September 24, 2015

Cosmo Women of the Year Awards

sylvia Uncategorized activism, advocacy, awareness, cosmopolitan, cosmso, endo, endoactive, endometriosis, feminism, julia gillard, proud to be out, women of the year awards 0 Comments

Hellooo people of the internet & fellow EndoActivists! Someway, somehow I am a finalist for The Cosmo Women of the Year Awards. I’m up against 4 other women in the ‘Game Changer of the Year’ category – A huge surprise and incredible honour. I can’t actually believe it. To think that around this time a year ago I was lying on the couch in pain with my little cat Pepi snuggled up next to me, unable to do very much is… I don’t even know how to describe it. It was an exhilarating time because of the excitement from our petition to Bayer going viral but right before that happened, life for me was miserable, unexciting and I was unhappy. Endo was causing havoc in my life.

I wasn’t able to work, incapacitated by pain a lot of the time, unable to attend much uni and just generally flat and anxious about what the rest of my life was going to be like if things stayed like this. I constantly questioned, will I ever be able to live a life free of pain? Will I ever be able to hold down a job? How will I ever move out and be independent if I can’t work? Will I ever travel again? Who will want me? Will I ever be able to have children? It was exhausting and depressing.

Fast forward a year –

• Mum and I managed to get Visanne (a medication used to treat Endo) on the market in Australia thanks to over 75,000 ignatures on our petition
• I froze my eggs and started this blog
• EndoActive was born in our living room and a few months later we became a registered charity
• We held the first ever conference on Endo in Australia for patients AND medical professionals and threw it all together in only a few months – the 1st National EndoActive Conference on Endometriosis – a WILD success and probably the most incredible, moving and proud days of my entire life
• I finished my comunications degree at UTS and started my Masters in Health Communication at Sydney Uni to learn more about women’s health issues and how I could help communicate those issues to the public
• EndoActive has over 5500 amazing people on our page all working together for the same goal – to raise awareness of Endo and to do it POSITIVELY and in style. What an incredible bunch of people. How lucky we are.
• I am free of pain and have been for the whole of this year. I feel healthy, happy, fit, focused and motivated. If you told me this time last year that this is what the following months would bring, I wouldn’t have believed you in a million years. Not a prayer!My health has improved dramatically thanks to huge changes I have made to my life and I want that for every single other person living with this disease. With the right knowledge and treatment, things CAN get better and you CAN get your life back !!! Thinking positively and having things to focus on to keep you going is a major part of this.Most of all, I am so humbled and touched by all the women with Endo whose stories Mum and I have cried reading night after night. That is what keeps us going. To change things for them and for YOU.

If you felt like voting for me that’d be really great.. Winning this award would of course not be for my personal gain but for YOU GUYS and the 1/2 a million Australian women living with Endo who we represent.

As you probs know I will do whatever it takes to help ease the pain for women with Endo and their families and if that means creating awareness by doing cringe things like asking you to vote for me then I will! A vote for me is a vote for us all – let’s get Endo OUT THERE!

Thank you to all of you who have followed my journey. It has been a bloody hard, fucking emotional year since I first started this blog. a charity? a new degree? a conference? No pain? A group of amazing women (and men) all working together to fight Endo? And now here I am, thanks to all of YOU! I want to say a huge thank you. You’ve all enriched my life and are the reason I’ve got my mojo, happiness and my drive back. Oh god now I’m getting emotional… THANK YOU ENDOACTIVISTS! You’re all amazing, strong, inspirational and together we CAN create change. Don’t give up hope.

You can vote here: