly normal sentence. For me, a kid who grew up in Fiji, it feels like somebody has accidentally stitched together two unrelated stories.

We worried about sharks. Stingrays. Sea snakes. The occasional wild horse with a questionable attitude. If you were really unlucky, maybe a boar with sharp tusks and a desire to ruin your day while out heading for a fun waterfall adventure.

But bears breaking into rental cars?

That was not on my bingo card.

The funny thing is that moments like this always make me think about something my grandfather said when I was young. He was a primary school principal, and when my parents worried about taking me out of school to travel with my dad for work, he told them that seeing the world would be one of the greatest educations I could ever receive.

Learning about different people. Different cultures. Different ways of living. How to use public transport in other countries. Understanding that the world was much bigger than the patch of it I happened to be standing on.

At the time, I don’t think any of us imagined quite how far that lesson would take me.

Because these days, my life is filled with people whose realities look nothing like mine. They work on the front lines in countries around the world, making an incredible difference and I spend my time, forever in awe of the incredible difference they make.
People working with homeless communities in the United States.
People advocating for trans women in India.
People building peace across South Africa.
People fighting for disability rights here in New Zealand.
People working on climate justice for communities whose homes are literally disappearing beneath rising seas.

People living through things I only ever expected to see on the news.

And that’s the thing.

Once those people become your friends, it stops being “the news.”

This year I’ve watched friends give updates while bombs fell in Lebanon.
I’ve watched friends navigate public health restrictions that mean they can no longer travel to events we’ve spent months planning together.
I’ve watched disability communities fight legislation that strips away dignity and support. I’ve watched people advocate for reproductive rights, refugee rights, climate justice, and basic human rights that should never have been up for debate in the first place.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent months battling my own body.

Trying to navigate a healthcare system that seems determined to turn every answer into three more questions.

Trying to remain a functional, independent adult while my body occasionally behaves like a Windows 98 computer running seventeen programs and a virus at the same time.

It’s exhausting.

Not because I regret caring.

Quite the opposite.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to switch on the television, see all of this, switch it off, and move on with my day.

But I lost that ability years ago.

The moment my world got bigger, so did my capacity to care.

And caring… caring is heavy.

It means worrying about people in places you’ve never lived. It means understanding that someone else’s disaster isn’t just a headline because you know their name, their laugh, the projects they’re passionate about, and the dreams they’re trying to build. There is also the dark side to this, you know when those voices and laughter go silent… its more than another statistic being reported on the news, its a person who you know, who lost their life.

So yes, today’s catalyst for this entire train of thought was a bear breaking into a rental car in Colorado.

But somewhere between the absurdity and the laughter, I found myself feeling incredibly grateful.

Grateful for the people I know.

Grateful for the work they do.

Grateful that my life has crossed paths with humans who care enough to spend their lives trying to make the world better.

I give too many fucks.

An objectively unreasonable number of fucks.

And maybe one day I’ll figure out how to turn the volume down a little.

But for now, I think I’ll keep giving them.

I just really, really want the people I love to be safe.

xxx

Chronically Bex

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Now, before anyone panics and assumes I’ve completely lost the plot, obviously I miss health. I miss bodies that behave predictably. I miss not having to know the names of medications. I miss being able to book appointments that aren’t medical in nature. I miss a lot of things about the version of my life that existed before chronic illness became a permanent and deeply unwanted houseguest.

But that’s not what I’ve been grieving lately.

What I’ve been grieving is carefree.

The ability to simply do things without first having to calculate the cost.

The ability to say yes because something sounds fun rather than because you’ve carefully assessed the risks, reviewed available resources, considered recovery requirements and determined that participation is unlikely to result in catastrophic consequences.

I think that’s one of the most invisible parts of living with chronic illness. People see the symptoms. They see the medications, the appointments, the mobility aids, the cancelled plans and the occasional public meltdown when your body decides enough is enough. What they don’t see is the constant mental arithmetic running quietly in the background of every single day.

Because I don’t get carefree.

I get calculated.

And I know I’m not alone in that.

There are people everywhere carrying invisible spreadsheets in their heads. People managing chronic illnesses, disabilities, caring responsibilities, neurodivergence, mental load, burnout and all the other things that make life feel less like a spontaneous adventure and more like a logistics exercise. We are all quietly running calculations that nobody else can see, trying to make the numbers work while pretending we’re not doing advanced mathematics before breakfast.

For me, those calculations start before I’ve even left the house.

A simple invitation isn’t really a simple invitation anymore. What sounds like a straightforward question often turns into a full internal committee meeting. My brain immediately starts assessing variables. How much walking is involved? Will there be somewhere to sit down? What shoes will I need to wear? How much energy will this cost me? What does tomorrow look like? What have I already committed to this week? If I spend my energy here, what am I going to have to sacrifice later?

Then come the calculations that nobody talks about. The medication calculations. The symptom calculations. The recovery calculations.

Will I need extra medication to get through the day? If I do, am I willing to accept the exhaustion that medication might cause afterwards? Is the pain manageable enough to push through, or am I about to write a cheque that my body will cash with interest tomorrow? Am I planning around reality, or am I planning around a version of reality that my body is about to completely ignore?

Because that’s the thing about chronic illness. The biggest challenge isn’t always what you know.

It’s what you don’t know.

I know that certain activities are going to hurt.

I know that some days are harder than others.

I know that there are medications that help and medications that help right up until they decide not to.

What I don’t know is whether today will look like yesterday. I don’t know whether something that was manageable last week is suddenly going to trigger a pain response. I don’t know whether my body is going to cooperate, negotiate or stage a full-scale rebellion.

Living with chronic illness often feels like trying to create a budget when both your income and expenses are randomly generated each morning.

The uncertainty is exhausting.

The calculations are exhausting.

And the truth is, they sit on top of all the normal calculations of adulthood that everyone is already carrying.

The groceries still need buying. Meals still need planning. Appointments still need remembering. Laundry still needs washing. The dishwasher still needs emptying. The toilet paper still somehow runs out with alarming regularity despite being purchased what feels like three business days ago. Life doesn’t stop demanding things from you just because your body has decided to become unnecessarily complicated.

So while everyone else is managing the mental load of life, chronic illness quietly adds another spreadsheet to the pile.

Actually, that’s not true.

It adds several spreadsheets, a risk register, a compliance audit and what feels suspiciously like a disaster recovery plan.

Sometimes I genuinely think I spend more time planning activities than actually doing them.

The absurdity of that isn’t lost on me.

What also isn’t lost on me is that this wasn’t always who I was.

When I think about carefree, I’m not imagining some fantasy version of myself. I’m remembering a real person. A younger version of me who made decisions because they sounded exciting. Someone who said yes first and figured the details out later. Someone who trusted that her body would more or less do what bodies are supposed to do.

I miss her.

Not in a dramatic way. Not in a way that makes me wish my life away or spend my days wishing for a different reality. More in the way you miss an old friend that you slowly lost touch with over time.

Because that’s the thing about grief and chronic illness. The losses rarely arrive all at once.

Nobody sat me down one day and announced that carefree was over.

It disappeared gradually.

Appointment by appointment.

Symptom by symptom.

Medication by medication.

One tiny calculation at a time.

Until one day I realised that the version of me who used to make spontaneous decisions had quietly been replaced by someone who requires supporting documentation before agreeing to lunch.

These days it genuinely feels like every outing requires approval from management.

Unfortunately, management is a collection of organs with questionable communication skills and a long history of making terrible decisions.

Every proposal must be reviewed for energy expenditure, pain implications, medication requirements and recovery projections. Additional documentation may be requested. Processing times vary. Decisions are final and cannot be appealed.

It’s honestly a miracle anything gets approved.

And yet, beneath the sarcasm, there is something sad about recognising how much mental space those calculations occupy. There is a grief in understanding that carefree isn’t something I can simply choose to be. It’s difficult to embrace spontaneity when experience has repeatedly taught you that every decision comes with consequences, and not all of them are immediately visible.

I think that’s what people often misunderstand when they see hesitation. They assume caution is about fear.

Most of the time it isn’t.

It’s experience.

It’s years of learning that your body doesn’t always provide complete information. It’s years of discovering that a two-hour activity can sometimes require two days of recovery. It’s years of understanding that saying yes isn’t always just saying yes. Sometimes it’s also saying yes to the aftermath.

So when I say I don’t get carefree, what I really mean is that carefree has been replaced by calculated.

Not because I’m pessimistic.

Not because I’m anxious.

Not because I’ve forgotten how to have fun.

But because chronic illness has turned me into someone who is constantly negotiating with a body that refuses to show me the full contract before asking for my signature.

And while I’ve become remarkably good at those negotiations, there are still days when I miss the version of me who never needed them in the first place.

The version who could simply decide to do something because it sounded like a good idea.

The version who wasn’t constantly solving equations with half the numbers missing.

The version who got to be carefree.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get her back completely. I think of her a lot as I prepare to embark on yet another adventure.

But every now and then, when I ignore a spreadsheet, make a slightly questionable decision and trust myself more than my calculations, I catch a glimpse of her.

Usually right before I need a nap.

xxx

Chronically Bex

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Departure day.

Taipei is now close enough that I can no longer refer to it as “next month” and instead have to acknowledge that I am leaving very, very soon.

For those who haven’t been subjected to me talking about this for the last three years, I’m heading to Taipei for a massive international non-profit convention. Approximately 37,000 people are expected to attend, which feels less like a conference and more like a small city that has collectively decided to descend upon Taiwan at the same time.

I’ve spent the last three years on the planning committee for this event.

Now, on paper, that sounds impressive.

In reality, it mostly means I have attended an alarming number of meetings that began sometime between one and three o’clock in the morning because apparently time zones are a social construct and sleep is for the weak.

Three years of planning.
Three years of discussions.
Three years of trying to advocate for things that matter, push conversations forward, challenge ideas when they needed challenging and occasionally attempt to have a voice in rooms that weren’t always designed to make space for voices like mine.

But that’s a conversation for another day.

Because right now, I am sitting on the floor of my bedroom staring at an open suitcase and wondering what the actual hell I am supposed to do next.

I am currently writing this from Auckland, where winter has firmly arrived. The heat pump is running. I’m wearing a hoodie. I’m wearing tights. My winter wardrobe is thriving.

I am not.

Meanwhile, Taiwan appears to be operating under entirely different management.

Current forecasts suggest temperatures floating somewhere between “warm” and “why does the air feel wet?” with humidity levels that seem less like weather and more like a personal attack. Rain is also apparently keen to make an appearance.

Excellent. Love that for me.

So now I am trying to pack for multiple realities simultaneously…

Professional but comfortable.
Presentable but practical.
Conference appropriate but chronic illness friendly.
Capable of standing on stage but also capable of surviving an entire week of walking.

Because here’s the fun twist.

This trip marks the first time I will be travelling with a mobility aid.

And if I’m honest, that’s probably the piece I’m still trying to wrap my head around.

Which is mildly ridiculous considering I work in the disability sector.

I spend a significant amount of my life around mobility aids. I advocate for accessibility. I support people to navigate systems that often weren’t built with them in mind. I’m usually helping someone else figure out their equipment. I’m not usually the person standing in my bedroom looking at a walking stick wondering how exactly we’ve arrived at this chapter.

The practical part of my brain understands it completely. The emotional part appears to be lagging behind several software updates.

So now I’m learning how to move through the world with this extra piece of equipment while simultaneously trying not to look like a newborn giraffe discovering its legs for the first time.

At the moment, the giraffe is winning…

What makes all of this slightly absurd is that this isn’t a holiday where I can quietly disappear into the background.

I will be on stage four separate times.
I’m involved in breakout sessions.
I’m emceeing a cultural night.
I’m part of the closing ceremony.
Objectively, these are all things I should be excited about.

And I am excited.

Underneath everything else, I am genuinely proud.
Proud of the work.
Proud of the friendships.
Proud of the opportunities.
Proud of what we’ve built over the last three years.

But excitement and anxiety are apparently sharing an apartment right now, and neither of them understands healthy boundaries.

Because while everyone else is packing for a conference, I feel like I’m packing for every possible version of my body.

I’m packing for good days.
I’m packing for bad days.
I’m packing for inflammation.
I’m packing for fatigue.
I’m packing for uncertainty.
I’m packing outfits based not only on what looks nice but on whether I’ll still be able to tolerate wearing them after eight hours on my feet.
I am evaluating shoes with the seriousness of someone conducting a government procurement process.

There are dresses for stages.
Comfortable shoes for walking.
Emergency medications.
Backup plans.
Backup plans for the backup plans.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that is the uncomfortable reality that I genuinely don’t know how my body is going to behave once I get there.

I think that’s the part people don’t always understand about chronic illness. The planning isn’t exhausting because there is so much to do. The planning is exhausting because you’re constantly trying to prepare for variables you can’t predict. You don’t know what version of your body is getting on the plane. You don’t know what version is getting off it and yet somehow you’re expected to pack for both.

Which brings me back to the floor…

To the packing cubes.
To the carefully folded dresses.
To the increasing suspicion that whoever invented packing cubes dramatically oversold the experience… Because right now there is nothing aesthetically pleasing about this situation.

There is just me, trying to stand up and sit down without my back deciding to lock itself into position like an angry office chair.

There is me trying to prepare for an event I’ve spent three years helping create while quietly hoping my body gets the memo and agrees to participate.

And honestly?

At this point I am less concerned about the conference itself and more concerned about successfully getting my spine, my walking stick and my suitcase onto the same international flight.

Everything after that feels like a problem for future Becky.

And frankly, she’s had three years to prepare.

xxx

A VERY VERY OVERSTIMULATED

Chronically Bex (who side note) has a disability sports day to help run tomorrow….

FUCK