Campaign Update #4

Oonagh in the news and one for the Creatives

Dear Substackers,

We hope you’ve had a great weekend!

We’ll be in your inbox with a proper post on Tuesday (hereafter ‘#ThereForME Tuesdays’) but we wanted to share a couple of quick updates with you before then.

Oonagh Cousins in the Times

We were delighted that our very own Oonagh Cousins was featured in The Times this week. Oonagh spoke to Eleanor Hayward about Olympic rowing, Long Covid, the stigma around chronic illness and her support for #ThereForME. Alongside her research work at the University of Oxford, Oonagh is part of our small team at #ThereForME and volunteers with Long Covid Support.

You can read the Times piece here (paywalled) and a snap of the piece in print below. We’re delighted to see the media coverage of #ThereForME continuing.

Community voices: understanding ME/Long Covid through music, words and art

Since launching our campaign we’ve been keen to find ways for our supporters to share their ideas with the world - especially those who may not have the energy to write a full piece for us.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be test-running a new project collecting voices from the ME and Long Covid communities.

First up we want to hear your answers to this question:

Is there a song, book, poem, film or piece of art that you think would help people understand what it's like to have ME or Long Covid?

If something comes to mind, let us know here. We’ll be sharing some of the responses via our Substack in a few weeks’ time. And if you need some inspiration, you can see some of my personal picks here.

That’s all from us for now - until next time!