Suzi Sterel.

Change.

If anything is certain in a time of a global pandemic – it’s that CHANGE will happen. And life will spiral out of control, at a pace we are truly not prepared for. We need to be ready for the fact that the death toll will change astronomically, our friends, family, neighbours, colleagues will get sick, not be around for awhile and maybe even die. Daily, the case numbers change, people will change and I know without a shadow of doubt, I have changed. I don’t know what I’m feeling from day to day but out of control and lonely don’t seem to completely do it justice to describe what I am fully feeling.

I speak often as a disability and mental health advocate and one of the things I can be certain is that my life has changed. From the minute I had my spinal surgery as a teenager, taught myself to walk, self-medicated, taught myself to live as a sober, tee-totaller, all the way through to surviving chemo/cancer and on a daily basis, continued to show up in life, my life has done nothing but change.

I now face the uncertainty of being alive, living through a global pandemic and not getting infected; all whilst recovering from not one, but two brain anuerysms.

And with every moment of life change, I have been challenged and pushed and pulled and moved and moulded, stretched and strengthened like a long piece of taffy. Sometimes I wasn’t sure how I could make it from one day to the next, if I could continue to work, let alone eat or sleep.

Who am I anymore? Am I just a meat carriage of disaster and illness? Who am I? What makes me so loved? I’ve been pushed and pulled, yanked and grabbed, moved back and forward, sideways and backways, all the ways that I never knew existed.

I’ve been shoved up and down mentally in the last two years. Convincing myself of my gratitude – “I’m still employed, thank God” to catastrophising that “I am on the verge of a mental breakdown” and self-medicating with alcohol and self-pity, just to try and hold it all together.

All of it to prove my strength, my resilience.

I have lived with chronic illness and disability since I was 16 years old. And yet my strongest supporters, friends and family will vehemently cry ‘you’re not disabled’ or the question ‘you don’t look / act disabled’ – whatever the fuck that means! I am this distorted wonderful warrior woman who is all those things and so much more.

What we’re NOT seeing is change from Government – what we desperately need now is leadership, strength in business, commitment from employers, we’re all being told that the ‘back to normal’ statements will fix everything. But the ‘back to normal’ catchphrases of of eighteen months ago, when no one was prepared to even begin to acknowledge that the BIG global changes were sweeping through our country WILL happen. It will happen- with or without those who agree with it or not. People don’t want to return to normal. We are damaged or in a societal PTSD phase of anxiety and change. Return to normal – work five days a week, the commute, the hussle and bussle? No thank you. We will change and we will watch the broken institutionalised systems crumble

And that is one thing that we can be certain of, CHANGE happens – with or without our consent. What we can agree to is our perspective, our strength, our resilience. So life and a global pandemic might ruin my day, but it can’t ruin my life.

I am better than that. I am worthy of living this life and so much more.