The EndoMentalist (2025)

28/05/2025

🚨 As someone living with endometriosis, I know how exhausting, painful, and lonely chronic illness can be. We’re often misdiagnosed, dismissed, and left to figure it out alone, and that needs to change.

That’s why I’m building Sanaa, a space for women with chronic conditions, shaped by our real experiences. But I can’t do it alone.

💜 Sign up to help us make the difference: https://bit.ly/4jfKED9. (Clickable link in Bio)

Even one click shows this matters. Please share,your voice truly moves us forward.

31/03/2025

Breaking the Silence: Endometriosis is More Than Just a “Bad Period”

On this final day of Endometriosis Awareness Month, I am choosing to break my silence and bring this page back to life. A lot has changed since my last update, my health, the progression of this condition, and the discovery of associated diagnoses. But today, I just want to share one truth:

Endometriosis is not just a reproductive disorder. It is a full-body, systemic disease.

It is now recognised that endometriosis spreads much like cancer through the lymphatic and circulatory systems, triggering neuroangiogenesis and deeply impacting quality of life. Yet, despite the growing medical understanding, so many of us are still dismissed, gaslit and left to suffer in silence.

But I refuse to be silent.

This space was created to raise awareness, to amplify the voices of those who cannot speak out and to help caregivers understand that endometriosis is not just in our heads. It is real, it is debilitating, and it deserves more than whispers, it deserves action.

I will be sharing more about life with endometriosis, unfiltered and unapologetic. And this time, I will not let the fear of being called a complainer hold me back.

To anyone battling this disease, I see you, I believe you, and I will keep speaking until the world listens.

17/06/2024

I haven’t been too active here for last few months because life had been extremely taxing with paper submissions, exams and juggling hospital appointments. Last week, I got dismissed by yet another “Endo specialist” who contradicted himself a few times during the consultation while I end up being back to square one with very limited choices regarding treatment and management.

Anyway, it’s Eid today so I won’t go on ranting about myself as people often state that I do which also put me off from sharing my journey. I don’t need validation but I also don’t want people putting me down.

Well, on that note, Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating.

24/03/2024

March is an important month as it is the Women’s History Month and it also marks the Endometriosis Awareness Month. Endometriosis is a condition that affects 1 in 10 women (which is more than Diabetes in the UK). In this condition, the uterine lining starts growing outside the uterus on other organs causing debilitating chronic pain. While it is mostly dismissed as menstrual pain, it is actually a systemic condition affecting every single cell in your body. I have been diagnosed with DIE and thoracic endometriosis while investigations for renal and optic endometriosis are ongoing.
Every year, I share quotes from Endo-warriors but this year, I was overwhelmed with the number of hospital appointments since February which ran into March along with work commitments. But here I am cheering on every Endo-warrior fighting the Endo-battle everyday with their heads held high, overcoming the challenges and facing the world like everything is well and good.
This month I would urge people to remember that women as they go through a lot in their lifetime, be it period pains, childbirth or menopause. Mocking them, invalidating their experiences and forcing them to put their bodies through traumas when they may not be ready is something that people should learn not to do. The choice of their bodily autonomy should always be left with women and women alone! Nobody should get to decide for them and I hope just to get the society to shut up, women don’t have to put up with things that could be detrimental in the long run. Also, not every woman’s pain and experience will be similar to other women, so do not belittle them by quoting that others also go through the same. Be compassionate, kind and display emotional intelligence.
🌼🎗️💛

🎗

08/03/2024

Women are such fascinating beings who can be incredibly strong, resilient and fierce and at the same time not afraid to showcase their emotions, vulnerability and determination.

Women in the avatars of goddesses,
Women as mothers, sisters and daughters.

Their tears are dismissed, their struggles invalidated and they are labelled the weaker gender regardless of the strength they display.

Every year, I say that it is the parent’s duty to ensure their daughters learn financial independence before setting out to play the roles of the wives and mothers. Empowering girls will create successful women of tomorrow.

Here’s to celebrating each and every woman who is making a difference in her own way.

04/02/2024

Women have fought and continue to fight hard to be heard in medical settings, for their pains and symptoms not to be invalidated and dismissed by being normalised. Yet, we have people like Poonam Panday, who think a publicity stunt done in bad taste would create awareness. It wouldn’t, it would actually set women with real conditions back by several decades of struggle. Yes, there are woman who have died of cervical cancer but it is one of those cancers which have a higher survival rate as it can be diagnosed and treated earlier. There have been campaigns for HPV vaccines in schools and I am glad India is picking it up too like the West but cancer is NOT a joke and you cannot pretend to be dead and come back alive within a day. You aren’t Jesus!

I had my doubts when I first saw the news and it was proven correct the next day. It’s a shame that to gain a few followers, we make a mockery of serious conditions. There have been celebrities throughout the world who have been raising awareness in much more dignified manner. Some of these celebrities are cancer survivors too so they know the challenges one faces during the cancer journey, the constant fear of losing the battle, and it is not only the journey of one person but everyone associated with them are a part of it.

This World Cancer Awareness Day, let’s pledge to be more compassionate and not do outrageous stuff to raise awareness.

25/12/2023

“May the world never again live through such a Christmas night.
Nothing is more horrible than meeting one’s fate, far from mother, wife and children. Is it worthy of a man’s destiny to brave a mother of her son, a wife of her husband and children of their father?
Life was bequeathed in order that we ought to love and be considerate to one another.
From the ruins out of the blood and death, shall come forth a brotherly world.” - signed off by a German Soldier (Battle of Bulge - 25/12/1944).

This year has been particularly difficult for many people around the world, be it the wars and battles between nations or fighting the systems in their own country for their lost identities, be it to make the ends meet due to rising cost of living or having the luxury to boycott things, be it fighting the mental health or braving the physical health, be it losing loved ones or welcoming new ones in a world which seems to be more hostile with every passing day.

But, there is always hope that one day things will get better. And the only way is through compassion, kindness and love. We do not need to shame others for choices they make, or don’t make. It is okay to be inclusive, forgiving and learning from the past. And most importantly, educating ourselves before riding a bandwagon for trends, likes and followers.

Merry Christmas and have a happy festive period with your loved ones.

Love,
The EndoMentalist

✨🎄🎅🏻🎁💕

03/12/2023

*Not every disability is visible!*

Recently, at work I was in the accessible loo at work & a cleaner kept on knocking on the door. When I came out, she made a face and very loudly said that abled people shouldn’t be using disabled toilets. Little did she know that just like me there are a lot of people with hidden disabilities, who need longer times, more space and a water in reach to attend nature’s call. I don’t blame her for being ignorant but I do blame the system and society for being compassionate towards only disabilities that are visible and that too very rarely.

This year, I got diagnosed with a few more things, while some health professionals were kind, others slapped me with comments like, “oh, it’s a just a label.” No, it is not just a label, it helps me communicate my needs to my work place, it helps me gets the support I may need as a person with hidden disabilities, when suddenly my body locks or I can’t lift my foot to take the next step or I pass out, I need the diagnosis to help me get through with it.

As a brown girl, with hidden disabilities and health conditions, life becomes a joke because let alone health professionals or staff take you seriously when a lot of your own friends make a mockery of your condition because they can’t see it and if they happen to witness a flareup, they compare it with their symptoms of a fever or cold. We are different, our bodies are built differently, our genetic makeup isn’t the same, so why do we expect everyone to react the same way to conditions and medications?

21/11/2023

:: For UK Residents Only ::
Hello, I am sharing with you UK’s first chronic pain survey. If you suffer from pain (irrespective of the cause and severity) please participate and spread the word. The survey is completely anonymous.
To access please scan the QR code below or use the link https://dundee.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/ukpainsurvey2023
You can DM me for the link if you cannot access it from here.

14/11/2023

And I get, “Mashallah 🤦🏻‍♂️,” from people who claim to care when my body is collapsing in a flareup, when my legs refuse to take another step, when the brain fog is more intense than smog, when the cramps in my pelvis make me want to get in foetal position, when my thoracic symptoms punch the air out of my lungs, leaving me gasping for it.
The same people have not only witnessed flareups, they have witnessed numerous hospital trips, appointments where I was dismissed by doctors, where health workers believed me, where paramedics didn’t know what to do, they have witnessed my throwing ups, my nauseas, my blackouts, my shivering, my fevers, my tears, my anger, my frustration but hey, a facepalm 🤦🏻‍♂️ emoji describes that they understand, that they are there for me because they say so and are reliable. My life isn’t a joke. I don’t need anyone’s validation but I won’t take insensitive comments either. You can’t relate to it, fair enough but don’t undermine my daily struggles due to your lack of emotional intelligence and empathy!!!!

09/11/2023

It’s appalling how some people (read: men with no medical or scientific background),would go out and beyond to lecture me on how to manage my life with endometriosis but when invited to talks or screenings creating awareness on endometriosis, they respond with, “it doesn’t look like my thing, “let’s talk about happier things.” This condition rules my life, and if as a close friend you think it’s not your “thing,” then it makes me question a lot of things, the integrity of such individuals and where their priorities lie when it comes to friendships. This morning was the final nail in the coffin when my recent trips to A&E were invalidated because I couldn’t keep my promise of being at an event. I am so sorry that my health came in between an event. It shocks me that even after witnessing my health scares for years first hand, such people still think I am making it up and I should drop everything to just see them. I have lost more friends to this condition than gained and I know it’s a lonely road and a long battle.
Anyway, is screening “Below the Belt,” on 16th November in London along with an endometriosis exhibition from Nov 2023 to March 2024. Do come along if you are around!
📷 credits:

The EndoMentalist

28/05/2025

31/03/2025

17/06/2024

24/03/2024

08/03/2024

04/02/2024

25/12/2023

03/12/2023

21/11/2023

14/11/2023

09/11/2023

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