We are not simple. We are layered, nuanced, and ever-changing; we carry stories in our bones, emotions in our breath, and memories in the way our shoulders rise when someone asks, “How are you?” To live with chronic symptoms — pain, fatigue, grief, or an invisible struggle, is to live with complexity. Not just in the body, but in the mind, the heart and the spirit. Yet, the world often asks us to flatten ourselves — to be ‘fine’ to be ‘resilient’ to be ‘easy to understand.’

When you live with chronic symptoms — pain, fatigue, brain fog, or emotional overwhelm, your mind often does not feel like an organised, neat filing cabinet. It feels more like a tangled, messy bowl of spaghetti. Thoughts loop and twist. Emotions entangle and thread through memories, sensations, and fears. One tug on a noodle — a sudden flare, a stressful email, a loud noise, and the whole bowl shifts. This is the spaghetti mind: nonlinear, sensitive, and deeply human.

There’s a quiet moment that often comes in the healing process. A pause. A breath. A moment where you look back on your life - the person you were, and think, was that really me? It can be disorienting. Laced with grief. Empowering. Liberating.