What Do You Do?

← back to blog identitychronic-illnesspatient-advocacyentrepreneurshipwhat-i-do What Do You Do? Wednesday, 25 March 2026 Someone asks. At a co

← back to blog identitychronic-illnesspatient-advocacyentrepreneurshipwhat-i-do What Do You Do? Wednesday, 25 March 2026 Someone asks. At a conference, at a dinner, at the school gate. Simple question. Four words.

I take a breath. Not a long one — I don't have that kind of energy. Just enough to buy a second.

"Um. It's complicated."

They laugh. They think I'm being modest.

I'm not.

Here's the thing: I'm not a speaker who also writes and also runs ventures. I'm not someone with five separate careers that happen to overlap. There's no "day job" where I do one thing and a "passion project" where I do another. It's not additive.

It's all one.

I spent seven years in bed before I figured out what was wrong with me. A doctor told me at 25 that I'd never walk again. I got out of that bed anyway. I rebuilt myself. And in that rebuilding, I learned something specific: there's no separation between who I am and what I do. The bed didn't create a before-and-after where I went from sick person to entrepreneur. The bed is the entrepreneurship. The illness is the knowledge. The constraint is the design.

So when you ask me what I do —

Am I a speaker? Yes. I've spoken in 27 countries. But not because I'm "good at presenting." I'm a speaker because I learned how to name things that were previously unsayable. Medical gaslighting. The spoonie tax. The way the healthcare system breaks people. I speak because I have to. Because patients are being dismissed by doctors and they need words for it.

Am I an author? Seven books. Another one coming. But I'm not a writer first who happens to care about chronic illness. I'm a chronically ill person who learned that language is infrastructure. That naming something makes it real. That if you can say it, you can deal with it.

Am I an entrepreneur? I've founded eight organisations from my bed with 1% energy. Spooniversity. Spoons.world. Denialbuster. Others. But I didn't become an entrepreneur despite my illness. The illness taught