- Hello welcome to a pre filmed video
because I don't want to give myself too much work
to do whilst I'm in LA.
First big trip with the stoma bag,
me and Mona going off on our holidays together.
So to make things a bit easier on myself,
I'm gonna do a Q&A.
Now normally I ask for questions on Twitter
but I thought, hey let's spice things up a bit
and ask for questions on Instagram.
Oh wow!
There's like over 600 questions
so hmm definitely not going to be able
to answer all of them.
What I'm gonna do is I'm going to answer the questions
that have the most likes
and what I take from that,
is that other people were like,
yes I would also like to know the answer to that.
But hey Instagram you guys you guys turned up
so thank you and maybe there'll be more Q&A's
from Instagram in the future.
Okay so let's jump straight into this.
Megan Crofts asks how do you cope with finding the balance
between wanting to get good grades
and not letting your education/grades
harm your mental well-being?
I think this is a really good question
and is relevant for people studying for exams
whether that school, uni but also,
career stuff as well once you're in the workplace.
Finding that balance between your ambition
and wanting to succeed
but also taking care of your mental health is so important.
So this is something that works for me
and you might want to try it and see if it works for you,
but it's basically about having other people around you
who are either doing the same thing as you,
which if you're in school or at uni,
there's loads of them
or if you don't have that structured learning environment,
finding friends to kind of hold you accountable
and to maybe do like study or work parties.
So you're getting the studying done
but because there's that social element of it,
it's not as debilitating to your mental health.
You're maybe having to leave the house and go outside
and actually talk to another person,
which sounds like small things
but when you're studying for like long periods of time
and stressing that can really really help.
It also helps to have other people
make you accountable for taking breaks.
I cannot stress enough how important taking breaks are.
When I was in school, we had study leave for our exams,
I would teach myself a new skill
so my brakes were comprised of still doing something
and keeping my brain active but doing something
completely separate from what the work was.
So I learned how to knit, I learnt how to do Rubik's Cube,
I learnt how to juggle and I learn how to play guitar.
Like I'm not very good at any of these things by all means
but it just gave me something to do
and something to look forward to in terms of having a break
and I would do that for like 15 minutes or half an hour
and then get back to studying.
I realised I've talked for ages
and this is the first question
but I really do have lots of ideas about this.
I don't know whether you guys
would want a whole video on this topic
because I know that most of my viewers are now older
so we're not like in uni you're studying for many exams.
Let me know if that kind of stuff
is something that you'd still like to watch.
Rosie B asks, bit of an odd one
but have you ever felt less worthy
to be somewhere/to be part of a conversation
because of your height?
I'm 411 and find it hard
to be taken seriously/feel like I don't belong.
That's really hard and to some extent yes,
I'm 5 foot but I've also always been quite loud
and quite confident and so often people forget
how short I am.
The only times that I've really felt left out
and the people doing this,
I don't think they realise that they're doing this.
They just happen to be tall
and I'll be like standing in a conversation with people
and the conversation will just be happening over me
and I can't get into that conversation
and I just don't feel a part of it at all.
It's annoying you kind of do have to overcompensate
by being a bit louder,
if the conversation is happening up here,
you need to be a bit louder so people will kind
of include you in the conversation
or wear heels a lot!
If there are chairs, like stools
I often like sit on a stool
whilst people are standing up around me,
that gives me a bit more height.
So many practical tips for shorties, yay!
Pandawannabee asks,
how do you feel about your body post-surgery?
You lost an unhealthy amount of weight
but with societal pressure to be skinny was there a part
of you that felt good about having lost some of that weight?
Really interesting question.
So if you've only been following me recently,
like over a year ago, I came off the pill.
Coming off the pill made me gain loads of weight
and I wasn't a healthy weight before or after by no means,
I just have a very large spectrum of like healthy weight,
I think most people do.
So I'd gained all of this weight
and now is that the heaviest I've ever been
and then I got really ill and lost loads of weight.
I'm pretty sure I've been healthy
and been at that low weight before
but it just felt so different, like I know that
that was unhealthy for me
'cause I'd been so sick and I hadn't been eating
but I've now gained back loads of that weight
that I've lost
and I'm now actually sitting somewhere in the middle,
between where I was pre coming off the pill
and before getting ill.
I don't know if I'll continue to gain weight
but I'm kind of I'm happy with this.
I'd be happy if I was,
you know the same way I was before
but I definitely think that is that pressure,
like I went to see a dietician
and I'd gained back some of the weight
but I wasn't quite happy with how healthy-looking I was
and the dietician was like, so your BMI is healthy
so like you don't want to be gaining any more weight do you?
And I was like, ehhh
but yeah, I think I've gained back the weight pretty quickly
and I'm very happy with that.
The annoying thing though
about being somewhere in the middle of my two extreme weight
is that none of my bras and bikinis fit me
so I've had to fork out a lot of money on getting new ones.
Yay!
Teeceevstheworld asks, advice for young feminists
who get abuse for being such
and feeling angry but also feeling trapped
because you don't want to prove the stereotypes right?
First of all, it's okay to be angry the world is screwed up.
Sexism and racism and homophobia,
we're allowed to be angry about it
because it is infuriating.
I'm sorry that you experienced abuse for being a feminist
and sometimes it's not always enough
just to know that let you're on the right side of history
but as you get older you'll find more
and more like-minded people to surround yourself with
so you feel less alone and you can create support groups
in order to handle some of that abuse.
My friend Holly who's an author,
gave an amazing answer to this question at one
of her book events that I was interviewing her for
and I can't for the life of me remember
and it's really pissing me off.
I will message her and I'll get back to you.
Nat crook asks, where you nervous the first time having sex
again with a stoma or were you excited for a new adventure?
Yes I was excited to be having sex again
'cause it had been so long
but to be honest, I wasn't frustrated at all
because I was too busy like being ill
and recovering from surgery that that
was like the last thing that was on my mind.
I was nervous but not necessarily nervous
because of the stoma bag,
I kind of knew how to manage that.
It was more the fact that I was still so physically weak
and I am now so it's more for like be careful with my body
and I can't like move into certain positions
and I'm not very strong.
So it was more nervous about the physical activity
than the stoma badge getting in the way.
Extra idiot asks, has having a stoma affected your youtube,
like subscribers gone up slashed down,
correlates of stone vids?
It it definitely has affected it
and in a positive way.
I was really nervous having not made a video
or like done anything on social media for weeks and weeks.
That you know, everyone would forget you,
you'd come back and like half the subscribers would like
unsubscribe and no one's watching your videos anymore
because they forget about you.
Yes, all of that was going through my mind
but it turns out people really curious
about stuff that they have no idea about
and weird medical body things.
Everyone's so curious because no one talks about this.
Are there things you can't do anymore
now that you have a stoma?
Yes, I can't poo or fart out of my bum hole.
What advice would you give to someone
who would like to explore their sexuality
but don't have a chance to?
I'm assuming you mean you don't have the chance
to explore it with other people
because then in that case, you can explore it by yourself,
with or without porn, up to you.
It can be a great tool for exploring your sexuality
and figuring out what you like
but not having a sexual partner definitely isn't a barrier
to exploring your sexuality,
lots of ways that you can do that by yourself.
Daphne cp asks, would you recommend history at uni?
I'm choosing my a level options
and part of me really wants to keep doing history
but I feel like three essay based subjects
would be too much.
I studied history at uni
so of course I would recommend you studying history at uni,
it's amazing, I loved it but you are not the same as me.
Doing three essay subjects for A level,
if you like them all and you are good at time management,
then I don't see any problem with that.
Loads of people will do like three science-based subjects
or 3 essay based subjects
but doesn't necessarily hold them back
and actually the skills that you learn in each
of those classes can be fed into each other.
If essay styles are kind of similar.
For my A levels, I did history, French, politics and maths
so there were like three essay based subjects in there
and I was fine.
Up to you but yes I would recommend doing history at uni,
and if you want to do history at uni you kind
of need the A level.
Frankie Millard asks, how have you adjusted your diet
with your stoma?
This is something I'm still personally struggling with.
Initially I followed all of the doctors
and nurses instructions and had a very strict low fibre diet
so basically I was just eating carbs and meat,
just a lot of starch but to be honest
that is like my favourite diet.
My parents were kind of laughing at the situation
because my whole life that has been my favourite food
and I don't like eating my vegetables.
Even as the 26 year old adults,
I'm like what do you mean I can just eat potatoes
and meat?
Yay!
But now I'm kind of eating everything again
and actually it made me miss vegetables.
Made me miss having greens.
Your food just looks better with a bit of more colour in it.
The way that I did it,
was just what my stoma nurse recommended
so I would have a very small portion of,
let's say, really cooked broccoli
so it was very soft and I would like wait 24 hours
and see if it all came out all good
and I had no problems,
and then I would have something else
and then I would have something else.
I'm completely avoiding dried fruit and nuts though
because I do not want any blockages
but yeah I hope that you can figure out your diet soon,
I would just recommend talking to your IBD nurse
or your stoma nurse.
Extra idiot again asks, the summer and beach,
how do you feel about chilling on the beach
in a bikini with it and would/does it affect you
going into water?
So it doesn't affect me going into water,
I can do that, I just have
to put a little sticker thing over a filter,
I've not done it yet.
Maybe by the time you're watching this, I have
and you should go home Instagram
and I'm sure there's loads of stoma bikini pictures.
I feel okay about chilling out in a bikini with the stoma,
I've kind of got a variety of swimwear
so I've got like normal bikini, high-waisted
and like full swimming costume
because right now, I don't know how I'll feel in that moment
so we've got options.
The other thing is that,
I am an SPF 15 kind of gal
and that will be no more
because I kind of have to put factor 50 on my scar
because you do not want that burning.
But yeah so the main thing I'm worried about
is actually having the scar out in the open
and then the other thing I'm really sad about
is that I'm gonna forever have
like a really weird circular tan line
where the adhesive of the stoma bag is on.
I'm just never gonna get tan to there again.
Bradleyy Watts asks, from one Harry Potter fan to the next,
which Harry Potter book is your personal favourite and why?
I think my personal favourite,
I have not reread them in years
but it's the Order Of The Phoenix.
For me, it was the one that just like stepped up the stakes
and the story.
I loved the backstory of like learning about the Order
and the dark times when Lord Voldemort was its highest power
and stuff like that.
It's also like the biggest book,
there's just like so much good stuff in there.
I've not reread them so maybe I have a new favourite now
but when I was reading them like Order Of The Phoenix,
I just remember being blown away when I read that.
Bumbling liss says,
got any advice for dropping all the shit in life
and starting again in a new place?
I have zero advice for that
because I've never done it,
have no idea how to do it
and the idea of doing it terrifies me.
But if your gut, is telling you run away
then maybe do it
or maybe think about what is it about your current life
that you don't like so much
and rather than running away from your problems,
try and fix them.
If you just want a new start and try something new,
doesn't have to be forever, you can just let go
and live somewhere new for like six months or a year.
Let me know how it goes.
Tatjana Celia asks, you sometimes talk about an operation
to reverse the stoma,
why would you or would you not do that?
Are there health risks?
So yes, it is called J pouch surgery
and that our health risks,
basically once they kind of connects you all back up
there is a chance that you can get inflammation
and I would have colitis again basically.
Also if I have pouch surgery then I can't get pregnant
or I would find it really difficult to get pregnant
or something so I'm not even making any decisions
about having that surgery until after children.
It's not even on my mind.
I'm just not in a rush to get back on the operating table,
no thank you.
Nemstagram asks,
what's it like not doing a nine-to-five job?
Do you think you would prefer it?
I love not having a nine-to-five,
I like being in control of my timetable
and my week, all of that good stuff.
It allows for a lot more flexibility,
that being said, I still do a nine-to-five
like I just go sit at my kitchen table
and work except I'm doing it on my own
and not with colleagues, it's kind of sad.
I think for a short period of time,
I would like a nine-to-five.
I did have one for a bit that was part-time
so it's two days a week.
I enjoy the office vibes
and joy actually guaranteeing seeing other people.
Being freelance you're just accountable for yourself
and you know, if you lie in bed for ages
or like don't do the work,
like are you gonna tell yourself?
It's a lot easier to get stuff done
if you've got someone else who will tell you off.
But I really do love the flexibility of being freelance
even though, I create my own structure.
It's like flexible structure.
Alright there are so many more questions
and it is impossible for me to get round to them all
but I hope that you enjoyed this
and maybe I answered something that you were interested in
but we'll do more of these
because it seems like you guys want to know a lot of stuff.
So thank you for watching, please give the video a thumbs up
if you enjoyed it and I have a question
for you for the comments.
Which goes back to one of those earlier questions,
how do you deal with abuse if you are a feminist
and you're getting abused
for the simple act of being a feminist?
What do you do?
Maybe we can all kind of create a nice little support group
and help each other out.
Don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell
so you know when I upload new videos
and I'll see you soon, bye!
(upbeat instrumental music)