Over ten months, I morphed from a skinny blonde into a 45-pound-heavier brunette. From being praised by my workplace boss for a great job of managing change in our organisation to struggling to explain to my husband the changes happening inside me. I went from a woman who could buy a house to a woman [...]
“Why are you doing this? Did someone hurt you?” My parents looked up at me from where they sat at the kitchen table. Pacing the length of the room, I tried to answer their first question. The second question was simple: no, no one had molested or abused me. I was fifteen and, from the [...]
Do you remember that kid who was always last to be picked for any sports team? The one who was always tagged “it” because he/she was easy to catch? I was that kid. I grew up as the only black head in a sea of blondes. Growing up in a bilingual household with a mother [...]
Back in the 90's I made fun of people who went to chat rooms. I had friends in real life. Why would I want to make friends online? That's lame, I thought. Now that I spend a great deal of time online blogging, I have developed real friendships with people online. There is no stigma [...]
I can’t remember the first time that I had a panic attack, I was too young. In my very first year of primary school, at the age of 5, I saw a child be sick during a lesson, another wet themselves in an assembly. These things bothered me tremendously and led to some obsessive behaviour, [...]
The following article is an anonymous submission for Stigma Fighters. The writer wanted her identity to remain confidential, but feels that the issues expressed here are universal. This is her story. Abuse: the silent killer You see it in the movies. You hear it on the streets. Most of us have a friend who is [...]
I started Stigma Fighters in April 2014 with one purpose: to help people living with invisible illnesses like myself share their stories. I was inspired to start this community after I shared my own story on The Huffington Post about living with panic disorder in silence for most of my life. I was 18 years [...]
The Set Up For as long as long as I could remember, my mother was “on a diet”. On a Diet because she had a big butt and her thighs were fat, the “Engblom Thighs” she called them. And I knew what that meant at a very early age as my grandmother was a short, [...]