Doing Life in Lavender

Hello everyone! This is a photo that would not exist if I did not have epilepsy. It is the bucket of money I raised for the charity Young Epilepsy from a cake sale that I put on when I was about 17. As someone with epilepsy, as I got older I became more passionate about education and awareness surrounding epilepsy. Therefore when I got to sixth form, as my confidence was growing, I wanted to do something to encourage my school to educate themselves about the condition I experienced on a day-to-day basis. I thought the way to motivate teenagers would be with cake so I put on a Purple Day cake sale. I had so much cake leftover and lots of people disappointed they hadn't been able to get cake because they had forgotten money because...well, if you've ever met a teenager, then you'll know that the teenage memory occasionally leaves a little to be desired... And so we carried on the next day, and the next day, and the next day! We ended up with a whole school week of a cake sale...

Hello again wonderful people! Today I wanted to talk about independence which is something I’ve talked about before. This time though, it will be the sole focus of my ramble. The feeling of not being as independent as I would like to be is something I have struggled with continuously as I have grown up, and as I get older it has only gotten worse. Any young child is pretty much totally dependent on grown-ups to help them through life, whether they have epilepsy or not. This meant that when I was little, I really didn’t notice too much difference between myself and my peers. There was little difference apart from me being the only kid in my swimming class to need 1:1 supervision in the water. As a child I lacked independence anyway, so my epilepsy didn’t change much. This was helped along by the fact that my parents were determined for me to have as “normal” a life as possible. Things only started getting more complicated as I got older and I started sticking out like a sore thumb. Wh...

Hello again lovely people! I am sorry for the delay but I’m glad that this blog is finally here! Today I wanted to talk about friendships. I do not think my epilepsy had a big impact on my friendships. However, I do think my friendships impacted my epilepsy and how well I adjusted to it.   I had a couple of friends who were close, practically since birth who really got my seizures, but also weird quirks and all the emotions that came with my seizures. These girls grew up with my epilepsy and were there right from the beginning. Our friendships were never affected by my seizures. We were just best friends who loved spending time together but when they needed to, they looked after me. They accepted me and my slightly special brain and they helped me feel normal when I felt different. I never felt like an inconvenience around them. As kids, I’m fairly sure they were still more qualified than most adults to handle my seizures. They were the only people I could have sleepovers with be...