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! A few days ago I sat down with my amazing mum and had a conversation about what it was like to be the parent of a child with a complex neurological condition. Specifically me. During this interview, we discuss what it was like being my mum during a weird and complicated diagnosis, managing things like school, how my brothers were told I had epilepsy as well as a fair bit more!  This was not a conversation that would normally happen so it was really nice to sit down with her and try and get some of her perspective on certain things as well as her insights, people who have helped her the most and things that she has learned.  My mum decided that she didn't want to be filmed so for the most part this is entirely audio. I hope that's ok! However, because we are muppets, we didn't realise until after recording that we had used lots of people's names when we shouldn't have done. Thus, every now and then, a message will appear on the screen for clarification o...

 Hello again wonderful people! Today, with it being the beginning of September and schools going back, I thought I’d share some of my experience of epilepsy at school. I tended to be quite a quiet and awkward child at school, but that was just my personality. I was only loud and a little bit crazy with people I was completely comfortable around. That tended to mean I had fewer but closer friends at school. I was a bit of a nerd. I loved books. I was always reading and genuinely loved learning (if geography wasn’t involved!). I was also unashamedly a teacher’s pet. However, I was also not very good at standing up for myself, which ended up with me being bullied a bit. The group of friends that I did have made being bullied so much easier. I didn’t really care if at lunch I could go and hang out in our tiny corner of the school. I also had a motto that got me through any kind of bullying whether related to my epilepsy or not. I think it was my mum who first said to me that no one’s...