22/09/2026
It’s Migraine Awareness Week and this post is dedicated to my friends and family who supported me through mine;
In support of The Migraine Trust’s Believe Me Campaign
BELIEVE ME
A Mabon Wellness reflection for Migraine Awareness Week 2026
“It’s just a headache.”
Except it isn’t.
And if you have ever lived with migraine, you probably don’t need me to explain that to you.
You already know.
I have lived with migraine since my twenties. For many years it was an unwelcome, unpredictable presence in my life — sometimes arriving as migraine, and sometimes as something even more frightening: hemiplegic migraine.
For me, that could mean numbness down one side of my body. Weakness. Changes in my face. Symptoms visible enough to look frighteningly like something else entirely.
And then there was everything people couldn’t see.
The pain.
The aura warning me about what was coming.
The overwhelming need to retreat.
The knowledge that whatever I had planned might have to disappear from my diary.
And the uncertainty of not knowing quite how long it would be before I felt like myself again.
My attacks could last two or three days. One particularly bad episode lasted around five.
Sometimes an ordinary migraine would begin and develop into a hemiplegic one. Sometimes I knew what might have contributed to it.
Sometimes I didn’t.
For much of my life there was a strong hormonal connection. Migraine often joined the already unpleasant collection of symptoms that arrived around my period — aching legs, aching back, premenstrual symptoms and then, sometimes, migraine on top.
But hormones weren’t the whole story.
Strangely, something I began to recognise over the years was that migraine sometimes appeared around the things I was most looking forward to.
Christmas.
My wedding anniversary.
A party.
A night dancing with friends.
Something exciting.
I’d look forward to going out. I’d plan it. I’d get excited.
And then the aura would begin.
Eventually, something quite cruel happens when that pattern repeats often enough.
You don’t only become frightened of the migraine.
You become frightened of looking forward to things.
You wonder whether getting excited will somehow bring another attack.
You worry about making arrangements because you might have to cancel them.
And when you cancel often enough, people don’t always understand.
Perhaps they think you’ve changed your mind.
Perhaps they think you’re unreliable.
Perhaps they wonder whether you really wanted to go in the first place.
And there you are, in a darkened room, missing something you desperately wanted to be part of.
Believe me. I wanted to come.
Believe me. I didn’t choose this.
Believe me. This isn’t “just a headache.”
That is why the theme of Migraine Awareness Week this year — Believe Me — means something to me.
Because migraine doesn’t only take hours from people.
Sometimes it takes days.
It can take birthdays, celebrations and nights out.
It can affect work.
Relationships.
Friendships.
Confidence.
And eventually, even the way you make plans for your own life.
A migraine isn’t necessarily something you can sleep off for a couple of hours.
There were times when sleep was exactly what my body needed — but that might mean being in bed for two or three days.
And hemiplegic migraine brought another layer entirely. The symptoms can include temporary weakness on one side of the body, alongside other migraine symptoms. It is rare, and because some of those symptoms can resemble a stroke, it needs proper medical assessment.
My own journey towards finding things that helped wasn’t quick either.
There were years of appointments. Different medications. Trying to understand my own patterns and my own body.
Eventually I received acupuncture through the NHS, and personally, I felt it made an enormous difference for me.
That is my experience rather than a promise of what will work for somebody else. Migraine is deeply individual, and what helps one person may not be the answer for another.
Thankfully, over approximately the last five years, my own migraines have become much less frequent.
I don’t take that for granted.
Perhaps that is partly why I want to talk about them now.
Because I remember.
I remember the darkened rooms.
I remember the cancelled plans.
I remember losing days.
I remember knowing that I was genuinely unwell while wondering whether somebody else thought I simply had a bad headache.
And I remember the strange loneliness of an illness that can make your entire world stop while everybody else’s carries on outside the bedroom door.
So during Migraine Awareness Week, I’m not going to tell somebody living with migraine to drink some water, get some fresh air or simply have an early night.
I’m going to say something much simpler.
I believe you.
I believe that it hurts.
I believe that you’re exhausted.
I believe that you wanted to go.
I believe that you’re disappointed too.
I believe that cancelling again feels awful.
I believe that sometimes you’re frightened of the next one.
And I believe you when you say:
“It really is that bad.”
Perhaps one of the gentlest forms of wellbeing we can offer another person costs absolutely nothing.
We can believe them.
Mabon Holistic Therapy
Calm. Held. Nurtured. Human.
Migraine Awareness Week 2026
21–27 September |
