182 - Finding Rest in a World That Never Stops - Karen's Recovery Story

Karen Wright from Sage Health and Wellness shares her powerful recovery story from Long COVID, offering hope and practical wisdom for those still struggling with chronic illness.

• Karen was a busy NHS physiotherapist involved in developing Long COVID services before becoming ill herself in autumn 2021
• Her severe case left her unable to speak at times, care for her children, or maintain basic daily activities
• Understanding and accepting true rest became fundamental to her recovery journey
• Finding her energy baseline through careful observation of triggers like food, light sensitivity and conversation was crucial
• Small, consistent actions over time led to gradual improvement including nutrition changes and gentle movement
• An unexpected thyroid cancer diagnosis revealed how some of her persistent symptoms may have been related to cancer rather than Long COVID
• Karen's recovery insights led her to launch Sage Health and Wellness to support others through education programs
• Self-acceptance emerges as a core message: "You're valuable as you are, whatever your productivity looks like" 

Links:

Connect with Karen at Sage Health & Wellness:
www.sagehealthandwellness.co.uk

For more information about Long Covid Breathing courses & workshops, please check out LongCovidBreathing.com

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction
• 4:00 Life Before Long COVID
• 11:22 The Devastating Impact of Illness
• 18:52 Finding What Works: The Recovery Journey
• 27:00 Understanding True Rest and Connection
• 35:02 The Recovery Curveball: Cancer Diagnosis
• 43:54 From NHS to Sage Health: New Beginnings
• 46:37 Final Advice: You Are Enough

Transcript

Jackie Baxter: 0:55

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Long Covid Podcast. I am delighted to be joined on this very sunny morning by Karen Wright from Sage Health and Wellness, and she's going to say a little bit more about what that actually is. But Karen is here to share her recovery story, to give us all some hope and some ideas, and I'm excited to hear what worked for you, karen. So a very warm welcome to the podcast. It's lovely to meet you.

Karen Wright: 1:24

Oh, thanks, jackie, it's great to meet you and it's great to talk to you. I mean, I'm excited to delve into things today.

Jackie Baxter: 1:31

Absolutely and, you know, just on a total tangent. Isn't it wonderful this idea of connection? You know, we lose so much connection when we can't do things and I think certainly for me, one of the silver linings has been all of these wonderful, incredible people that I have connected with because we would never have met otherwise yeah, I agree, you know, and I think part of it is is connecting with ourselves as well.

Jackie Baxter: 1:57

Um, you know, as part of the recovery journey, um, that connections with the wider sort of mandala of people who have been through similar experiences is so valuable, isn't it, and so validating yeah, I totally agree and I think, yeah, that's a really good point, you know, sort of reconnecting with ourselves, um, because certainly for me, I had kind of discovered that I had totally lost any connection I had with myself. Um, so let's talk a little bit about you and your journey. So what was life like before you became unwell?

Karen Wright: 2:33

and when was that? Yeah, so I got ill in autumn 2021. So prior to that, well, I just had my 40th birthday. I was working full time in the NHS as a physiotherapist, in a management role. I had two boys, two sort of. My boys were around about 10 and 12, I think at that time and I was on the go, I was loving my fitness. I was doing lots of functional fitness, crossfit, climbing mountains, kind of just embracing life, enjoying myself. But, yeah, very active and very um on, shall we say on, there was not, there wasn't much of of the off switch being utilized at that time in my life.

Jackie Baxter: 3:33

um, yes, and I think you know that this is a very common theme, isn't it? And it's not that it was your fault because you didn't ask for this, but that benefit of hindsight is very, very interesting, I think, because I can relate to a lot of what you were saying. You know the always being on, you know it was almost like for me, the idea of taking time off was insulting. Why would I want to do that? That's showing weakness. We can't do that. You know it was bad, whereas, you know, obviously, my perspective on it now is very different to that, but it's part of the process, I think, for me. Um, so yeah, so you were living this sort of very, very full, very busy life and then you became unwell and you said autumn 2021. So this was about what, 18 months into the sort of covid pandemic wasn't? It? Is that right?

Karen Wright: 4:39

yes, it was about 18 months, you know, and I was. I was in the thick of it in the health service. Ironically, I was involved with developing a long COVID rehabilitation service. I did some research into long COVID. It wasn't really anything. I didn't know about long COVID at that time from a kind of an intellectual perspective, you know, but it was intense that 18 months, as you can imagine. You know, we in our health board we set up a field hospital, so I was involved in developing that.

Karen Wright: 5:15

So, yeah, you're right, it was about 18 months and the lived experience, I to say when I wasn't recovering from the infection, was an entirely different thing to the intellectual understanding that I had previously. And actually, you know, I think, although that was there and that understanding was there, because of the nature of the symptoms and particularly the brain fog, you know, it was so dense, um, you can't see the wood for the trees, can you? Um? So it was almost unhelpful. You know, I really needed, um, like we were talking about connection, I needed that um external guide, I suppose to, to help me to navigate through a lot of it. I mean, yeah, it was. It was an incredible change of state and change of normality.

Karen Wright: 6:19

Um, like a sled, like being hit by a sledgehammer. You know, I had this list of symptoms, like 16 different symptoms. I couldn't do anything, you know, I couldn't care for my children. My husband picked up the majority of that, that, you know, because I it was pots, quite potsy presentation. So there were times when, uh, I couldn't even raise a voice, you know, I couldn't even find energy to make sound, um, let alone think of a response to a question. Um, yeah, work was out the window, training was out the window. Um, I couldn't drive, I could barely travel in a car, to be honest.

Jackie Baxter: 7:07

Um, so it was a shock, it was a huge shock and it was a huge loss and a trauma, a big trauma yeah, and I think you know this is a really good point that you made that, the sort of clinical understanding, let's say, that you had. You know you. You said, you know I, I knew everything about long COVID, you know you, you'd written the book on long COVID, um, but what you didn't have was the lived experience. And then you did, and when you did have the lived experience it was almost like whoa, you know, I might have known, but I didn't know kind of thing. Um, and I think, yeah, it's very, very illuminating, I think, to have experience of something that you understand. Um, and I think you know, probably the majority of people with long COVID came in not knowing really anything about it and have then sort of flipped it the other way, become ill and then learned more. So it's very interesting that you were sort of the other way around with that, but actually that it didn't really make the experience any easier.

Karen Wright: 8:16

You know, on some level maybe it made it harder, I don't know um, you know, on some level, maybe it made it harder, I don't know. Um, well, I had this. It was obviously we were still developing our knowledge base in 2021. It was back in the early days. Um, yeah, I knew that people were very ill and I knew that a lot of people weren't getting better too, so it was scary, you know.

Karen Wright: 8:40

And um, yeah, it was tough to sort of have that knowledge base of seeing and knowing. Um, well, lots of other people had gone through and other people's experiences, the people we were seeing through the health service, and thinking, well, what's this, what's it going to be like for me, you know, is it going to be like this or is it going to be like that? Um, so, yeah, and as I said, you know to, to have the objectivity of mind to implement some of the strategies was a challenge in itself, you know, and that's why we you know, I'm picking up on this theme of connection again that's why it is so important that we have these connections and that we support each other, because knowing and doing are two different things.

Jackie Baxter: 9:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it really really is. And you know, I remember saying I'm not sure if it was after I was recovered or if I was still unwell at the time but making some comment about you know how people who get long COVID sort of two or three years into the sort of pandemic have a much easier job of it. And then immediately thinking actually, is that true? And I don't think it's an easier or harder equation really. You know, I think for me I was right at the start. There was very little knowledge of long COVID and I spent a lot of time doing the wrong things because no one was telling me what the right things were. But at the same time, if I'd come into it knowing that there were people three years in who hadn't recovered yet, like you know, that would have been absolutely horrific. So yeah, you know, I think it's a very different experience that there is a lot more help out there if you know where to look. There is a lot more help out there if you know where to look. But that doesn't necessarily negate any of the other stuff, um, and it's not about things being harder or easier anyway, is that it's. You know, everyone's experience is probably one of the worst ones that they will ever have.

Jackie Baxter: 10:53

So, yeah, um, so you said you know you had a very sort of potsy presentation, that you weren't able to do things, and I think that's one of the things, isn't it? Whatever your presentation is, and whatever your specific symptoms or severity of it, you lose the ability to do things that make your life up. Your entire life is turned upside down to some level, and that is pretty horrific. You know, both physically and mentally and emotionally. You know that we lose our identity. We lose the ability to do things that make us smile. We lose our jobs, maybe our. You know families don't interact with us in the same way. You know families don't interact with us in the same way, or we don't interact with them in the same way. Um, you said you have children, so that must have been a really difficult thing for you. Um, that sort of not being able to be the person in your family group that you have always been, I would imagine.

Karen Wright: 12:52

Yeah, so I totally, you know, and I think the point about identity is really big, isn't it? Because it's what we have always attached our identity to, around this doing and these relationships, who I am and this I'm a caring person, for example, I help people, you know, and when that's taken away, um, it is a grief and you sort of left quite fearful, I guess, and quite just, um, yeah, just just questioning who am I? Yeah, what does this mean for me? So, yeah, it was. Yeah, it was one of the definitely one of the worst experiences of my life.

Karen Wright: 13:44

You know, and I don I don't say that lightly, of course we all, we all go through our stuff. It's brought a depth of learning and it's changed me and actually, you know, with the benefit of hindsight, I wouldn't change the experience just because of the richness of what I've learned and how I've evolved through that. Of course, I wouldn't have said that at the time. But I think your point as well, about there's no worse than or better than, um is really important because it's individual, isn't it? And it's how, um, how things land for us. I mean, I've seen lots of people with these illnesses and know to present the same. You know everybody has their unique experience. Yeah, and how that lands for them is really, I guess it's not important really for us better than or worse than somebody else's experience.

Jackie Baxter: 14:56

It's what's meaningful to them exactly, and it's validating that experience um in in each individual person. Yeah, absolutely um. So what did you start to find, or even how did you start to find things that did help?

Karen Wright: 15:17

yeah, well, that's a great question, you know, and I think in the beginning I had this sense of injustice, you know, because I wasn't working, I wasn't parenting, I wasn't going to the gym, I dropped like 90% of my life but I was still crashing or booming and busting, or however you want to express it, pem essentially. So, yeah, there was that. So I sort of had to get through that anger phase, I think, and move through to a little bit of acceptance and think, okay, I need to look a little bit more closely. So that's what I started to do, you know, and I started to notice lots of things that drained my energy. The smaller things in the day, you know so little things like being in an upright position would be a drain. Having a conversation, you know, the effort of listening and processing information, light, just being in an environment of light, was depleting for me. Amount of light was depleting for me. Digesting food was energy demanding, you know. So when I started to look a little bit closer to my body, I started to come up with this kind of bigger picture of where my energy was being spent. Yeah, and that was really the turning point, I suppose, of moving towards finding baseline, like I said, this energy of digesting food was a golden piece of information for me to realise that that was happening.

Karen Wright: 17:14

One day, I remember, actually in the early days, in our part of the country, we sometimes eat fish and chips from the takeaway. So we, and it's a lot, it's a large meal and it's quite sort of dense and energy rich. It's quite a lot of fat, it's deep fried, you know. So we had this dinner one night. It was a Friday night and, you know, by the Sunday I still couldn't walk. I was so absolutely depleted after this, just one meal which wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest prior to the illness. But, like I said, this was golden information because there was something there.

Karen Wright: 17:55

This was a variable that I could change, this was something that I could control. So that was the start. That was the first thing I changed really was the nutrition. I dialed right into what I was eating, how my body was feeling, and I started to eat a low histamine diet. Um, and what I noticed after the first 24 hours of eating in that way, the body just calmed down. I was feeling this regular, like a, a revving. I describe it as a revving, you know, like a car revving in the body, just this releasing of adrenaline all the time, and so upregulated, and it calmed after eating in this way and it was such a relief I feel my breathing drop and the sleep was restorative for the first time in months. You know, it was almost blissful.

Karen Wright: 18:56

I still had all these other symptoms and all these limitations, but it was hope. You know, I really found hope and a sense of control that OK, there's something here. You know, I've got this, I can do it. You know, and it was trial and error, many, many things worked. Many things didn't work so well and there was a lot of things that needed to tweak in, you know, as I went along to make it work for my body. So, yeah, so that was the start of it. You know, I found my baseline after that and I was able to start building in some movement into my routine, some more structure into my daily routine. Yeah, regularity with sleep, regularity with social interactions, regularity with activity and rest cycles. Yeah, and I was starting.

Karen Wright: 20:00

It was a slow journey, but that's how I gradually, yeah, pushed a little, you know, sometimes took steps backwards, but then was able to push a little bit more and just quietly, very, very gently grow out this capacity. You know it's playing the long game. That's what I had to do and, yeah, the challenges along the way were really tough because you know, you do have to learn to say no. And it's not just saying no to the things you don't want to do either, is it. It's saying no to some things that you actually want to do.

Karen Wright: 20:40

So that was hard. It's like a sense of short-term pain for longer-term gain. It's a sacrifice, but it was sort of coming back to myself. But it was sort of coming back to myself, my core goal, which was recovery and just holding that every moment. You know, and that was my sort mindset because, as I described, you know, before I was this doer, I was this action person, helping, you know, achieving. So that was one of the hardest things is adapting this sort of mindset, you know, and learning a different way to the ways you've always done things. And of course, that's a bit hit and miss in the beginning when you start trying different ways, but gradually, you know, it just becomes easier and more of the normal response.

Jackie Baxter: 21:49

Um, so yeah, so that's how I did it. Yeah, and I think you know you just touched on something. You know I I did an episode, I think it was earlier this year, that was called um, sort of five themes of recovery, because I got asked this question. You know, what do all your guests do to get better? And I'm thinking, well, their stories are all so different, but I can't just say that it's one thing. So I went through all of the recovery stories and looked at, you know, everybody's journey and I realized that, although there weren't, you know, a couple of the same things that they were doing, there were some very distinct themes and one of those was that sort of consistency. So it's consistently doing those little things.

Jackie Baxter: 22:36

So for most people, recovery isn't one big thing, it's consistently doing little things over time and those little things do change. You know you said that sometimes you had to adapt things, but you kept going with those little things over time with that goal in mind, rather than sort of falling back into the boom and bust, which is very, very easy to do, because, as you say, we have to say no to things that we want to do, we desperately want to do, or maybe I'm being made to feel that we should do, if it's work, for example, or family commitments or things like that and it's very, very, very difficult to sort of stand your ground and advocate for yourself, for anybody, but particularly when you're so unwell, it's very, very difficult to do that, um. But you know, I I love what you were saying about, you know, finding that first thing that helped to kind of sort of create a bit of space. You know, and for you it was nutrition, for me it was breathing. That was the first thing that really helped me, um. But you know, it's finding that first thing in your journey because it does, it gives you that little bit of hope, it gives you a little bit of space, it gives you a little bit more capacity, you know. And then you know, you continue, um, and you, the trial and error is real, you know, that's why recovery is so nonlinear, isn't it? Because, in order to work it out, we do have to do things that don't work, and I think, certainly for me. I was very judgmental on myself about that. You know, it was very sort of oh you, idiot, you've done it wrong again, you've overdone it. Why did you do that? Well, that was part of the process and you know you were saying about. You know you had to sort of shift your mindset and I think that very much comes for me into what you were saying there. You know, know, it's that being kind to yourself when things don't go well as well as when they do um.

Jackie Baxter: 24:39

So you were talking about balancing activity and rest. I think was the? Um the words you used and for me, and I think for a lot of people, this idea of rest I mean it's not something we want to do anyway, um, it's boring, um. But also I think there's a lot of misunderstanding around the word rest, um. Because for me, before I became unwell, rest you know. Well, you know watching tv or reading a bit, or you know making cake in the kitchen, that's's all rest. Climbing mountains would even come under rest for me, because it was not work. But I would love to hear a bit more about what your ideas of rest were and what forms of rest you found helpful in that kind of balance of activity versus rest.

Karen Wright: 25:29

Yeah, this is an amazing question, you know, and what pops into my mind is me being completely at a loss to be able to answer this question. What is rest? At the beginning of my illness Didn't have a clue. You know, like, like you, I was like, okay, so if it's not watching TV, you know, like you say, doing something more of a lower level activity. That's all I ever knew and I actually tweeted, uh, a post in 2021.

Karen Wright: 26:03

What is rest? You know, I needed help. I was so lost, um, but yeah, things I would do, like, um, watching tv, would hurt my eyes. You know, dependent, I couldn't really process a lot of the content that I was consuming, so that wasn't rest, because clearly it was an active process, wasn't it in? Um, understanding this content, so okay, so that wasn't rest. Of course, I was potsy, so I couldn't have a bath. You know that would just make my symptoms worse. You know, ok, sleep, sleep is sleep. You can only do that for so long, yeah, and actually that sort of takes away if you do it for so long as well.

Karen Wright: 26:59

Anyway, in answer to your question, I started with breath work. I'm a physiotherapist, so I've got a background in the breath, so I had some experience of working with that, yeah. So I signed up to a breathwork program and from there I kind of moved into meditation. I had to do a meditation lying down because I couldn't maintain an upright position, so I did the breathwork and the meditation lying down in the first probably year or so. Yeah, so they were my two biggest forms of rest really.

Karen Wright: 27:37

I used to do some like maybe guided yoga, nidra type sessions as well, which are really sort of down-regulating and takes you to that lovely sort of in-between sleep and awake state, yeah, and I kind of got to feel that, oh, okay, this resting is not so bad, you know, it's not doing and and that's the thing I've come back to, the mindset is being okay with not doing all the time, you know, and allowing ourselves a space and allowing ourselves the rest and, um, yeah, I kind of got quite interested in sort of the, the culture of that. You know, like you mentioned about the expectations and the shoulds. Uh, yeah, but we're human beings, you, you know we're not machines, we're not doing machines. So, yeah, once I sort of realized that I had this belief, due to the culture that I live in, that rest was a bad thing. But actually what was real was that my body needed rest and that my body was my priority, so that I could heal and be well. Um then, I was okay with it yeah, it is.

Jackie Baxter: 29:02

It's so difficult, isn't it? And I think you know it. There is also a gender thing. I think you know, as a female, we do feel like we have to work harder, we have more responsibilities, particularly around family and children for people who have them, um, and that sort of not being able to rest or not feeling like we're able to rest, and, as I said, it's not something I had ever even considered that I should. I, I sort of, was the other way around.

Jackie Baxter: 29:35

I thought I shouldn't, and you know I was also a massive fan of yoga nidra. It's just, it's magic. There's something about it that is magical, and I hated it to start with because I was so bored and I felt so uncomfortable in that stillness, because I'd never been in stillness before in my entire life. And then, over time, I just felt like I got that overwhelming sense of peace when I did something like a yoga nidra or a breathing exercise that worked for me, or a breathing meditation or something like this, and I'd never experienced that before and over time, it did become something that I actually really enjoyed and that I still build into my life now. You know it's part of my daily practice is my morning breathing practice and I think it's as you said, you know, that kind of mindset shift of rather than I shouldn't rest.

Jackie Baxter: 31:01

Actually, in order to be a happy, healthy, functioning human being, you have to rest. It's not a should or a shouldn't, it is a fundamental need for our body, and if we don't rest in the right amount, in the right way, then the body starts tipping into that unhealthy state and eventually it will really let us know kind of thing, and I have much more of an appreciation for that now than I ever have. I mean, I still fall into. You know, I logged on today and I was like hi, karen, it's nice to meet you. My day is chaos, and you know that that still happens, but I like to think that I'm usually able to balance that out with with my swim this afternoon.

Jackie Baxter: 31:49

There's hoping, um. So yeah, I, I do think it's something that we often don't appreciate until we've sort of been forced into it and and then have this sort of new, new sort of appreciation. Um, so you were saying how you had found the sort of nutrition, the balance between the sort of the rest and the um sort of activity and sort of gradually expanding and trial and error and you know this sort of you know I think many people will sort of activity and sort of gradually expanding and trial and error, and you know this sort of you know I think many people will sort of be very able to relate to some of that. Um, what did that kind of final trajectory towards recovery look like and how did you know that you were recovered? What did that look like?

Karen Wright: 32:38

well, um, let's see. So I've got to. If we fast forward a little bit, then to 2024 sort of spring 2024 I was back in work, so I was working 30 hours. I was working 50% in the office, 50% from home. I was back, you know, being an active parent, you know, much to the disappointment of my children because they were being nagged again.

Karen Wright: 33:10

Yeah, I was doing my exercise, I was doing my movement, I was engaging in hobbies, my movement, I was engaging in hobbies, you know, and I learned a lot of new hobbies, actually through the illness which brought me, uh, you know, great pleasure. So like playing the piano, for example, and I go paddle boarding now too. So I just love the water and gardening, you know, I found uh, I've got an allotment now I found gardening during my illness. So, yeah, so I was having quite this sort of, um, this full life. I'm still having reduced cognitive capacity, um, but that was kind of more, it wasn't booming and busting, it was more of a sort of a stable new level. Um, I was still having migraines and tinnitus, um, yeah, and then I found a lump in the pit of my throat, so, yeah, so I got that investigated, had a biopsy, and the biopsy was inconclusive. So I had to have surgery and I had half my thyroid removed and luckily I did, because that lump did actually turn out to be cancer. Yeah, so that was a bit of a curveball. As it happened, it was all contained within the surgical removal, um, and I decided not to have any further treatment. Uh, so how that evolved then, from the recovery from the surgery, was that I started to notice I haven't had a migraine for a while, you know. Um, oh, I haven't had a migraine for a while, you know. Oh, I haven't noticed tinnitus for a while.

Karen Wright: 35:10

So, effectively, you know, I think that those two remaining symptoms that I'd always thought of were long COVID symptoms. They left my body with that surgery, with that part of my thyroid. I don't suffer from those problems anymore and I don't know, I don't know if, I don't know how long that cancer had been there. You know it was 30 mil, so it's quite big so, and I can see it back in photos from 2023 in my throat. So the difference, I think yeah, the honest truth is, I don't know is what was long COVID and what was thyroid cancer, because the symptoms are quite similar. Because the symptoms are quite similar. Maybe, yeah, maybe, they overlapped. Maybe I was recovered from long COVID sooner and I was just living with symptoms of thyroid cancer. I can't work out where there was the end of one and where there was the beginning of another.

Karen Wright: 36:21

So by really autumn 2024, I was experiencing this new lease of life, this new sense of wellness and just gratitude strong, beautiful sense of gratitude for life and for health and for absence of symptoms. You know, and yes, you know, I can't, I don't multitask like I used to. You know, I need to focus and concentrate on tasks now. So, from a cognitive perspective, I'm not as sharp as I was prior to long COVID, but I don't care. It's me, you know, and I embrace that and I accept it and it's who I am, and I'm here and I'm alive and I'm well and I'm blessed. You know, and it's my passion now and my sense of purpose to support other people that are living through these experiences, because I know, like I said, as much as I knew about it, I couldn't do it alone. So I'm here, I'm here to connect with others and to support others and that's my yeah, that's my real passion now and to support others, and that's my yeah, that's my real passion.

Jackie Baxter: 37:47

Now, yeah, and like that, you know, must have been an absolutely terrifying experience, on top of your experience with long covid, and if that wasn't a test of your resilience, I don't know what would be. Um, and that actually, not only did you not crumble under that, you came out stronger from what must have been a really quite like dude what next? Like kind of thing, almost you know not to make light of it at all, but you must have felt like what is the world going to throw at me now?

Karen Wright: 38:19

Yeah, and I think it's interesting, isn't it? That sense of resilience, because, you know, the truth is that we're not in control. You know life's going to unfold and life's going to happen, you know as it does, and we just have to sort of embrace it and to do what we can uh in in the face of it. Really, I mean, what? What made it difficult for me, uh further, was during that, during last year, things were changing with my job. Yeah, um, my service was being closed by the organization that I worked for, so that was a real sense of distress. Um, so, yeah, so that, coupled with, you know, the backlog of, uh, the cancer, the long COVID general life stuff as well, um, yeah, I guess that and the resilience comes from, uh, you just got gotta roll with it, you know what else can you do?

Jackie Baxter: 39:25

yeah, I, I agree, I mean it's. I think I'm one of these people that likes to control things, and the sort of more out of control things get, the more I try to control them. And you know you, you can't do that with anything in life, really, can you, um? But particularly when you know something health-wise comes at you, um, you know it's, it's kind of like this total terrifying feeling of an out of control, and the more you try to control it, the worse it gets, almost, because we then get more and more stressed and our body feels more and more under threat. So, yeah, I think that resilience really is that we are able to surf those waves rather than sort of sink underneath them, to use yet another water metaphor. So you said that there was work stress over the last year. So what does life look like for you, kind of now?

Karen Wright: 40:26

Well, so yesterday actually was the last day of my employment with the NHS. Yeah, congratulations, thank you. It's the start of an exciting new chapter for me. Yeah, thank you, it's the start of an exciting new chapter for me. Yeah, as I said, I was working in this field in the NHS and the organisation that I worked for closed the service, so what I decided to do is pursue this line of work on a private basis. Because of my own experience and how it's all sort of um interweaved, it's really important to me that people get the support that they need and, like you said, you know, the best people, in my opinion, to support people that um have fatigue and illness are people that have experienced it themselves, because I've done both. I've been that professional who hasn't had lived experience and now I do it's. You know it's a completely different offering. You know, much more meaningful, I hope, anyway yeah so I've.

Karen Wright: 41:37

I've launched my business, sage Health and Wellness, and effectively what I've done is developed an education program for people to, in bite-sized chunks, understand a lot of the learning that goes behind finding baseline, for example, what pacing really means. You know there's modules on nutrition and sleep and I've done a lot of training as well to enhance my skills, as obviously I've got this foundation as a physiotherapist, so movement and breathing it's kind of second nature to me. But I've been really excited to add on some education. I've learned coaching, therapeutic nutrition and cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. So I really wanted to give people this really rounded offer so that they weren't having to sort of pick different services for different facets of the illness. So, yeah, we talk about mindset in the program too and sort of overcoming those um kind of automatic responses that might develop into barriers for on our recovery journey. Um, so I'm really excited actually to be able to launch that and share with people.

Jackie Baxter: 43:01

Yeah, it sounds amazing and I think you're right. You know, the people who have experienced it, you know, have this very unique and important perspective that someone who hasn't got the lived experience doesn't have, who hasn't got the lived experience doesn't have, you know, and that doesn't mean that they can't help, but it does mean that they don't fully understand what that feels like to experience that. So, yeah, I think that's amazing, and I love what you said about learning as well, because I found this as well. You know, I didn't realize how much I need to learn. It's something that I have within me, it's this curiosity about everything and I just need to know more. You know, oh, I want to know about that. Oh, I want to know about that. And, you know, I just want to do more trainings in this and more trainings in that, and I have to rein it in sometimes. But, you know, it's kind of like this whole experience has unleashed it for me and it makes me much better at what I do.

Jackie Baxter: 43:59

Um, so I think that's, you know, that's amazing. I love that. You found that too. Um, so I guess finally, um, what advice would you give yourself, with the sort of benefit of hindsight? Um, so, karen version. Who, looking back on yourself from before, when you were unwell and and struggling, yeah, it's a great question.

Karen Wright: 44:26

Um, oh, I was so hard on myself back then, jackie, you know, I would just say take your, take your foot off your neck, it's okay. You don't have to be that way, you know. You don't have to do all the doing, it's okay to rest. Um, you know, it doesn't make you any more or less of a person. Um, you're okay and you're valuable as you are, you know. However, you show up, whatever the symptoms are looking like, whatever your productivity looks like, even if it's zero, whether you've got greasy hair, you know, or you can't do things for people, whatever that looks like, you're still enough, absolutely and I think that is a very beautiful um sentiment to finish on umaren.

Jackie Baxter: 45:19

Thank you so much for coming along and giving up your time on a very hot day to share your story and to offer some helpful ideas and tips and hope for people listening. So thank you so much.

Karen Wright: 45:33

Thanks, jackie, it's been great to talk to you.