How You CAN Help This M.E Awareness Month

Supporting-This ME/CFS Awareness Month

An untreatable, incurable, tortuous disease has the power to do one thing, aside from all of the suffering. It has the ability to render each and every one of us helpless, no discrimination here. ME/CFS is not prejudiced.

The sufferer helpless in the ravages of it’s power. The loved ones, friends and family, left feeling helpless-longing to help but often it seems only so much can be done. It is cruel and unfair.

Today I’m offering you ways you can have power to support the person you care about with ME/CFS: both during M.E Awareness Week and as an ongoing advocate. These are ways in which you can actively aid a movement to better awareness and understanding of the illness the person you know suffers and with such, create better funding opportunities for research which can help.

Let’s take back the power. Thank you in advance.

Give us a ‘like’

🔹Like posts ♥️

I know they’re not always the type of things you want to ‘like’, heck I don’t always ‘like’ the nature of them either but they are the truth and they’re a truth we face daily. Trust me, if anyone is bored by my illness and its constant moaning at me, it is me, I get it…but we need help and we can only get this help if the true devastating nature of the illness is understood and no longer stigmatised.

Liking posts helps show your support and reminds us we’re not alone. It also helps others see the posts on the various social media platforms as they become more popular & Instagram for e.g. share them-and that awareness is desperately needed. 

Here’s my latest insta post!

Pass it on

🔹Share a blog post.

There are so many incredible posts written to help raise awareness of the true nature of ME/CFS. Reading them is excellent. Not only is the hard work (very hard work when you’re poorly!) that the person has gone to in writing it, telling their story or their call to arms, validated with each and every read but by sharing a post one more person may learn something new. That’s pretty powerful.

You’d be amazed how one tiny action can make a difference. 

Here’s a few:

Meeting my illness Pt 1, Meeting my illness Pt 2, Jo Moss’s, excellent short ME Awareness video, What it feels like when I crash, 8 Common myths about ME debunked, Emma’s post: What people say it feels like living with ME.

Jo’s blog is A Journey Through The Fog

Emma’s blog is Not Just Tired

My blog: Amy’s Chapter

Talk about ME

🔹Talk about the true nature of the illness with someone you know. An acquaintance, a colleague. Correct them politely ( 😉 ) if they believe the stigma falsely attached to ME/CFS. Direct them to my instagram account @myillnessmythoughts where I share all the latest biomedical studies into the disease and share the movie Unrest, a powerful and very truthful, factual film which will open their eyes.

Informative websites: ME Association & ME Action

What is ME/CFS? Here’s a link.

Watch some telly

🔹Watch Unrest movie.

Take an hour out of your life and watch this movie based on those living with ME/CFS. Maybe you’ll watch it for someone you care about, perhaps you’ll watch it out of intrigue, maybe you’ll do so because it’s an award winning, Oscar nominated movie: whatever the reason, it’ll be an hour well spent. 

It’s available on Netflix here and you can learn more about it here.

Donate

🔹If you can, please donate to one of the incredible charities both supporting people with M.E and/or funding biomedical research of the illness.

Open Medicine Foundation

ME Research

Reach out

🔹Possibly one of the most simple ones on the list. Reach out to the person you know with ME/CFS. Doing so knowing that they may simply be too poorly to reply but that your action might have helped them get through a difficult day. Whether it’s a text, a card or simply sending a funny meme; trust me hearing from you will make their world.

And so

As you can see, liking a post, reading one and watching a movie-they’re not difficult things to do and yet they can have powerful actions. We all have this power at our fingertips.

Incredible feats can be and have been achieved when people come together and support one another. Once you understand the vilification of this disease you will stand for this mistreatment no longer. I hope this has been useful to know that support can be offered in such simple ways and will not go unnoticed.

Thanks for taking the time to read and for any and all the support you offer.

in support and solitary,