Life with a Flare

A couple months ago I did a post about self image and chronic illness and here is my long promised post about clothing and chronic illness. Shopping, as it is for most girls, used to be my favorite activity, but somewhere along my journey of medical problems I came to despise it. Braces would make it hard to try things on and I have constant restrictions on what types of shoes I can and cannot wear. On top of that I have to think about what will accommodate my joints, should they decide to swell. Clothing is complicated! Here are some tips that make clothing easier (at least for me and I hope you too!) Yoga Pants , these things are my savior, they are very forgiving for muscle mass changes and joint swelling. I probably wear yoga pants. Another bonus about yoga pants is they are easy to put on. Jeans , these tend to be a no go, although I have found ways to wear them more recently. 1st I have let go of the whole skinny jeans trend. When I buy jeans I make sure they are stretc...

Today I am going to write about a taboo subject- body image, and how living with chronic illness/pain has affected it. I get told how great my body is a lot, I am tall and fairly skinny. Not to be egotistic but I look pretty good in a bikini. I should love how I look. I should be confident of my body, after all I just bought a pair of size 2 jeans. Yet I still struggle with loving my body. My New Jeans! In middle school I thought my legs were fat, that was when I had muscles from horseback riding, today I miss my muscular legs. My thighs tend to be two different sizes, the left one is almost always smaller. The reason for this is simple, my left quad has atrophied from months of limping and being on crutches when I was 15/16, at one point it was so bad my doctor measured it and the difference was a good 2 cm in circumference. Today they are almost the same size, and probably look the same to anyone else, but to me they still look different. If you haven't guessed it yet, ...