12/11/2025
It is with huge sadness I want to tell you that I have decided to close Holistic Philosophy permanently and wind up my business.
As a few of you know I have been feeling unwell for about a year now and have been off work for nearly 4 months following my diagnosis of ME/CFS.
It’s mad how we go along in life and take the simple things for granted without even thinking about them. Then over the course of a short period of time we realise how much of a gift they were. I took my bodies ability to produce and use energy for granted and now it struggles to do that properly, so do I. Everything has changed in the past few months. My mobility, my ability to socialise, to sit in a room with the lights on for long periods of time, to be able to stay comfortably in the company of friends and family and do something simple like chat, to listen, go for coffee without being fatigued and unwell, these simple things can take days to recover from. To shop, to camp, got for drives, go to the cinema, walk through the woods or the beach, to walk anywhere for a distance in fact. All these things, sometimes even small things like this leave me so exhausted and unwell.
It’s so sad, I’m sad and I miss you. I miss me and haven’t got used to this newer version of me yet.
ME is a cruel illness that affects every part of the body. It’s not just being exhausted all the time. It’s painful, physically, mentally and emotionally and even spiritually. Every battery in every cell of my body feels like it’s on 5% battery, low power mode with hundreds of apps open at once. Then I feel the batteries deplete and empty doing the most mundane thing. It feels like I never charge fully nowadays. My arms and leg muscles use up their limited supply of energy so quickly some days that sometimes they won’t work properly. My mind can’t function properly sometimes, I find it hard to process simple things, find words and to even think and understand things properly. Even my eye muscles have been affected causing double vision, muscle fatigue and light sensitivity. This is only a snapshot of things. The very last thing ME/CFS should be thought of as just being ‘tired’, it’s so much more than that. To ‘push through’ leads to an increase in symptoms and pain and a horrible feeling of being unwell that takes ages to get over, making that elusive baseline feel further away. Even your soul feels beyond exhausted. It’s isolating and strips everything back to the bare minimum so life seems to go on all around you, but without you in it sometimes.
I’m blessed to have support from my family and my wonderful group of friends who have helped so much this past wee while. I’m grateful to those of you also who have reached out and checked in. I’m sorry I’ve not felt well enough to keep up with a lot of you but I think about you and hope you are well.
I was so blessed to have shared your journeys with you when I did and although I’ve had to step off the path for a time so I can heal I still hold you in my thoughts and hope you’re fabulous.
I know this is the right thing to do for me at this moment in time. Nothing is permanent and it helps me to think of this time in my life as temporary. But I need to heal without giving myself any pressures of still holding on to a business that isn’t paying for itself anymore. (I definitely wouldn’t recommend being ill and self employed!)
ME is a total sh*tstorm of symptoms in every system of the body that’s affected every part of my life. Although I am a very private person I wanted to share some of my experience because it helps if people understand. To be understood when you don’t feel well is a real blessing.
So here’s to my next adventure whatever that will be when I feel more like me again. I miss you, I’m so blessed to have done what I’ve loved and made a success of it for the past 13 years. I’ve met some beautiful souls and I consider it an honour to have achieved what I have and to have been there when you’ve achieved all that you have. To have laughed and cried with you, to have welcomed the babies and to have been on the final stages of some of the bravest people’s journeys (I remember every one of them and their impact on my life.)
To have celebrated your wins and to have heard first hand how that made you feel was such an honour, you’ll never know what that meant to me.
I’m proud of you and me…
Be fabulous always
Yvonne xx
