About Me

Welcome to Grace's Crochet Comforts.

I'm Grace (surprise!) and I'm 37. I live in Northern Ireland, in a seaside city called Bangor in North Down. When I was 17, I was forced to leave school due to being diagnosed with Myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia. 

If you don't know, not a lot of people do, ME/CFS is described by Action For ME as "a long-term (chronic), fluctuating, neurological disease that causes symptoms affecting many body systems, more commonly the nervous and immune systems." ME is not just feeling tired, in the 2021 Nice guideline for ME it is described as "debilitating fatigue that is worsened by activity, is not caused by excessive cognitive, physical, emotional or social exertion, and is not significantly relieved by rest." It causes extreme fatigue, brain fog, memory problems, speech difficulties, poor temperature control, dizziness, sensitivity to light and sounds and a range of other symptoms.

Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition which cause widespread, debilitating pain all over the body and also comes with a wide range of other symptoms that are extremely changeable from one day to the next. With both conditions, symptoms overlap and and can also cause poor mental health causing anxiety/depression.

I have lived with these conditions for longer than I didn't but I still don't have a handle on them. In 2017 my symptoms flared up so much that I had to leave my career in childcare and have been relatively housebound since. No day is the same with my symptoms coming and going like the wind.

When things started to get me down, I found comfort in crocheting. Finding cute patterns and finding I could follow them and make adorable stuffed toy items brought me a lot of joy and I found that focusing on crochet projects eased my anxiety. Crocheting became a great distraction and helped my mental health as I could see, that I was achieving something in the day with my low energy levels. 

So now that my bedroom is over run with my plushies (!), I decided to share my little comforts with the world... I hope they can bring you a little bit of the joy they brought me to make. 

If you would like anymore information on ME/Fibromyalgia you can check out the following websites: https://www.actionforme.org.uk/, https://www.fibromyalgia-associationuk.org or https://hope4mefibro.org/.