It made me realise as a young person, who’s a new graduate, after COVID, with a disability, the opportunities out there for young people, or from someone in my position were non-existent, essentially.

And it wasn’t until I stumbled across an internship opportunity and I got introduced to Cate. And she realised my potential even when I didn’t know I had it. And instead of keeping me for the original six weeks, she kept me on for a year. She just gave me that opportunity that nobody else did. And it made me realise that my worth was a hell of a lot more than I thought it was in the beginning.

I had just turned 15. I woke up one morning, and I couldn’t walk. It was all very confusing. I had searing pain in my back. I just thought; maybe I’d slept on my back funny and it was gonna go away. Then the pain started to spread and it got to the point where it was in every joint of my body. By the time I was 16, it affected my jaw; I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t do anything. I still didn’t know what was wrong with me. So they just gave me painkillers, because that’s all they knew that could help.

By the time I was 17, I had been living with a physical and invisible disability for over two years. Then, I had really bad mental health, depression and anxiety; it just really messed with my head. I also developed an addiction to pain medication. I couldn’t live without it.

And then one doctor said to me, you cannot see the trees because of the fog. I couldn’t understand my body, my health or my worth, because I was so fogged by all the medication in my head. She said before we can even support you in your journey of wellness, you have to get off this medication. At 17, I had to make a decision if I wanted to live. It was very confronting.

After three and a half years, they gave me a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, which is a disconnect within your brain. A pain pathway had been left open after I had both pneumonia and glandular fever at the same time and essentially, it just sends pain signaling all the time. Even now sitting here, I’ve got pain in all joints in my body, but I’m so used to it that, I just make do.

It took so long for them to diagnose me because it’s an older person illness. And being a young person who’s constantly complaining about pain, nobody took me seriously. Everyone just assumed that I was wanting attention, or I wanted a day off school. And it only took one person to believe me that it shifted.

It’s a real, confronting space where my whole life, I wanted to be a doctor; and then to have doctors not believe you, or not take into consideration my mental health and how that’s affecting my body, really was hard.

That’s when I realised that caring for my mental health, confronting all my demons, having belief in myself, dealing with my anxiety every day, made my pain go away. That stuff seemed so much more important than the medication I was given.

It’s a day to day battle. I get flares. A shift moving from a student to a person that works was massive. My body being in pain, constantly, and having to try medication, again, was just terrifying. It was such a weird space to think that my mental health controlled so much more than what I gave it credit, especially at a young age.

Like throughout the whole time at high school. I was still an excellent, – I was an endorsed student in high school. I still got top of my English class. And yet, those were the things that were important then, it wasn’t my mental health.

I’m grateful that I now know that I can’t rely on just medication alone to better myself. But having that fail for you at such a young age really puts it a level of doubt in your head. Like, I’m terrified to do lots of things around medication, because I trusted doctors. They said that this was going to help but the medication they gave me, long-term, made me worse.

And it was really hard as well, not having the recognition that I know my health. I guess it’s a level of ageism; I’m young. What do I know? Well, I know my body. And I know that this isn’t right.

Wellbeing for me is balance and knowing when to say no. I love to do things; I’m a busy person that’s what I do. And that burns me out. I end up in flares where I am literally bed-ridden. So actually saying no and looking after my health is 20 times more important. In saying that though, I’m now training and will be doing a quarter Iron Maori later this year.

That’s not necessarily balance – its prioritising, I should say! Coming from a space where I couldn’t walk to now training for an IRONMĀORI quarter… I’m in disbelief. I know when I cross that finish line I’ll be a wreck.

I’d like to see societal change in our attitudes towards young people, our support for young people and allowing young people a chance and a voice. Nobody knows what it’s like to be a young person, other than them. Things change so quickly, nowadays.

I just don’t want another person to go through what I went through. And I don’t think anybody does.”