When the world gets overwhelming. What do you do? Do you stand and fight? Do you sit in the silence, or the loudness?
How many doctors will stand in awe? Curiosity is beautiful but is there anything after the curiosity? When textbooks don’t cover what you experience. Is it possible humans are less inclined to be curious if they have a negative outlook? Is it that by denying themselves of visibility they deny their patients? Knowing rare humans exist, but not feeling the need to educate even on the most basic level. When you hear “ there’s nothing we can do, we just have to keep you comfortable”. But then not totally comprehending the person listening is only 27. To have to spell the rare syndrome to every single human on medical staff within a 20 hour period. Them not even understanding, some filled with curiosity, some filled with ignorance, some filled with confusion with a touch of helplessness. Pain, I talk about this a lot and it’s something that needs addressing, not just the symptoms of pain, the cause and the effects, not just on the body but the mind. Be in pain for long enough and it changes you, not just on the outside but deep inside the soul, the psyche and those darkest parts of self.
Honesty, stillness and sovereignty. If you have a rare disease, speak. Tell them exactly how it is, don’t hold back. Be gentle with your words but always be truth. Your pain is your truth. Not every human connection within the system is worth your energy, you will know this with how they treat you. It’s not you. You are in charge of your body, be still, in your sovereignty. Klippel-Feil syndrome humans exist. It’s simple. If you are a medical professional please listen with little time you have, we understand your time is like gold, but two minutes of your time, still even if you cannot help, then you will know to be gentler if you come across it again. You can tell your colleagues, so if they meet someone with it they will at least know the name.
We are the rare genetically mutated humans; we exist. While some never experience pain, others endure pain so intense it feels inhumane. And when conventional medicine fails, we must keep our minds open to other forms of treatment. Even if mainstream societal views haven’t quite caught up yet, we can’t leave people in the dark because of lack of knowledge or ignorance. By leading by curiosity we can start to lean into more opportunities for treatment.
Going into what is portrayed as a beacon of help and medical assistance, to experience unhelpfulness, silence but the deafening kind, to leave you feeling bewildered, exhausted and confused. Holding tightly on to the strands of wholeness from those who haven’t lost their light. Is it worth losing your connection to the planet for something created without our consent? Life can be intense, but surely that reflection would be best off falling into a metamorphosis, so we are not entirely intense with one another? Surely our softness must come from within. By journeying alongside those who are not so internally soft, perhaps we learn how not to be. If their energy feels negative, why allow it to ripple outward from us, until the lake is filled with pebbles, each ripple colliding, turning the water into a tsunami of negative emotion?
White bright lights summoning hormones to awaken and keep time itself captive in a state of paralysis. Blue hues striking out like blades, feeling like your being interrogated by those faceless and unnamed. The silence of night shatters in an instant blink, as if the corridors ignite from matchsticks of stress, breadcrumbed from ambulance to reception. Souls creating a suction of survival, each one clawing at existence, creating laws of isolation. Is every human out for themselves? Is that how it truly works? Or is there another way?
The lady with the lamp, would she see healing or survival? If she walked these corridors now, would her lamp tremble at the chaos of the human psyche, watching a modern version of perish, is this care? or is this captivity? Nurses with mountain soul hearts, 25 minutes breaks, sleeping for 20 and eating for 5, lovely souls, climbers of peaks now scaling the mountains of cortisol and exhaustion itself. Cheeky faced cleaners braving the dark depths of the battlefield of the most treacherous rooms within. After every battle still having the courage to face another cycle of it all over again, without as much as a gleam, or embrace.
Our fleshy sensitive appearance, is it turning to rock? Are we so scared to be gentle that we avoid it altogether? When we care, they receive it, to care is to ignite a chain of alchemy, care given is transformed and passed on. If care has a frequency, and if energy never dies, then perhaps it is we who evolve the way we care, from within.
Welcome back fellow beings. Hope you are all making it through the terrain of winter.
When the emotional storm arrives, who do you become?
Who are we, WITH our emotions?
Are you a rollercoaster?
Are you the feeling?
Are you the witness?
Are you the cause?
Or are you indeed the remedy?
Has your body tried to speak recently? Maybe you silenced it, maybe you listened. But still, you find yourself stuck in wet glue that never seems to dry. Is there a possibility that the darkness of pain can be ripped into the light? Are we tripping up on our own emotions just to be protected in a bubble of ego? We are constantly changing, so by denying the change or refusing to flow with the universe, do we just hoard our pain? Instead of collecting physicality, we collect little pockets of deep seated emotion and hold on to them as tightly as possible but trying our best to ignore them. Maybe the longer and tighter we hold onto them they get spikier and darker, then seep into the cells of our souls and create wars within our bodies creating them into physical pain. Which of course then we go to someone in a white coat and expect it to be fixed by sharper spikes which only prod at the symptoms, dancing with them for a while to keep them busy and ignorant.
Could our knowledge have been lost? The way in which we communicate with each other has changed. As humans we create and watch films like I ‘robot and we assume that these are going to be very visual and physical pieces of equipment replacing us, but maybe its replacing the things we cannot see? Is it replacing emotions and feelings? Only if you allow it too. We have to remember we have free will, so we can take this technology and use it in such a way that maybe it teaches us to be more in tune with our evolution. Making it look in, rather than away. Should we be looking at money and currency as tools again? Have we lost our way, only by simply ignoring the colours of self? Is there a possibility that within humanity something as simple as communication can be twisted into hate by simple miscommunication?
What if a computer is just a tree? What if this technology we use to communicate with each other is the same network the trees use? What if a human body is just a tree? Full of nerves sending messages through its mycelium of circuitry. Imagine 3 images right now. number 1 is a human brain, number 2 the network inside of a computer, number 3 A mycelium network connecting trees. What is the difference? We were given a technology to support every frequency below us, we were given technology to live inside of and then we created a technology that seems to flow the same way, but we slightly missed how to use it?
Is it that the pain of humanity is needed for evolution? But we keep tripping ourselves up into suffering? Why do we suffer in pain? or is suffering a choice? Are we not incredible super computers capable of re-brainwashing ourselves with the things that make us better and stronger humans?
Chronic pain, is it not we are the earth and the pain is the sea, the streams, rivers, ponds and lakes. There’s always water on earth moving somewhere, sometimes there’s flares, but are those not the storms above the sea creating waves of nervous system damage? Is it not that the ponds are the constant spaces of pain that never dissipate, water is pain but are we forever grounded if we choose? Letting pain fall. Is it not through the darker months we have our own icicles that are sharp, is it not the more we ignore and refuse to witness, the less it will melt? The colder we get……..
If, water is pain, if, water is hydration, if water is dehydration, you wouldn’t gulp down sea water would you? So which one do you witness and which one do you consume?
And what about the rain? The unexpected down pour of pain? Sometimes intense, sometimes covers you in a thick fog for days, you think to yourself “will I ever see the sun again?”
The path of chronic pain, is it not that of a pirate at sea, constantly assessing for the dangers of the ocean ahead. When the next wave flare will commit to the body of the ship and whip it across the many miles of ocean. Until you finally see land, the break between the flowing waters of pain, to a calmer but more consistent form of pain, the consistence of the lakes and ponds. Always there but in its rarest of occasion, the answers of pain lead to a drought. Surely with rare pain, its like being a new found pirate, fresh map, travelling to locations to find the answers, some islands provide relief, some islands are hard to get to and sometimes cause you capsize. Is it that we need to learn how to tame our own sea monsters? By claiming islands, are we not claiming our own witnessing of our pain? Converting battle strategy into chronic pain strategy.
Hello everyone! Hope you are all doing okay. As we head into the darkness of winter, to hibernate and reflect. The mountains can get very dark this time of year, oh and freezing! You have to remember to do those things that make you happy!
Lets get into it!
Can you ask yourself this question, ” Am I guilty of fighting against my pain?”………………. Rather than fighting against it can we not ask it’s intentions? Get to know it a bit? or maybe even ask it’s purpose?
Living with pain constantly, can lead to intense overstimulation, then overwhelm, so in those moments behind closed doors can we learn to live alongside pain and not against it? Rare mutations can lead to a long road of not being able to find any answers, that means everywhere you look. Whether it be side effects from medications or not being listened to by those that should. Personally still having so many questions to the treatment of those with rare mutations, including those such has Klippel-Feil Syndrome. Is there options that are natural that can help aid this process of being able to live alongside the pain and not fight it? I have had this question for so many years, feeling like I am drowning in knots of shoe laces and earphones. It was getting increasingly impossible to find any medications that worked even a little. And the side effects made it feel impossible to bring myself up for any air.
Is it possible that a plant could guide those in constant pain to live alongside this pain? Could this plant be what some of those with rare mutations and constant pain need?
The pain isn’t you, it is a wanderer passing through, drifting passed the light and dark parts of self. As we experience this reality as ourselves for the very first time, can we remember we are ALL still dreamers, learning something new everyday. Life is not the drama we see online or in fact those we see on tv. Real life has shorts bursts of what you see online/tv, it’s filled with those gaps we have taught ourselves are “boring” periods of time, but maybe the magic is hidden underneath the mat with “boring”. Maybe under that little mat hidden away is where you find your power. By fighting against the pain, are we then the cause of our own suffering potentially longing out our evolution? Or is it indeed part of the shedding of humanities pain that has been ignored for so long because of our need for survival?
Convenience is what we built now, we have to use it to make more time to heal. Whatever happens we have to remember not to be too hard on ourselves. Pain is the visitor, granted it reaches the darkest places of your soul, but it is not the verdict. This pain you feel, it is not you, it is an echo. If you live in constant pain or have Klippel-Feil Syndrome, what if you could live alongside your pain instead of against it, naturally too? But this source is not something the whole of society validates. What if this Green Ally is the one to guide this inner conflict towards resolution from the inside. Can we live with the ache, but not as our enemy but as an echo, as a companion?
I wonder if maybe our perception and our understanding only comes from our own personal experiences. By our own experiences we are creating our own perception of the reality around us. Example, if you feel good you see good. Close your eyes an imagine a beautiful scenic route, maybe on a mountain, maybe by a river, maybe on the beach. Now your perception of that terrain is how you feel. Could your perception of this reality be altered by the way you feel? Pain effects the way we feel right? So could physical pain be changing your perception of reality at lower levels of your subconscious? But is that not the powerful thing, as soon as we make ourselves aware of something we can alter our own perception of it? Could we use this natural Green Ally to guide those in constant pain to a comfortable state of self. So they can experience this reality more softly and supported, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally and one we tend to forget in the western world, spiritually.
If you are out there as a human with a rare genetic condition, including ones like Klippel-Feil Syndrome. Your journey will forever be etched in the stars. The pain you are in is not you, you are capable and beautiful. We are all learning and sometimes rare humans have to exist, which sometimes come with pain that textbooks and doctors do not understand. But it means you can create something new, something beautiful. Forge a new path, create new protocols, learn and communicate with the pain so that it does not rule us 100% of the time.
Is there a reason why natural alternatives are not looked at when everything is exhausted?
Why is a cultivated molecule embraced, while the ancient leaf is questioned?
When did being on a sterile shelf start feeling more safe than a forest?
What if we could safely use techniques that are natural like the green ally or certain breathing techniques that trigger certain neural pathways? All these questions, and lets face it, for every 1 question I have answered it triggers hundreds more! So if there are alternatives, why are these Rare humans being left hanging but only after trying manmade? When a lab-born path fails, what comes next? Are these Rare humans like those with Klippel-Feil syndrome now reaching for the wild because the engineered has emptied everything. Being left suspended in the air on echoes and echoes of aches to drown you. Must these humans be left and dismissed to fall through the cracks before the Green Ally is permitted to listen. Must these humans be suspended at the edge, held in limbo, simply because the societal lens hasn’t been shaped to see this form of pain. Must they endure and wait in the silence until the collective decides it is safe to listen. Must these people wait for the world to catch up and name it before they are allowed to speak and be validated. Nature caused these genetic defects, so would it not be plausible to treat them non-synthetic pathways.
By teaching ourselves to be more gentle inwardly, surely it will give more space for non judgmental spaces for possible pathways and protocols? If these rare humans are finding their way alone, and it is working, then why aren’t these remedy routes being studied more deeply? And if not studied then at the very least, heard. If those marked by Rare Mutation are discovering ways to live with lifelong pain through alternative paths, then why not listen? Why not validate? The markets tongue was meant to serve, to be used as a tool, not to rule. This coin of silence was supposed to a companion. But now, it dictates who gets held and who gets left behind. Modern medicine was built to heal right?…………….The uncommonly genetically mutated are dismissed, not only just for their biology but because they dare to bring their own findings to the light. These beautiful and marvellous humans, their pain is real. Their research and journey is valid. How come the system only listens when the voice comes from the inside of a white coat? Once named monsters and cast out as a societal error. Now we walk with these wounds, carving out our terrain. Making our path through the forest. Experiencing new happenings that some humans have never experienced. They are turning their pain into art! Your voice was once silenced, but now that voice of yours, it is your compass through your own creation of a new terrain through that forest.
Incurability does not translate to invisible, nor do these voices mean any less than the rest of this weird and wonderful civilisation. Refusing to listen, is it not just denying medicine, it erases these beings, their journey and most of all their self-trust. Your voice is sacred.
Can this Green Ally guide these beings into a more stable and grounded sense of self. To forge the path, not against but alongside. To teach us that we can live alongside the pain, but we do not have to suffer. We are all here on this planet, a spinning rock, drifting through the everthingness and nothingness of space and time. But we the ones who named ourselves “wise” are forgetting how to hear the cries. Arguing in statistics, then drowning in the noise, eventually losing all heart to listen. BUT in amongst all the rubble the lighthouse still pulses, in the ache, in the mutation, and hopefully still in the heart of humanity. Can you still remember?
If there is a Green Ally, a natural technique, that could walk beside the wound. Then would you let prejudice get in the way? Can we allow personal bias to drown out these voices from the collective? Denying someone help, is it not just denying ourselves of connection as well? It silences these beings, which is not just a breakdown in society, but a betrayal of the listening we owe to each other to fully understand one another. Is it possible that every time we refuse to listen, we lose the chance to remember everything in what it means to be human? Can we choose heart over hierarchy?
Welcome back fellow earthlings! It has been a while and there may be pockets between posts, some longer than others, but I shall always come back.
Today is not a long one but hopefully just as impactful. Okay imagine being 27, but not the 27 you would typically imagine. Being 27 but feeling 3 times that. Does pain age you? This question I am very sure many humans will understand in the 21st century, especially in 2025. Pain is also insidiously bringing out the most beautiful colours and shades of our wisdom. If you are a 21st century human dealing with any form of pain, I have a question. Who would you be you without all of this pain? How sure are you that you wouldn’t be who you are right now? Did pain change the way you perceived the world around you?
If you had to pick between pain’s, which would you pick for comfort? Strange question right?! Pain roulette in a body that “overreacts” and does not sync with the level of knowledge, intelligence and logic within. So imagine you look in the mirror, you look 27. But nobody sees the carbon dated spine and skeletal system holding your entire being with an unearthly amount of gravity designed just for you. Right so, you are now 27, with a carbon dated spine and skeletal system, but now you have not slept since the bronze age. How do you feel? Is it a possibility that pain is forcing us to evolve?
Is it also a possibility that these humans with rare genetic defects and chronic pain, have become so strategically pain aware that they get looped into a paradox? Being both hyper-present but half vacated. So many paradoxes, pain & guilt. Being handed a genetic defect, much like being handed Hades double edge sword, difference being both sides now point towards you! Seems the human body can withstand the pain of its own cells exploding into a billion suns, while it’s nerves spread paradoxes from the slow burning depths of agony. Each flare falling like dominoes into the next until,…………..BAM! it all collapses into a bending black hole, ricocheting across your own quantum tunnel, leading back to exactly where you started. Only now, the gravity is heavier? Now you know this terrain so very well, but now the map is burned and your perception of the world around you is changing and something!? Something……..is well, missing?
Finding breadcrumbs of yourself every time you travel this terrain, like you are your very own Hansel and Gretel, avoiding the pain witch best you can. What do you do now? Could it be that genetic defects cause a quicker cycle of change? Which could be a rush of force to push the human race to evolve? Maybe pain itself causes a quicker shed of skin, if, you allow it. Many humans are just not ready to talk about pain, and that is okay. We have to go at our own pace, no matter what happens. Maybe that is how we can now walk alongside pain, by wholeheartedly respecting our own boundaries, no matter what? Keep moving forward, challenge yourself, keep reaching, but stay soft, be brave and always, always be patient.
If this blog is a lighthouse, then Metabolic Support UK is the flame at the edge of that horizon. Took so long to find a real ear that understood, but once found, it has lifted some weight straight out of those paradoxes, maybe even left more breadcrumbs towards the rebuilding of self.
If you keep searching for a light, you will find another! It can take years which feel like centuries to find it, and not every light along the way will help in the way you expect, they may disguise and then consume, but all will lead you to where you need to be, and the right lights, Well they will listen, respect your boundaries and most of all never rush your healing. For those that resonate and understand walking this sometimes unmapped terrain, Metabolic Support UK is one of those rare lights. Brighter than most, softly patient, gently present and most of all REAL!
You can’t just give yourself away like it means nothing.
What have you buried deep, to make others feel comfortable?
As humans we are quickly moving towards total suppression of self. This means we are holding on to all the grief and not letting it go. Will grief ever end? There is so many forms of it, the grief that clings from those lost to the next world. The grief of parents still breathing but not part of your support system. The grief of having an incurable genetic defect. The grief of loneliness. Even the grief of just thoughts, the thoughts of losing the ones that actually care. This grief ricocheting into a billion different questions like, Will this grief ever end? or can it change shape? By suppressing this grief, what happens? Where does it go?
The grief doesn’t suddenly just disappear the longer you hold onto it. It stays with us in every cell, every breath. And if not addressed, will then become genetic lineage, passed down grief to those children who will eventually be running the world and society. This grief claws itself into the body and turns it into physical pain and disease. When it is our time and we choose to start healing we are decoding the silence that now consumes every part of your being. This is a lighthouse, you are not alone, I write from the frontline of human society. Not to centre my story but so you can centre your own.
Denial, a form of grief i found hard to process. Pretending everything is okay while your body is attacking itself through pain, memory and experience. I am not out of the denial, and I am coming to terms with that it is okay. But if you were brought up gaslighted, could that then cause self medical gaslighting. Gaslighting ourselves out of denial that we are incurable. This then can causes more anxiety about health, because the journey up this point has not been anywhere near the light. So by finding our own light, can we climb ourselves out of the denial?
How you are treated, becomes how you treat yourself. If you grow up in a household shaped by narcissistic distortion, you learn to gaslight your own body, rewrite your symptoms and question your own truth before anyone else has the chance. When you finally receive a late diagnosis, when the incurable is named. It does not feel like total clarity, just more fog in some areas. It feels like a deep dive into the sea of denial, head first. Because denial was the language of those before you, the gift passed down. But what if this gift is no longer wanted or even needed. What if finding your own light is how you climb out, not to be cured, not to be redeemed, but to stop disappearing into the silence of those before you.
Can we change it? There was no guidebook passed down, only a set of rules and regulations, written in the very stardust of our being. Etched into our genetic code by trauma, then reinforced by narcissism. No clarity taught, just survival. They did not offer light, only the shaping of silence into our very cells. Experience becoming the only compass, because the truth could no longer be written by them. The rules they follow, still being carved into genes, into gestures, into the way your own experience and symptoms were dismissed before even being named. These beliefs and behaviours are no longer sacred, we will no longer place these ideologies on a pedestal. They can and will be re written. Not to erase the lineage but to honour it, and then to end the inheritance of distortion and self-denial.
What does it feel like when you finally find your light? It may feel wobbly, but that is not you, it is the empty space we now have to fill. Teach ourselves to hold it with strength, integrity and our own truth. What old reflexes can you witness while trying to hold your own lighthouse? Maybe you see shame? Maybe you see negative thought patterning? First step, analysis. Can you witness your own thoughts about yourself without getting involved or having an opinion? Sitting with yourself, no judgement. Just simply witnessing yourself exist. Now what thoughts do we align with? What thoughts do we NO longer align with? We say thank you to those experiences of corrupted wisdom, but now we rewrite our belief systems from the lighthouse and not distortion. No judgement. Just us, ourselves experiencing pain through a new transmission. Maybe we can get to a point where our pain doesn’t feel shameful, but empowering.
Most ailments that are curable, you can move on. By following a process that has been tested again, again and again. But when it comes to incurable diseases, there is no moving on from the pain itself. You can heal, you can move on from those experiences that affected the way you saw yourself. But what happens when you follow that journey, to find out at the end of the tunnel the pain will still be there and maybe even slightly more deterioration. These rare genetic experiences that are found in no textbooks, these are the signals of the humans who are dealing with the incurable. To heal from trauma to find yourself still in pain. But maybe by changing the way in which we see our pain, by questioning negative thoughts towards ourselves, we can alter the way we experience this pain?
This journey is not a cure. This is a reframing. maybe a way to walk alongside pain, not against it. A way we can finally reclaim the tunnel as part of our map. Perhaps this pain is not the villain, but a witness. An echo that reminds us, were still here and our truth matters.
To those of you that still carry pain, your healing is not invalid. Just because the aches and pains still reside within you. You are not broken. You are sacred. And if the pain stays? What do we do then? Well then perhaps we can build a life for ourselves that is not in spite of pain, but as a part of us, a piece of us that we walk alongside. No judgements, just witnessing. Maybe that is quiet healing.
What if this pain is not something we escape from? Perhaps it is the strongest part of ourselves, which teaches us to follow in peace.
Welcome back my lovelies. Today feels different, not chaotic but gently uncomfortable. I am writing because i know there has to be a way to build more connection. I am writing because it is necessary, it is truth and it needs to exist. So this post is a quiet lighthouse, a subtle flare, to those reading who feel out of place on this weird and wonderful planet, the ones who feel alone in being a rare bodied human. To you reading right now, we are still here, we are still trying and now is the time to connect.
This is the ECHOHEART PROJECT.
I started this blog to make sense of things, the rare anatomy, yes! But also shape the quiet emotional patterns that shape life. I have stood in rooms built for policy and sat with truths no policy could hold.
A long time ago, I was Crystal-Lily mills, a Member of Youth Parliament for Dorset. I spoke about things that hurt the whole of society, domestic violence, youth poverty and safety, not because I have answers but because I was living through those very questions. Through personal and political experiences, it has shaped my understanding of trauma-informed advocacy. Though back then I didn’t have the language, but I was ritualising pain into public protocol. I am still Crystal-Lily. But now I speak from both wound and the wisdom.
Last night I remembered her, for the first time in a long time, but really remembered. I remembered a girl who stood before 200 professionals and spoke about domestic abuse. She was 16. She is me and she is still here, slowly being uncovered, layer by layer through the dark tunnels of rare and isolating pain. I assumed I was bad, I saw the world through my parents engrained fear and paranoia, but these were not my eyes, vision, nor the weight for me to hold, a borrowed set of lenses that were fractured through others choices and experiences. Slowly I began to see differently. Not just because i started to heal but because the healing cleared room for clarity, which then led me to purpose. I helped redesign foster care materials, not as an expert but as someone who was living in those very gaps of society where souls get lost, sometimes never to return. I stood at Tolpuddle festival, not to be seen, but to honour those before me, our ancestors. I led youth council workshops on equality and confidence, offering what I could from a place of rupture and burnout, not perfection. Being able to articulate others needs with precision, but when it came to my own pain the language of it completely dissolved into emotional reckoning. These moments never fixed me, but every single step I took led me to a mirror, revealing and facing those very parts of myself. The good, the bad and the ugliest versions of myself that i had created through fear, survival and the words of other people. But through all of that the hardest reflection to stomach didn’t even turn out to be the one i was scared of seeing the most, that i was broken and unfixable. It was the realisation. I used to think i was a “bad or negative human”, not because i did anything wrong, but because i couldn’t make sense of my own pain. Now I know there is no split between “good” and “bad”. Everything is mixed. Pain doesn’t make you cruel. Cruelty is a choice. I did not want to make the same choice as those before me anymore. Survival doesn’t make you selfish, it makes you adaptive. I was not bad, I was becoming. I realised that maybe even back then what I carried made me feel “bad” but actually I was fighting through cement while trying to please. I just couldn’t see properly through second hand traumatised glasses.
There were emotional truths that i couldn’t and i wasn’t ready to see or embody at the time. It was hard, I was heard but not held. I felt like i was carrying the lighthouse on my back, trying to guide others while still lost in the foggy darkness of survival. Now i place that lighthouse down. Not from a place of burden, but as beacon. So that those who need it can find their way and maybe, just maybe not feel so alone on this planet floating through space.
You are not the same, but you are. Maybe you bent until you broke too. Maybe you gave away parts of yourself just so someone else had enough. I did too, I performed versions of myself that were not mine. I met the needs of others that were not mine to meet. I distorted my inner-power and energy until it no longer felt like energy or inner-power at all. Just depletion, if not the edge of personal deletion. Along side the experience of pain, not poetic but the pulverising type of pain. But pain is now forging my path. It has taught me where my edges lay, it has taught me what is mine and what is not mine. I haven’t started over, I am starting a fresh. I am rebuilding, not from scratch, just from truth. MY power to return, undistorted, as I started calling it back in, it didn’t become louder, just clearer. Not new, but mine. I hope that maybe as you read this. you will also feel your own ember start to flicker. The light I now see in myself, I see in you, the one that refused to die. The one that is ready to rise.
I was in an accident when i was 14. They did an X-RAY, but no formal diagnosis. Just, ” We don’t know what it is, but you will probably be in a wheelchair with arthritis in your spine by the time you are 40″. That was it, no follow-up consultation. No explanation. Just a sentence handed to a child. My inner health got even more lost alongside the life I knew when I went into foster care. From there, I was left to try and translate my pain. But it didn’t work out, not then.
The truth is it started way before this first accident. The migraines, oh my goodness the migraines. They started when I was a baby. Being sent home from school, sometimes walking home with a migraine so fierce I could barely see anything. Calpol and a dark room. That was the protocol. No questions. No pattern recognition. Just diets. Removing things. As if subtraction could solve what no one dared to study. The tonsilitis that kept coming back, so many antibiotics. Without even a regard for what might actually be wrong. It was like they were trying to fix something without knowing what it was. I was a chocolate kettle. They didn’t see the chocolate. They just filled me with water, flicked the switch to boil, and called me dramatic when my nervous system reacted.
I saw a chiropractor when I was about 9/10 years old, she was lovely but you cannot help what is not known. I was migraine free for about 6 months but I ended up with leg pain as-well as migraines which nobody understood. (I am currently seeing a Mctimoney chiropractor, he listens and the treatment is very gentle. My body is extremely sensitive so it can be rather uncomfortable at times, but extremely relaxing in other times. I feel it is helping right now, recovery is painful but I feel more aligned. My body seems to be aligning and listening.) But after my experience with the lady chiropractor when I was a child nothing much was done.
Then when I was cycling home from work in 2018, I got into an accident on the road. I fell. I got taken to hospital. There was a doctor in A&E, a gentle giant with a beard, like a strongman contestant. He sat me down and said “I think you may have something called Klippel-Feil Syndrome”. So I was sent for an MRI. Took two attempts, I panicked so much the first time they had to pull me out, it was like I could feel the MRI in my cells, but I couldn’t translate this. Second attempt and I managed 20 minutes because my partner came in and stroked my leg so I could focus on just one spot on my body.
When i met with orthopaedics, they confirmed the incurable diagnosis. He referred me to a panel of surgeons, I patently waited for news of help. Nobody could help or was even willing to. So i was left on opioids and other pharmaceuticals, which caused me more pain than good, but with nobody to help I got lost in the darkness just getting the prescriptions every month, still hoping they would do something to improve my life. No map. No guide. Just me, trying to make sense of it all, but I hit 23.5 stone at my heaviest on medication from pharma. I was ridiculed for putting on weight, I was made to feel even lower. I went into the GP surgery after blood tests. Before even looking at the results, she assumed I had diabetes, because of my size. She didn’t ask. She didn’t check. She just presumed. What made it feel worse. She was about the same size as me. But her body wasn’t under scrutiny. Mine was. She wore her weight invisibly. Mine was treated like a diagnosis. This isn’t about her weight. It’s about how mine was used as a shortcut to blame. They gave me pharma. I ate myself into oblivion. Out of shame and survival. And after that, every pain I named was met with one answer: “It’s your weight.” Not all professionals did this. But most did. Enough that I stopped expecting to be read properly. And then I went silent.
This is where it all started. The protocols. Not in clarity. In survival.
I shared this as a lighthouse for the ones still searching. This is my experience of KFS, and maybe just how scrutiny tried to silence it.
It needs to be spoken about. So I’m speaking.
What flame did you carry before you had the words?
What part of you is still waiting to be reclaimed?
You’re invited to respond, in comment, in ritual, or in whatever form your body trusts.
Pause Here: What version of you was built to survive? And what version is ready to live even if it is alongside pain.
If you find your answer, write it down, if you don’t that is okay too. The lighthouse has been lit now for you to go back when YOU are ready.
What is pain’s language if we decode it? Could pain be more than just physical? Where does pain sit in reality? What if longstanding pain is a flag and not a flaw, symptom or signal? What is the pattern? Can we choose protection over numbing? Can we choose to honour our signals with boundaries?
Questions again! So maybe we need to integrate the pain to feel less pain, by even just starting to listen and accept the pain signals. Maybe just by listening to our pain regularly can reduce the noise of it so it doesn’t have to shout for us to hear it. In rare syndromes/diseases, the pain can often be misnamed and mistreated with misunderstanding to the point of more physical trauma than gentle guidance. The mistreatment can be subtle but it dismisses, minimises and gaslights a persons experience into ignorance, which then causes ignorance within the patient towards themselves. Maybe if we start to treat the body like a puzzle, but not one that is cracked open like a safe, guarded or forced into alignment with textbook training. We cannot force our bodies to be silent when its screaming out for someone to decode it and listen to it. Then we can adapt to it, instead of taking the pain as something to carry and weigh us down, we have to open ourselves up to the possibility that the pain of the individual is a signal to be honoured and recognised, so that human may start to heal and be one with their pain rather than being at war with it.
What is it that can shift clinical rituals when a patient knows more about their condition? Could we maybe remove the elephant from the room to widen space to listen, but not just listen with trained medical ears but to listen with curiosity, not to surrender all authority but just to deepen these care rituals. If a patient sees a clinician but the patient has become a witness and scholar of their mutation/disease/genetic defect what does the clinicians position become? Maybe by collaborating together and being a guardian of health to help the patient understand themselves so they don’t feel left, abandoned and ignored.
Could listening to a well-informed patient be a form of professional refinement, not a threat, a chance to evolve our thinking towards the way in which care is offered and presented. Is it possible that some patients, especially those with non-textbook syndromes/diseases know more, not because they want control but just for the simple fact they have had to survive through experiences that textbooks do not cover. Being in the dark without even a medical opinion to turn to is a lonely and if not one of the most loneliest places to exist, knowing there is something wrong but not being taught to look further in and listen , or even just to feel safe knowing the possibilities of where the pain and symptoms are coming from.
What would happen if this knowledge was met with curiosity instead of resistance. Our species is changing in the corners of humanity that we cannot just ignore anymore, by ignoring the rest of humanities pain, we ignore the very centres ourselves, which could be slowing down our evolution.
I document Klippel-Feil Syndrome not as a symptom, but as a signal. I am mapping boundary flares into data. I honour nervous system refusal and question medical norms with tenderness. I respect all paths to relief and only speak from the landscape of my own body. This codex lives for clarity, not conquest.
Follow for intuitive healing pathways, rare mutation insight, and emotional pattern reflections.
Bless your journey. It carries wisdom no algorithm can mimic, and no system can erase your truth.
Hello and welcome back, hope you’re shining. Today, I want to explore a new way of thinking about healing, not just as effort, but as a pull to follow our genetic instructions. What if we’re not broken, just wired differently? What if healing isn’t about fixing, but about remembering the blueprint we were born with? By tuning into our unique code, we can begin to reclaim our bodies, not through force, but through observation, reflection, repatterning, and intuition. Some of us don’t bounce back quickly. But maybe we’re not meant to bounce. Maybe we’re meant to rebuild slowly, deliberately, according to the architecture written in our DNA. Not all healing is equal. By listening to our own genetic rhythm, we might just find the strength to rebuild ourselves, but on our terms.
So, i have a question, for you, for me, for everyone, could your healing instructions be written in your genetic makeup? By working with your own DNA instead of following peers. We can learn from each other but without judgement. Can we recommend with no push? Can we hold space for each other? Especially for achievements? Why do achievements cause such ricochets of awkward silence? Could it be possible that our healing is happening worldwide but with a slight lack of noticeability that healing is not a universal formula?
Now we have the process of healing but not just from physical or mental trauma, but to actually learn, that maybe Genetic differences just like those seen in Klippel-Feil Syndrome could possibly offer other routes and paths to repair, but not in conventional western ways. As westerners we fall too far behind, we can have all the science but if we do not start evolving and mixing the things unseen with the seen, there could be dyer consequences. There are magnificent beings on this planet, in the western world who are being treated like they are not human. We can be gentle creatures of nature. Example in certain parts of the world, you can have a realisation that maybe you can see more than the average person, and they will invite you with open arms, no judgement and take it in a wholesome way. But in places like the UK when it comes to humans that can see more, they are treated lesser. The very people we are abandoning are possibly the ones that are evolving quicker than those who don’t necessarily have this perspective on reality. Should we not be being warmer to those who see more colour?
PERCEPTION AS EVOLUTION.
We are such complex beings, but are we so beautiful. Maybeee, these mutations like Klippel-Feil Syndrome aren’t detours but a push and pull towards newer dialects and conversations our bodies are trying to have. Some of our bodies speak in urgency and others in stillness. Each one of us seeing the world totally different and not even realising it. Klippel-Feil Syndrome could be part of our evolution, from being called monsters to now having heightened sensitivity and/or expanded awareness. This is now the time where in the western world we can start to notice ourselves as whole human beings not just a body. We cannot keep holding ourselves down because we are so scared to change, if we want our species to survive we are going to have to look at the current spaces we hold and realise they are extremely outdated. One example of a visual representation of how we are stuck not changing. Now I want you to think of 3 corridors, one of which from a school, then from a prison, then a hospital. If you hold those images in your head. Why would I ask you to imagine 3 corridors? Because it is the perfect visual representation of how we all treating our healing process, an old copy and pasted corridor. Healing is not linear but by using our perspectives and holding space to change.
Talking about the marvellous architecture of our bodies, is it possible that mutations are leading us into a different sensory rhythm? Not visible, but so deeply felt in every cell of the humans being. This type of unlocking, could it be more of the brain being actively used? Or are we moving towards expanded awareness instead of reduced function? Is our evolution going in the direction of malformation, leading our species into the depths of multisensory intelligence? Mutations could maybe answer to the way in which our bodies are tuning it’s antenna differently compared to that of a human without these mutations?
Soooo many questions right? But lets pull our genetic balloons back down to planet earth for a second. Lets take ourselves into an area with possible answers to all of these questions. Remember, EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED. As we know Klippel-Feil Syndrome involves congenital fusion of the cervical vertebrae (neck), which can affect the spinal cord dynamics, nerve pathways and also cerebral spinal fluid flow. BUT! could these changes alter how signals from the body travel to the brain. Because of this, there could be shifts within balance perception, something called proprioception which guide our bodies to respond to pressure and also force. This is the body’s awareness of these experiences. But could this awareness be enhanced, resulting in the sensitivity of not just the body compensating but for fused regions. Could the fusion/mutation shift the nervous system and possibly shift sensory timing. This could mean that our integration is slower, our alertness is heightened and a shift in also our alternative regulatory mechanisms (these help our bodies manage, adjust, and respond to all changes).
If the signals in the spine and the flexibility of the spine is altered, is it a possibility that with those differences, it is not farfetched to think or feel that these could affect our whole perception of reality itself. There are links between sensory processing and congenital or acquired structural changes. This includes connecting things like pain thresholds, balance and breath awareness to neuroplastic adaptions (rearranging the furniture of your mind). Meaning it could enhance the volume of sensitivity in other areas as well. Some humans have actually reported synesthetic experiences (when senses mix, seeing colours when hearing music), heightened inner perception and/or intuitive mapping (the brain’s organic way of navigating spatial or sensory information). It could be very possible that Klippel-Feil Syndrome may not just be a re-shaper of bones, but also reshape the way in which these humans feel, sense, navigate and perceive the world.
What if Klippel-Feil Syndrome and the fusion of the vertebrae causes shifts in the way we perceive EVERYTHING. Could these miraculous mutations alter not just the body, but how sensory data travels and is processed, how time is felt and experienced but also which is awesome, that is how oxygen and breath is received and flows. I Know I am stretching beyond what has been defined, BUT is that not the point of exploring, especially in science and our magnificent bodies? And maybe we are more extra-terrestrial that we first perceived ourselves to be. Could someone with a mutation like Klippel-Feil Syndrome be a ticket entry to seeing more of the world around us? If the nervous system has been built differently, is it possible that the mutation can change the way in which these humans interpret sound, vibration and light?
Well hello there, My name is Crystal-Lily, how are we all doing this fine start of July? As said before I want to go through this ever so slow, learn together. Today I will be trying my best to execute possible questions and even maybe even change your mind on how the body works. We forget so often that we are evolving everyday just like every other species on the planet. We have to evolve to suit everything around us. But we slowed down and started to stumble into staying in the same place. YOU and me are part of this very important part of evolution right now!
This now brings me to something that has been tapping on my thoughts recently. What if the very genes that shaped my spine, (GDF6, GDF3, MEOX1) could have shaped how I and other humans with Klippel-Feil syndrome experience altered states like the ones DMT (dimethyltryptamine) unlocks? Sounds absolutely crazy right?! But stay with me, lets slowly introduce ourselves to all multidimensional possibilities.
A lungful of maybe?
When you are left to your own devices to heal the uncurable, first you ignore yourself, then eventually you have to take a chance on anything. Before the breath there is stillness, but not the kind that warms your soul, the kind of stillness that weighs you down clenching and clinging to every inch of your being. July 1st began with a strong herbal calm and a molecule of mercy, not escape. My way of guiding my nervous system still ringing the day before, starting to tune in. So with the Herbal calm in tow I was creating soft groundwork for something deeper. Not just searching specifically for enlightenment and certainly not escape anymore, I wanted to listen in to my body but also receive relief from it just feeling like its attacking itself. What followed was way more than relaxation, it was a cellular explosion, a quiet internal vibration and possibly the beginning of a very real hypothesis. So can my breath heal?
Lets find out together.
GDF6: THE ARCHITECT
So starting with GDF6 (Growth differentiation factor 6) this gene is part of the BMP family which helps guide how our bones and joints form in early development. This is especially in places like the spine, skull and eyes. The GDF6 gene acts like a tiny but powerful architect, it does this by sketching and drawing out our body’s blueprint for bones and joints. This process involving the GDF6 gene helps define where one bone ends and another begins, stopping bones from fusing together where they shouldn’t be. This is where it starts to get incredibly interesting, it is also expressed in the retina and brain regions such as the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain responsible to memory and learning. which also means it could hint at the role in the sensory processing.
First possible connection, GDF6 shapes the physical structure of our spines and brainstem regions exactly where DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) has been detected in trace amounts. If DMT is a signal, GDF6 may have built the wires in which DMT travels through. We can think of GDF6 as the architect of the antenna!
Okay, stay with me, I know it is a lot to take in, but for now just listen with your spirit. We are learning together.
GDF3: THE TUNER
Now we have GDF3, this gene is a regulator of signals. it is a bi-functional protein, this means that it is A “two for one deal”. Basically it does two jobs but is one protein. So the two jobs are basically attuning growth signals turning them up or down depending on what your body needs in that moment. Being an incredible biological multitool, it is active in places like the brain, spinal cord and also developing bones. Once more playing such an important role in guiding how our embryo’s take shape, this includes guiding eyes, spine and even fat tissue.
So if GDF3 modulates our developmental signalling pathways, like the BMPs (Bone Morphogenic Proteins) and NODAL, then let’s talk about NODAL for a moment. NODAL is a signalling protein with a huge role in the early shaping of us wild, magical humans. It’s like a tiny inner guide, whispering to the embryo, “Here’s where the heart goes. Here’s where the stomach should grow.”
Isn’t that mind-blowing? All of this happening without us feeling it or even knowing, it’s the kind of miracle we stopped noticing while we were scouring the sea and building machines. We, the human race, forgot to look back at our own blueprint. But NODAL doesn’t stop there. It is also critical in helping form the nervous system, and……wait for it…..it plays a hand in how cells decide their fate, bone, brain, or gut. That’s destiny being coded in silence. So yes, GDF3 and GDF6 are both part of the TGF-β superfamily, working alongside NODAL like backstage engineers of becoming. Think of NODAL as the molecular compass guiding the earliest stages of life before we even had a heartbeat to feel it.
Second possible connection. GDF3 is active in the brain, spinal cord and ossifying bone (formation of new bones), the exact regions where DMT has been detected or is believed to flow through. So, stay with me…..if DMT is a neurochemical, which seems to be some kind of internal transmission that alters perception. HOW AWESOME IS THAT! Because even though we’re all on the same planet, we are not experiencing it the same way. GDF3 is a developmental tuner just like we spoke about earlier, now GDF3 adjusts how signals are received and interpreted within our nervous systems. So, I am not saying GDF3 makes DMT, but like I have said before everything is connected, which means GDF3 could actually shape the system that receives DMT!
Basically GDF3 may not be the voice of DMT, but it could be the ears on the inside. By the way in which GDF3 tunes our nervous systems, it could affect how DMT is heard and welcomed into the nervous system. So could humans with Klippel-Feil Syndrome be more sensitive to this neurochemical (DMT). To make this more human, imagine you’re at a festival. The music is deep, loud, and consuming, that’s the DMT signal, flooding the entire space with sound. Most people come with options, ear defenders, breaks at the quiet tent, some way to manage how much they take in. But now imagine you’re born onto the planet with a different setup, a body wired without those filters. No ear defenders. Just pure, uninterrupted sound.
That might be what it’s like if your GDF3 gene affects how open or sensitive your nervous system is to DMT. If other people’s systems gently cradle the signal, yours might lean all the way in. No middle layer. No off switch. Just direct transmission. In that space, Reality might not just bend, it might sing along with your perception of reality.
MEOX1: THE BLUEPRINTER
Next we have MEOX1 (Mesenchymehomeobox1). This gene is a master instructor, again the same as GDF6 and GDF3 it is involved in early development, telling our bodies how to build itself. Makes you wonder if we’ve been specifically designed with the way our bodies just do it without conscious instruction constantly. So this little beauty (MEOX1) has the POWER! by this i mean it can turn genes on and off like a switchboard, this guides how our tissues form. The main important job for this gene is dividing our spine into proper segments, this means laying down all those blocks that will become our gorgeous vertebrae. Helping to blueprint and map out the locations of each part of our spine, especially including our neck and upper spine (cranio-cervical region). MEOX1 also has the amazing power of activating our other genes, for example NKX3-2, this gene helps shape bones and joints. But it certainly does not stop there! MEOX1 is also involved in blood and vessel development, meaning it helps guide hematopoietic stem cells which make all of our red and white blood cells and platelets, these are essential for carrying our oxygen, fighting any infections we may get and for healing our cuts and wounds. Just the same as GDF6 and GDF3, MEOX1 helps in the guiding of the cells during early development, which means it doesn’t just shape our spines, its also involved in the process of our blood building. We can definitely go into more details on all these little segments like hematopoietic stem cells in a future post.
Third possible connection. Now mutations inside the MEOX1 gene causes Klippel-Feil Syndrome, this means that some of the vertebrae in the neck fuse together instead of separating how they are supposed to. So MEOX1 is expressed in our spinal cord, craniofacial tissues (tissues that build our skull and face) and our developing joints, but here is the KICKER! These are the regions of overlap where DMT is actually believed to act or flow through. Just like what we spoke about earlier regarding MEOX1 being involved in vascular development (system of vessels that carries blood and lymph fluid through our body) and stem cell formation, which means there is rather large possibility that MEOX1 could influence how neurochemicals like DMT are transported and metabolised by our bodies. MEOX1 is also involved in TGF-b signalling which you may recognise from earlier, it is the same pathway that regulates genes like the GDF6 and GDF3, both of which we have already connected to DMT sensitivity.
MEOX1 has been also shown to influence cellular senescence and stress response. Cellular senescence, what a strange and wonderful name, this is basically a state in which the cells can no longer divide and separate. The job of this is to maintain vascular health by the regulation of our blood flow, but what is even more incredible is it regulates our immune function, inflammation and metabolism! My point and perspective is that could this affect how the brain and body respond to really quite intense signals such as DMT. So when we spoke a little while ago about how MEOX1 guides how our tissues form, which means there is a possibility that DMT could be interacting with the very same structure MEOX1 helps build because DMT is not just a brain chemical it is a tissue based signal. Think of a theatre there is a designer for the set, that is MEOX1, it decides where the lights go, how the room carries the sound, which also means seeing how the sound echo’s or is absorbed by the room. Now the script, that is DMT and the set designer is MEOX1.
WHERE GENES MEET CHEMICALS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
GDF6, GDF3 and MEOX1 are more than just genes, they’re the architects and builders of our body’s blueprint, shaping our spines, joints, face and even the flow of blood and signals. But, see, we have found some profound and impactful commonalities. They are ALL linked to Klippel-Feil Syndrome. They ALL interact with the TGF-b signalling pathway, a molecular motorway that regulates our growth, repair and cellular communications. ANNND magically they all shape the very regions where DMT is believed to act or flow through, again the spinal cord, craniofacial tissues and vascular system.
BUT, what does all of this mean exactly?
If DMT is a tissue based signal and these 3 genes (GDF6, GDF3 and MEOX1) are the ones building tissue, especially at the embryonic stages, then maybe there is a possibility they dont just shape and change the way we experience our world. Maybe these genes influence how DMT is transported, metabolised or even perceived. Maybe these 3 genes decide how the script of DMT is read by the stage they built.
So we have:
GDF6 laying the foundations and being a beautiful architect!
next GDF3 tuning the signal and being an incredible tuner!
then MEOX1 which is designing the set and being the phenomenal blueprinter!
and last but not least DMT? This gorgeous and magical molecule……………well thats just it isn’t it DMT IS the story! The strange and wonderful, yet luminous script that plays out on the stage that these 3 wonderful genes created.
Still here? then maybe you are not just reading, maybe your genes are remembering.
But what if we have been tunnel-visioning our way through life focussing only on what is “wrong” without realising that the mutations within us might actually be a scream out for the next stage of evolution?
What if these so called “errors” are actually messages, signals from our own DNA knocking on our door of consciousness saying “it is time”?
Klippel-Feil Syndrome Blog 