One month today is 15th May! And the 15th May just happens to be Blue Sunday and the Tea Party For M.E.
As a community, we’ve never united over something nice; something decent.
The only times we come together are to try to convince the masses of our existence, or to sign the latest petition to get ME/CFS taken remotely seriously. There is always something; something that we have to rally against.
Even the updated NICE guidelines, which should have felt like an immense triumph, was an absolutely abhorrent experience. And now that they’re published, the battle to see the changes put in place remains.
So I think we need something like Blue Sunday. Well, I know I do.
My time with M.E. has been made immensely more pleasant by the community of people I have come across online. I want to celebrate them and thank them and show them that there are people who hear us, see us, and support us.
And for those who don’t have M.E, who have often struggled with knowing how to support someone who now has to live such an isolated life, Blue Sunday is their opportunity to turn up and donate to aid research into the illness that has decimated my life.
Change is far too slow. Such little progress has been made in decades. So in meantime, to keep my spirits up, I will look forward to a ‘day off’ from the petitions we have to sign, the letters we have to write to our MPs, and the stigma and misrepresentation that we still face at the hands of the media and the (outdated) views of too many medical professionals and psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists.
We deserve a dedicated day where we come together for something other than fighting for funding or to put an end to damaging ‘treatment’ programmes.
I’m so proud and so honoured that Blue Sunday has become that day for so many of you.
M.E. myself and I 