As soon as I got my lipoedema diagnosis last year, tears rolled down my cheeks. For years, doctors told me that I was ‘just fat’. But finally a medical professional had confirmed my disproportionately large legs were a medical condition – an extremely painful chronic disease that causes fibrotic fat to accumulate in the lower part of the body, over which the patient has very little to zero control. It was the validation I’d waited nearly 30 years to receive. When I was 12 years old, I began

How can you know the difference when it’s you in the hot seat? Belief. The one thing that can drive us to achieve our wildest dreams and also shut us inside our houses. Not only am I one of the latter, but I also take it one step further. It feels like my lack of self-belief has me overanalysing — and doubting — my every step. It often stops me from trying new things and regretting my time sitting on the fence and asking “what if I’d just gone for it?”

Learning to like, let alone love yourself again is not a cut-and-dry process Lately, I’ve been waking up each day hoping to look a little bit different. Whether it’s my hormonal cystic acne smoothing out, one less pucker of skin from the cellulite on the back of my legs, or…

Women like Sabina Nessa aren’t safe to walk alone in the UK without being attacked and murdered… by men. What are the solutions for women’s safety? Of all the reasons for getting stood up, our date being murdered is the last thing we’d expect. Sabina Nessa, a 28-year-old primary school teacher, was found dead near a local community centre by a dog walker on the 18th of September. As a 31-year-old woman myself, this has confirmed a legitimate fe

When you think of the world’s most successful people, what do you think are their biggest challenges in life? What are the qualities that separate them from you? Are they really that different? The main thing to notice is how they respond when life throws a curveball and they’re faced with difficult challenges to overcome. The most successful people will take it in their stride and even seek ways to use it to their advantage. Successful people are often defined by what they have overcome in th

5 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Dating My Friend Because breakups can and do happen. Who would have thought it would come to this? You found your lover… within your friend. It came on suddenly one night when you both locked eyes longer than usual and you realised it didn’t feel awkward. Or maybe this has built up inside of you for months and months, ever since they offered to walk you home that night to make sure you were safe, or just to save you from boredom. And now you can’t help but wonder

If there is one thing the pandemic has taught the human race, it’s that we’re not always the ones in control. Catastrophe can strike when we least expect it and completely dismantle everything we once knew into an assortment of pieces on the ground. Even if we haven’t experienced catastrophe directly during the pandemic, most of us have realised that we won’t be returning to the old “normal.”

When choosing to uproot ourselves from our work desks and become payroll pariahs, a lot can change. Even when we feel we have grown enough to jump comfortably into the next phase of our careers, working from home brings an entire nursery of new hurdles. We are living in an age of distraction. Where smart devices are never usually more than a few feet away from us for most of our waking (and sleeping) lives. Where the data cookies we willingly leave behind like breadcrumbs are chased by alluring