Yoga seven days a week. Vegan. Praying and meditating every morning. Co-writing a film I believed in deeply. Learning — finally, at 42 — to let go of shame, and to love myself for everything I was and everything I wasn’t. I was happy.
Then, without warning, my body collapsed. What started as tunnel vision in Ireland became functional seizures, a wheelchair, a walker, and four walls I would stare at for the better part of three years. Dozens of doctors. Thirty hospitals. Diagnoses that contradicted each other. Treatments that nearly broke me. A body that refused to obey any of it.
What they eventually found: an acoustic neuroma (a brain tumor), cerebral vascular disease, Lyme Disease, POTS, C-PTSD, Maythurner Syndrome, Gastroparesis, Malabsorption, non-alcoholic pancreatitis, TBIs, Nystagmus, FND, and Post-Covid Syndrome (Long Haul) — which resulted in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) — after a near-fatal case of COVID in 2023 that many didn’t think I would survive.
That list is not for sympathy. It is so you know I am not speaking from the sidelines. I have lived every single one of these from the inside out.
At my lowest, I asked my mom what the point was. I felt I had nothing to show for my years here. She told me she needed me. That others did too. That was enough to keep fighting.
It is now 2026. I never went into full remission. I have a friend who is a part-time caregiver. On most days I cannot drive more than fifteen minutes — unless I’m in a Tesla, which changed that equation entirely. Full self-driving gave me back something I didn’t think I’d ever have again: the ability to get somewhere on my own. For anyone in this community managing neurological symptoms, vestibular conditions, or anything that makes driving dangerous — it is worth knowing that technology like this exists. Independence looks different now. But it still counts.
I manage these conditions every single day. I am roughly 55% recovered. And I have never been more alive in my purpose.
Any day I don’t feel like I’m dying is a pretty decent day. And on those days — and even on the hard ones — I make films. I show up. I fight for people who feel invisible. I choose joy as an act of defiance.
These smiles are my rebellion.
