There’s tired, and then there’s something’s not right.

As a mother of three, I knew what exhaustion felt like. But this was different. The kind of fatigue that made me feel like I was wading through concrete. Then came the migraines – sharp, relentless, and eventually blinding. My balance began to go. I lost the ability to read. I couldn’t concentrate. 

But I kept pushing through. That’s what mothers do, isn’t it?

I had no idea that what I was dealing with wasn’t just postnatal depletion or hormonal chaos – but a congenital brain condition that had silently shaped my entire life.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the toll on my body triggered a cascade of autoimmune issues – the kind that don’t go away and aren’t easy to explain. It’s like once my system broke, it broke wide open. I was now fighting battles on multiple fronts.

The slow collapse of everything

Each of my pregnancies had been fine on paper. Healthy babies, epidurals, the usual recovery. But with my third, something shifted. I was more exhausted than I’d ever been.

It didn’t happen all at once. That’s the thing – when your health is slowly unravelling, it doesn’t come with flashing lights and sirens. It creeps in. I was exhausted, yes, but I had three kids. I was dealing with migraines, sure, but I thought they were just hormonal. I kept pushing through – school lunches, washing, work, bedtime stories, repeat. I told myself this was just what motherhood looked like.

‘Through it all, my husband – the man I’d been with for 20 years – drifted further away’

The symptoms escalated so gradually that I didn’t see the cliff edge until I was already over it.

After my third child, the symptoms kept snowballing – optical migraines, flashing prisms in front of my eyes, and strange visual blind spots. Eventually, I couldn’t read. The words were there, but my brain couldn’t make sense of them.

And then one day, I got in the car – something I’d done a thousand times before – and realised I couldn’t steer. My hands were on the wheel, but I had no strength, no control. My limbs felt disconnected from my brain. It was like my body had finally decided, enough. I pulled over, shaking, terrified. I knew in that moment that something was very, very wrong.

I called my mother. She had to come and get me.

That was the last time I drove for nearly three years.

Looking back now, that moment was my body’s final plea – a full-system shutdown because I hadn’t listened to the whispers. It took that terrifying loss of control to make me stop and face the truth: I wasn’t just tired. I wasn’t just overwhelmed. I was sick.

And I wasn’t getting better by pushing through.

In just 18 months, I went from a fully able-bodied woman to someone who could barely navigate stairs or walk without stopping to catch her breath. I couldn’t be alone, because my visual perception was so skewed I couldn’t trust my own feet. I was in constant, crippling pain. It would take me 45 minutes to do a six-minute walk. And yet, every time I reached out for help, I was brushed off.

Arnold–Chiari Malformation is a structural defect in the base of the skull and brain, where the cerebellum – the part that controls coordination and balance – extends into the spinal canal. (An example of the condition, shown in another patient’s MRI scan, is seen here)

‘You’re just looking for painkillers…’

It was infuriating how quickly the medical system dismissed me. One neurologist told me I was ‘just looking for painkillers’. Another asked if I was simply hormonal. Someone even suggested I ‘go on the pill’.

Eventually, I broke. I walked into my GP’s office and said, ‘I think I need a psychologist. If you can’t fix me, I don’t want to live like this.’

That moment scared me – not because I was suicidal, but because I had lost all autonomy. I had always been fiercely independent.

That was the worst part – being unheard. Being a woman, being a mother, and being invisible.

Finally, a diagnosis – and it was terrifying

Eventually, I found a specialist who did listen. After extensive tests and scans, I was diagnosed with Arnold-Chiari Malformation – a rare and often misunderstood neurological condition I’d unknowingly had since birth.

Arnold–Chiari Malformation is a structural defect in the base of the skull and brain, where the cerebellum – the part that controls coordination and balance – extends into the spinal canal. In my case, the cerebellum was pressing against my brainstem and blocking the flow of cerebrospinal fluid.

The kicker? It had been made worse by my epidurals. The spinal fluid leaks had caused my cerebellum to drop even further – about 9mm lower than it should have been – intensifying all of my symptoms. I’d been walking around with a compressed brain stem, and no one had noticed.

Three neurosurgeries – and a marriage that didn’t survive

Between 2012 and 2023, I underwent three neurosurgeries. The biggest was decompression surgery – a procedure where they remove part of the skull to give the brain room to reposition itself. Another involved drilling into my head to insert a pressure monitor. The third was the most traumatic – a pressure test performed while I was awake, involving a catheter being threaded from my leg into the veins in my brain. I was told not to move – because moving could kill me.

At one point, I developed a form of meningitis caused by a break in the brain barrier. I was so sick I passed out and woke in a scan machine after vomiting and tearing stitches in my skull. The recovery was brutal – physically, emotionally, financially.

And through it all, my husband – the man I’d been with for 20 years – drifted further away.

We’d always had problems, but when I became severely ill, he couldn’t cope. I don’t think he believed how bad it was. He saw me pushing through for so long, I think he assumed I could keep doing it. But I couldn’t. I was broken. And he wasn’t capable of being there for me.

I held on for ten more years, trying to keep the family together. But the truth is, the woman who came out of that operating theatre wasn’t the same one who went in.

The woman I became

When I woke up after my final surgery, I felt something I’d never felt before: clarity.

I could read again. The headache I didn’t even realise I’d been living with my entire life – it was gone. I suddenly knew what it felt like to be well. And I knew I was never going to be the same again.

I had done so much work – therapy, reflection. The funny thing is, I started therapy because a friend needed a volunteer for her counselling course, and I figured I had nothing better to do. Turns out, it was the most life-changing ‘favour’ I’ve ever done.

It’s hard to admit, but I was 36 years old before I realised I was enough. Disabled, able, messy, magnificent – I was enough. Even with the lingering health issues, even with the autoimmune complications that still flare up when I’m worn down – I’d survived, and I was still standing.

I stopped tolerating fakeness. I stopped trying to be small to make others comfortable. I began showing up wholeheartedly – and demanding that others do the same.

The village that held my kids

Through the worst of it, my kids were remarkably protected. Not because of my husband, but because of the women around me. My mum, school mums, friends – they stepped in when I physically couldn’t.

There was a time I didn’t see my children for 11 days because I was in hospital. But they still got to school, saw their friends, had their routines. That’s thanks to the army of women who loved them as fiercely as I did.

And now? Now I’m closer to my kids than ever. We talk. We process. We do therapy. I’ve changed the narrative in our home – and for that, I’ll always be proud.

These days, I’m all in

Now, I work full-time, I run a household and a business, and I’m doing my master’s. I don’t slow down – not really – but I’m more intentional now. I value my life in a way I never did before.

I don’t take relationships for granted. I don’t do anything halfway. I don’t chase people’s approval. I’m just over here, living my life – fully, unapologetically.

Because when you’ve lived at the edge of what your body can take – and somehow found your way back – you stop wasting time on anything that doesn’t matter.

If I could speak to the woman I used to be, I’d tell her to trust the process. To keep going. To take the scary leap and have the surgery. And to stay in therapy.

I am so proud of how far I’ve come – not because I was perfect, but because I showed up for myself when no one else would. I advocated for myself when the system failed me. I chose growth over bitterness.

And most of all, I chose to keep living.