Welcome to my Lifestyle Parenting Blog, where I explore topics related to chronic illnesses such as ME/CFS, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia while embracing a passion for yoga, books, and blogging.
Finding Support as an SGO or Kinship Carer
There is a moment that most special guardianship and kinship carers recognise instantly. It is the quiet realisation that life has shifted on its axis. One day you are a grandparent, aunt, uncle, older sibling or family friend. The next you are navigating school runs, trauma responses, social workers, court paperwork and a level of emotional responsibility you never planned for.
The Emotional Toll of Kinship Care
Kinship care is often spoken about like a solution. A safety net. A keeping it in the family kind of story that people can wrap up neatly in their heads. What they do not talk about enough is the emotional cost of it. The quiet, constant weight that settles into your chest when you step into a role you did not plan for but could not walk away from.
Caring for Family While Living With Chronic Illness
There is a strange quiet grief that comes with being someone who cares deeply for others while your own body is unreliable. It is not the dramatic kind of grief that arrives all at once. It seeps in slowly through daily moments. Through cancelled plans. Through the heaviness that sits in your chest when you want to show up in the ways you used to but your body simply will not cooperate.
Life as a Kinship Carer: What No One Prepares You For
I wish someone had told me what life as a kinship carer really looked like before I stepped into it. They don’t. They prepare you with forms, court dates, meetings with social workers, and endless advice about what the law says you can and cannot do. What they don’t tell you is what it feels like in the quiet moments, in the chaos, in the grey areas between love and fear.
What Is a Special Guardianship Order SGO / Kinship Carer
I remember the moment the phrase Special Guardianship Order was first said to me. It was like someone had handed me a book in a language I’d never learned but was suddenly expected to speak fluently. I had lived through court hearings, adoption chats, kinship care referrals, late‑night Googling, endless forms, and the very real fear of choosing the wrong path for a child I loved with every fibre of my being. At that time, it felt like every instinct I had was whispering and screaming at the same time.
Chronic Illness: My self-care is different to your self-care
As a chronic ill person living with chronic pain, my approach to self-care is significantly different from that of someone without a chronic illness. While self-care is important for everyone, those of us managing conditions like ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, spinal stenosis, or other chronic pain disorders have unique challenges and considerations that shape how we care for ourselves each day.
Embracing Parenthood: Growing Up, Growing Together
Our house is full. Not just full, but bursting at the seams in the best possible way. Full of people, full of noise, full of stories being lived out all at once. Some days it feels like controlled chaos, and other days it feels like a deep exhale. What it always feels like, though, is home.
How the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) Saved Our SGO Placement
I want to write this because there was a moment where everything we had worked so hard for almost fell apart, and the reason it did not is because of the ASGSF programme. Without it, I am certain our SGO placement would not have survived. This is not exaggeration. This is our lived reality.
When Cleaning Hurts: Living With ME/CFS, Fibromyalgia, and the Need for Pacing
Living with ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia has completely changed how I experience everyday life. Things that once felt neutral now come with consequences, and cleaning is one of the clearest examples of that. Cleaning is often framed as a basic life task, something routine and unremarkable. For me,
My Aging Hands and the Stories They Will Not Let Me Forget
I have this bad habit of catching sight of my own hands when I am absolutely not prepared for it. Usually, when I am doing something deeply glamorous, like scrubbing toothpaste off the sink or trying to fish the last biscuit crumb off my jumper. And every time, without fail, there is that little jolt of shock. A tiny internal gasp. Like, excuse me, when did my hands decide to age faster than the rest of me?
Living With Chronic Illness: Overcoming My Own Stigma
When ME CFS was first mentioned to me, it wasn’t even in a dramatic or definitive way. It was more of a quiet suggestion, almost a passing comment, like something to tuck away for later. At the time I didn’t really know what it meant. I knew the words, but I didn’t understand the weight they carried. I went away and did what I always do when something doesn’t sit right in my head. I researched. I read.
Giving Up on New Friendships Was the Best Thing I Did
Living with chronic illness has shaped my life in ways I never could have imagined. Over the years, I’ve navigated the unpredictable reality of ME/CFS, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia, facing challenges that tested my resilience and reshaped my priorities. One of the biggest shifts along this journey has been how I view friendship
Developing Body Positivity in my Teen Daughter Who Has Childhood Trauma
As a Special Guardian (SGO) and kinship carer to my teen daughter, I have become deeply aware of how important it is to nurture a positive body image and healthy self-esteem. This is not something I ever expected to think so much about, but when a child has experienced early childhood trauma, even seemingly ordinary stages of development can feel layered and complex. My daughter’s journey has taught me that body image is not just about appearance. It is about safety, belonging, and feeling secure in who you are.
Chronic Illness Has a Way of Humbling You
Living with a chronic illness changes everything. It changes how you see your body, your mind, and the world around you. Conditions like ME CFS, chronic pain, or fibromyalgia aren’t just physical; they shift the very way you experience life.
Before my illness, I measured myself by what I could do.
Special Guardian Child Not Doing Well in School: What I Did and What Helped
When I first realised my special guardian child was not doing well in school, I felt a mix of worry, guilt, and constant anxiety. I’m a Special Guardian to my little girl, and like many children under special guardianship, school was not a safe or supportive place for her, at least not at first.
10 Things Kinship Carers Need to Hear
When I first stepped into kinship care, I did not feel brave or capable or ready. I felt overwhelmed, frightened, and quietly unsure whether I was about to break myself trying to hold everyone else together. Kinship care often begins in crisis, and when you are in the middle of it, there is very little space for reassurance. Over time, and through many conversations with other kinship carers,
Living With Chronic Illness: A Painfully Slow Walk, and Why It Still Mattered
Today I woke up and noticed something small but important. I felt a little lighter. Not fixed, not suddenly well, just lighter enough that the walls of the house did not feel quite so close. I have been mostly house ridden over Christmas, days blending into each other, measuring time by pain levels and energy crashes rather than clocks. This morning there was a quiet pull inside me that said I needed to get out
Things I Hope My Children Learned When We Became Kinship Carers / Special Guardians
When we became kinship carers, our boys were just 3, 9, and 12. Even then, I knew their lives were about to shift in ways they were far too young to fully understand. Almost overnight, our home stretched to hold more emotions, more needs, more chaos, and more love than any of us had known before. I worried constantly about what the boys would take in from all of it.
Chronic Illness: Living Between the Boom and the Bust
I was recently watching a series of Fibromyalgia group session videos on YouTube, shared by my pain nurse through our local NHS hospital trust. One video in particular focused on the idea of boom and bust, that familiar cycle so many of us with fibro live in. They talked about the mindset we often carry, the quiet determination that says, I’m not going to let fibromyalgia beat me.