Thrills, pills and a headscarf

"Tired of trying to cram her sparkly, star-shaped self into society's beige square holes, she chose to embrace her ridiculous awesomeness and shine like the freaking supernova she was meant to be." My aunt posted this quote months ago and I just had to save it, knowing it was exactly what I want to say in this post! This post is probably the most important one yet for me. I've known I've wanted to write it for sometime, I've spoken to large groups of teenagers just scratching the surface on this topic and I feel like now is the time. It's the time because this is the month of my 32nd birthday (I know many of you will be shocked I'm not turning 24 again this year!), and it's also the month I'm going to start the process of losing my physical identity again as I begin back on intravenous chemotherapy. To be honest my physical identity is starting to feel so fluid I'm not really sure I know what it is anymore. It's also the tim...

12am 1st of January 2018 I sat on that questionable terrazza in Chile, saying Cheers to the New Year with a non-alcoholic cocktail and a slice of pizza. The stray dog at my feet lay quite happily, unfazed by all the noise around us, and I laughed as I began my commitment to saying Yes to my year, to my life. We're now halfway through this commitment and I really want to consider what saying yes has done for me and those around me. To start with I want to apologise for saying yes to making the word yes a verb; it just feels appropriate this year. So as anyone who has read my January 1st blog knows, I started by saying yes to the circumstances offered to me. Not just accepting these circumstances but embracing them. I laughed at every level of imperfection in that moment and thought about how perfect it actually was. I could have chosen never to have taken on the challenge of going to South America for four weeks, with cancer, after two major surgeries and while still takin...

I've always said that travelling gave me an education I could never buy. One that could never be taught in schools or universities; that simply needs to be learnt as each opportunity presents itself. Those opportunities could be great fun or amazingly challenging. All of them important to deal with. I feel so thankful to have had another four weeks to continue my education in life and as slow as I've been on my blogs I want to share some of those learnings. Some useful, some not. Language is great in it's ambiguity: I thought I spoke Spanish to a point. I guess that's still strictly true but we had some fun experiences with it. It was quite empowering to realise I was still able to get by in Spanish, speak to people and get done what I needed to get done even if it wasn't perfect. What I did learn was there are many more differences between the Castellano I have learnt and South American Spanish. In some of many language confusions we established that ...