An incident in 2015 resulted in 1st and 2nd degree burns to my face and chest.

This had a huge impact on my life - my confidence took a hit. Social anxiety. Lowered self esteem etc.

However… It ultimately gifted me with more compassion, sensitivity and empathy, increased my interest in psychology and a ‘say yes to life’ attitude.

In the earlier months of 2021 I messaged Sass + Co. Body asking if they had anything that might help hyperpigmentation. The amazing woman who spoke to me offered to send me some samples. I would send her before and after shots.

Thank you so much Sass + Co. Body - I love your products. Thank you for helping me to feel more comfortable in my own skin.

I have one main reason for wanting to write this post -

I've been messing around on social media a whole lot more over the past year. What I want to remind everyone, not just young women… everyone… Social media rarely shows the full picture. Rarely do you?

THE TIME I SET MYSELF ON FIRE: I arrived at the Royal Albert via my second ambulance of the night. The ambulance staff were really kind, they honestly made the horror of the situation easier to bear. The kindness of strangers – at one stage the young lady sitting at the back monitoring me, told me that I was doing really well and that I was very brave. Of course that made tears run down my face

– I didn't feel brave at all. I had caught sight of my face whilst in the shower at the Hospital. Things did not look good. Little did I know, it would look even worse before it would get better. I was on my own at this stage, I had sent J back to our hotel, knowing that I wouldn’t be getting back there that day. We’d booked in for one night, so I figured he should get our stuff together and have a rest.

I spent a lonely few hours sitting upright on a bed in the Alfred A & E. I couldn’t tell you how long I was there. Staff would stop in, connect a wire here, check blood pressure there, ask how the pain was, pass over yet more painkillers. At some stage a very gentle nurse came and bandaged my head up – the mummy effect. She told me that I was waiting for a bed to become available upstairs in the burns unit. Some more time passed and I had my first visitors. I was terrified of scaring the eight year old with my swollen mummified head so I didn’t let him in the room.

A little later, a specialist came to see me. Turned out this was the gentleman the doctor at the first hospital had liaised with regarding my case, she’d woken him up at 5am, bless. He was the one to tell me – things would get worse before they got better. He explained that we would need any swelling to go down, and that the face heals itself really well because it’s so well supplied by blood.