M.E awareness month

I would like to talk to you a wee bit about M.E awareness month💙 Throughout the month of May, £2 from every HTK cake order will be donated to the wonderful charity ‘invest in M.E’.  This is a cause that’s incredibly close to my heart. For those of you who are new here, you might not know that M.E (myalgic encephalomyelitis) has been a permanent fixture in my life, for over half my life. And my business was built - of course, out of my passions and unwavering desire to help other people - but also out of the sheer necessity that I needed to find a way to carve out a career for myself, and one that allowed me to work from home, for myself and around my temperamental health.

I wrote a little piece two years ago about my personal experience with this absolute prick of a condition.  You can find it here: https://www.hollytreekitchen.com/blog-1/2018/3/5/my-me-story

It’s a snapshot of my story, but not the whole shebang. The often harrowing and oddly heartening reality of what life has been like over the last 15 years is too long and complex to put down onto a few pages. Such is the nature of the beast in and of itself. But for those of you who live with chronic illness, you may see a reflection of yourself and find some solace in knowing that you’re not alone and that things absolutely can get better. And for those of you who are new to this lockdown life lived primarily between four walls, you may be interested in taking a peek into the window of the world of the millions of people whose lockdown will not come to an end when all this is over. Who may have been housebound for years upon years with no real support, and no end in sight.

At the end of the piece I wrote about my hopes for one day starting to sell my products. It was merely a dream at that point, and a lofty one at that. The plans were yet to be made, the building work was yet to begin, the logistics yet to be tackled. Still, in my gut, I knew I was going to make it a possibility.

It’s been a good personal marker to take a few minutes to read back over that post and to see how far I’ve come. To know that I’ve made it happen against the odds. That I’ve been working solidly since then and not relapsed. I’ve not had to shut up shop if my health faltered. I’ve not had to quit or admit defeat. I’ve just been able to quietly get on with it, finding my flow and trying to get the balance right. And to take a second to embrace the fact that I’m doing it, I’m actually bloody doing it! 

I never want to be defined by my limitations or lumbered with labels. However, it is simply part of my life. My health issues have been deathly severe, monotonously mild and everything in between. And it’s just a part of the picture that I’m no longer embarrassed by or reluctant to share for fear of sounding negative or seeming in any way burdensome. Life is too short and laced with too much fragility and inevitable tragedy to waste a second being fearful of judgement from the wilfully ignorant. Many people will never understand this condition. That’s alright, I don’t need them to. Many people are also horrifically loud, relentlessly wrong and impossibly thick. Hopefully they never have to go through it first hand in order to truly to understand. 

So, together, if we can, let’s raise a wee bit of money for a wonderful cause. Even if it’s just a teeny tiny amount. I also, as always, want to say thank you for supporting me each and every step of the way. You are all brilliant beyond what words can say. Love always, Holly xXx 

Ps. Watch ‘unrest’ on Netflix