TheMindfulMigraine.Blog

Today is a book review of “10: a memoir of migraine survival” (2018) written by Danielle Newport Fancher – here’s her website: Books | Migraine Writer in which she refers to herself this way: “Danielle Newport Fancher lives a double-life. In one life, she’s a smart, upbeat, and happy 30-year-old; her body is fit, she comes across as confident, and she always wears a smile. In her other life,…

OK, so I thought I knew something… but it turns out I only sort of knew about this something… and since it was super-trippy for me to discover the other half of what I knew about this fact, I thought it might be an eye-opener for you too, hence today’s share. A very common symbol for health is a cross. I’ve written before (here) about how hospitals, pharmacies, first aid kits etc all have a…

When a full-blown migraine strikes, there is not a lot you can do other than ‘shelter in place’ as it were; go to a quiet room, close the curtains, and shut the door. For me, I’ll have the company of a heat-pack I place on the right side of my head as if it were a jaunty little French Beret, as well as a grape-flavored sports drink for the electrolytes and some plain, salty crackers… nothing…

People getting lost in their own home is a real thing. It’s a condition called Developmental Topographical Disorientation (DTD). It’s not the “where am I?” kind of moment that happens when you wake up from a Nanna-Nap and can’t remember how you got on the sun-lounger. It’s also not the sort of desperate “what is this place?” confusion that comes from advanced Alzheimer’s disease. It’s also not…

A long time ago I posted about ‘brown noise’ (as opposed to ‘white noise’) and how it can help people heal. Some of the links in the post came from one of my blogging buddies, M’Chels Musings. In her reply to the post, she wrote one of the funniest things I have ever received in a comment: ” I can’t handle dolphin 🐬 noises” [with a cute little leaping dolphin included]. Now, to be fair, I knew…

There are so many videos on the internet with dogs behaving badly, cats looking grumpy, and pets just generally being moody… sometimes there’s also a dig at another member of the family (usually teenagers) acting out in a similar, snarly, way. It’s like the post I did of animals giving serious-side-eye… only MORE side-eye-y. I don’t know how well these links will work (if at all), but here’s the…

Today’s post is an enquiry into the latest trend that has been burning up my newsfeed: Manual Lymphatic Drainage (MLD). I know we have lymph nodes, but it never occurred to me you could ‘drain’ them… I’ve written in the past about different healing options I’ve spotted online, such as Rolfing and EFT Tapping as well as ear seeds and bathing in mustard… there’s a lot of unexpected things out…

If you’re new here to this blog (welcome!), there’s something you might not know about me: I read, read, read… way more than I write. I read other blogs, I read scientific papers (as a hangover from studying for my PhD), and I read self-help books galore, looking for clues on how to be a healthier / happier version of myself. The latest book I read was “The Use of Metaphors and Stories in…

To conclude Migraine Awareness Month, I want to do a shout-out for my top 7 tips to heal. There are MANY activities on this blog that you can try, any or all of which can move you along the illness-wellness spectrum to help get better – BUT – I’m starting to realize that to increase your chance of success, there are 7 key things that you need to do BEFORE you go too far changing your diet,…

OK – so the title of this post is a lot more… macho (maybe)… than my usual posts – and it’s why I countered it with the “no violence” words in the cover image. “Being bulletproof” is not my phrase; it’s the book title of US Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras. The idea for reading this book came in a comment to my blogpost “Prepper-Mindfulness” about how I wanted to toughen up my ability to…

If you read migraine literature, you keep brushing up against the statistic that women are much more likely to get migraines than men. Very rarely is it ever explained WHY. I have always assumed it was hormonal, and vaguely remember hearing that the wise men of medicine in the past believed it was due to women’s naughty wondering wombs, or our uterus radiating hysteria… ugh. I decided to go…

In a recent post, I mentioned subconscious visualization. Rob, a fellow blogger from Things I have thought of… in case you haven’t mentioned that the approach sounded a lot like Carl Jung’s Active Imagination… Well, I hadn’t thought of that, so I just had to find out more. First stop: Wikipedia. They note that the approach was developed by Jung between 1913 and 1916 as “a meditation technique…

OK, heads up – swear word coming up. When I first saw the term “MTHFR gene” in a wellness book, my mind instantly (and unnecessarily) filled in the blanks with vowels and came up with the rude phrase “mother-f*ckr gene”. Sorry. [I blame it on the self-help shelf at the library which is FULL of books with titles that are all a variety of “f*ck this sh!t” – which seemed rebellious and…

You’ve probably heard of the phrase “mood-board” plenty of times before (I know I have, and I’ve written about it here). The idea is that you collect magazine images, postcards, affirmations, fabric swatches etc etc and place them all on a vertical pinboard, lay them in a tray, or use an online tool to copy-paste what you like. Most mood-boards are typically inspired by ‘something’ – for…

I’ve written before that I have had to change my healing-metaphor from time to time. There’s the shift I made from thinking of myself as a “migraine warrior” to becoming more of a “gentle gardener” in order to make peace with my pain. Then there’s the shift from thinking of healing as “an uphill battle” to something more “tidal” rather than linear, more of a tooing-and-froing process than a…

June is Migraine Awareness Month, the anniversary of my chronic migraine pain, my birth-month, pride-month, AND (as my blog-bestie Dayle pointed out) the start of Hurricane Season. Today is a super short post to celebrate “Burple Day” in Australia. It’s a relatively new initiative by Migraine Australia which encourages you to wear BURgundy-and-purPLE to show that you support those of us with…

Hello! If today is your first day visiting The Mindful Migraine Blog; welcome! If you’re a regular popper-inner, welcome back my lovely friend! June is Migraine Awareness Month. In the past, I haven’t made too much of a fuss about it, because I’ve been struggling too much with my health to promote much more than ‘breathe better and be kind to your mother’ as a rallying call. The start of June…