8 Women Health Bloggers You Should Follow 2022 Edition

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Two Decades of Writing. Sharing Helps Me Out

8 Women in Pain Health Bloggers You Should Follow

I started an awareness campaign in 2020 that features women health bloggers that you should follow. This is my 2022 edition and you’ll find links to my 2020 and 2021 editions at the bottom of this post. Read on to be inspired and celebrate these incredible women and the work they are doing to assist chronic pain patients around the world!

Tiffany Kairos

Rise Above Epilepsy

Tiffany Kairos is well known in the chronic illness community because of her fantastic networking skills, and she has her finger on the pulse of the epilepsy community. She has been recognized time and again for her advocacy work. I’d be hard-pressed to find readers that don’t know about Tiffany’s health advocacy work and her famous Tik-Toks.

Tiffany is a friend of mine. (Mad girl crush on this lady. I adore her.) She’s an epilepsy blogger, advocate, and the founder of the The Epilepsy Network. She was involved in a car accident on December 11, 2008 when she experienced a second grand mal seizure while driving. She crashed into a tree, and was later diagnosed with epilepsy. After many tests, medication changes and adjustments, Tiffany learned that she has “Refractory Epilepsy” which is a type of epilepsy that is hard to control with medication.

Like many chronically ill patients, Tiffany has learned and grown so much with her journey with illness. She hopes that by sharing that journey, she can uplift, encourage and inspire others who are on the same journey. If you have a friend who has epilepsy, and I know I have many, send them to Tiffany’s website at Rise Above Epilepsy.

“Being diagnosed with a chronic illness can be unpleasant and uncomfortable. It flips our world on its head. Within this blog you will find my journey with epilepsy, along with inspiration and motivation for living with this condition. “
Tiffany Kairos, Rise Above Epilepsy

Nikki Albert

Brainless Blogger

Words cannot express how much I admire Nikki. She’s a terrific writer with a wicked sense of humor. She offers great tips and advice for patients who are living with chronic pain, and while her posts are serious, she is also a lot of fun.

Brainless Blogger is about chronic illness, chronic pain, and invisible disability awareness. Nikki lives with chronic migraine, Fibromyalgia, asthma, hypothyroidism, depression, and hypermobility syndrome.

Nikki have been chronically ill in one way or another since she was a child. It started with hyper-mobility syndrome that gave her joint pain and insomnia. In her teens, the joint pain, fatigue, and insomnia picked up and she began skipping school to sleep and rest. By age 20, she had her first official diagnosis: Fibromyalgia. At that time, she didn’t receive any treatment or assistant with it as she was considered to be too young to be in so much pain. She also began experiencing migraine with aura in her 20s as well and has now developed persistent migraine auras.

The impact of all this has taken a toll on her life and career. She gave up on getting her Ph.D and was eventually told by a pain clinic that she should only try to work part-time given the toll her health was taking on her life.

If you’re interested in learning about life with depression and chronic pain, how Nikki employs coping strategies to help her life her life to the fullest, and reading about the educational research content she produces, check out her blog at Brainless Blogger. I know you’ll find a lot of useful content there!

“I am now disabled. I cannot drive. I have difficulties functioning for any length of time without rest. And periods of time I need naps to get through the day. I cannot sit at my computer for any length of time without severe dizziness, so now I use my laptop on the couch. It has been a struggle to adapt ot this lower level of functionality, but I still persist in doing some things in peak functionality times (early in the morning) before the symptoms slump and things become so much harder to do.“
Nikki Albert, Brainless Blogger

Melissa Reynolds

Melissa vs. Fibromyalgia

Melissa Reynolds has published several books that are part-memoir and part self-help guides to living with fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and insomnia. In addition to being a wonderful human being who genuinely cares about her fellow patients and friends, she’s also the mother of four boys, and her yoga videos are fantastic.

Melissa has been sharing her personal journey with fibromyalgia, myofascial pain syndrome, and insomnia since 2013 on her blog called Melissa vs. Fibromyalgia. She is passionate about sharing how yoga can help you with fibromyalgia. She emphasizes simple, sustainable changes every day. Having battled fibromyalgia for more than a decade, she has learned a lot and she wants to share her life wellness plan with her readers.

In seven years I went from miserable and barely coping with life to thriving – using a combination of research and personal trial and error, I have managed to bring my pain and fatigue levels down and minimise the effects of the debilitating brain fog by using everything I have written about on my blog.
Melissa Reynolds, Melissa vs. Fibromyalgia

Lynne Said

The Healing Within Fibromyalgia

Lynne lives in Kingston-upon-Thames, England. She is a proud mom to six kids and got her fibromyalgia diagnosis in 2014. She was also diagnosed with hypothyroidism as well. She writes The Healing Within Fibromyalgia and has learned so much from her journey with fibromyalgia, she decided to become a coach and help others.

Lynne describes her story as more of a novel, but it’s such an interesting story. You should check out her interview with me at My Fibromyalgia Story by Lynne Said, which was MSW’s first interview for 2022. Her struggles with living with fibromyalgia led to some very deep and dark moments in life, but she came out on top and began helping others, first by sharing her story, and then by becoming a fully qualified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach and NLP Master Practitioner.

Taking back my quality of life from fibromyalgia was the longest, hardest and loneliest journey I have every taken. On my journey I learned what true mind and body self-care is and how crucial it is to weave it into every day so that it becomes part of your lifestyle. Your level of mind and body self-care could mean the difference between feeling healthy and happy or having to struggle with stress, burnout or worse still a chronic illness. Self-care is Healthcare!
Lynne Said, The Healing Within Fibromyalgia

Grace Bassey

Cancer Convos with Grace B.

I met Grace Bassey last year through WEGO Health’s annual WEGO Health Awards. Like every good advocate does, I make the most of this award season by checking out what other health advocates are doing and how they’re getting their messages and mission statement out to their readers and listeners. Grace’s work really stood out to me and shortly after that, I bought her memoir IMPOSSICANT: QUIRKY INSPIRATIONAL TALES FROM A CANCER SURVIVOR.

You can purchase her memoir on Amazon for a whopping $3.99. I promise this is money well spent and the further information and support you’ll receive when you join her page or YouTube channel is solid gold.

WHY? Because we should always support our friends and fellow advocates! Hit that donation button. Buy their book. Income for health advocates is always a hard thing to come by and if you can support in any way, do it. I loved Grace’s book and have bought it for a few friends who received breast cancer diagnoses last year.

Her Facebook page and YouTube channel aim to demystify the cancer disease by having discussions with patients, experts, and stakeholders in the cancer space. If you or a loved one are suffering from cancer, please check out her FB page and YouTube channel.

Cancer Convos with Grace B. is persistently pushing the needle in ensuring women, girls, (and men, of course) have the ability to lead healthy, cancer-free lives with heightened awareness and serious health conversations to extend life expectancy.
Grace Bassey

Rachel Barclift

Once Upon A Fog Blog

It’s no secret that I love art and I regularly feature artists in pain on My Several Worlds. Enter Rachel Barclift, author of Once Upon A Fog Blog. I met Rachel through one of my fibromyalgia support groups and lucky me, this talented author and illustrator agreed to be interviewed by me. You can read Rachel Barclift’s art interview about using art to cope with chronic pain here.

Rachel and I agree on many things, but one thing we both feel is certain: We feel better and a little more understood when we can share how we’re feeling through art.

Rachel’s dream was to work with The Walt Disney Company as an artist and she moved forward with that dream in 2001 when she graduated from Ringling College of Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Art in Illustration. A few years earlier, I obtained an Associates from The Art Institute of Dallas with a concentration in Computer Animation and Multimedia. It was shortly after this that Fibromyalgia came along and started wreaking havoc with her life. Like many of us, Rachel found it hard to leave home as her fibro symptoms ramped up.

Today, Rachel offers words of kindness and support to her readers while also providing many happy smiles with her gorgeous illustrations. I hope you’ll stop by her site and tell her how awesome she is!

“It was 2006 when I first started taking note of my Fibromyalgia symptoms. For years I went from doctor to doctor, never finding any answers. I went to one doctor who told me my pain was all in my head. In 2011, I finally found a doctor that believed me! I was officially diagnosed by my rheumatologist and I was so relieved!”
Rachel Barclift, Once Upon A Fog Blog

Lucy Barnes

LB Health and Lifestyle

Lucy writes about her journey with chronic illness on her blog called LB Health and Lifestyle.

Two years ago she was taken to hospital with a rapid heart rate, high blood pressure, low body temperature, intense chest pain, extreme dizziness, blurred vision, trembling and shooting pain, tingling and weakness down her right arm and leg. Just like many other patients, her tests came back clear, leaving her wondering what was happening and how her life had derailed so quickly.

She saw three different doctors who diagnosed her with anxiety. Lucy was referred to a cardiologist and after months of tests was eventually diagnosed with dysautonomia and postural tachycardia syndrome, a dysfunction of the autonomic system, where my heart rate increases by an abnormally large amount when going from lying down to sitting and standing.

She shares health & wellness tips and treatments that helping to improve my physical and mental health as well as healthy nourishing recipes and tips for transitioning to a low toxin lifestyle. Her blog documents her life with dysautonomia, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and post viral fatigue/chronic fatigue.

“Going from being a fit healthy independent person to having difficulty standing up and being unable to leave the house on my own, work, play sport, go to church and becoming isolated from my friends made it the most lonely, scary and challenging time of my life, both physically and mentally. “
Lucy, LB Health and Lifestyle

Estela and Juana Mata

Looms For Lupus

The Mata sisters created Looms For Lupus in January 2011 to provide an environment for education and outreach to Lupus and Fibromyalgia survivors and their family members through multiple avenues such as hands-on workshops, informational clinics, bilingual resources, and psychosomatic support groups for overall physical and mental health.

In 2009 the oldest of the three sisters was diagnosed with Lupus, an autoimmune disorder, something the family knew very little about. They researched it and began spreading the word about this disease, it was then when they realized that most people did not know what it was or had very little knowledge about it. They want to educate and support Lupus survivors, their family and caregivers.

And thus Looms for Lupus was born.

“Looms for Lupus is a non profit corporation providing resources and awareness to minority families and those affected by Lupus, Fibromyalgia, and other overlapping illnesses. Looms for Lupus forms partnerships with similar agencies and patient care facilities to provide support and resources for overall physical and mental health. Our aim is to create an environment to reassert a sense of hope during times of illness and to empower individuals to take charge of their life through chronic and often life-threatening illness.“
Juana and Estela Mata, Looms For Lupus

I love that they prominently feature art for pain therapy. They do a lot of loom knitting, but they also regularly feature videos for other types of art projects that chronically ill patients can take on to relieve stress.

And as you know, I’m a huge advocate of art therapy. Perhaps you’ll see them here on My Several Worlds one day as featured artists in my Art for Chronic Pain series!

And that’s that! Thank you for joining me. I do a round-up of health bloggers each year. You can check out my 2020 Women in Pain Edition and 2021 Women in Pain Edition by clicking on the links.

Do you know any of these amazing bloggers on my list? Make sure you show them so love on social media and give them a shout-out! Don’t forget to Pin It!