#ThereForME 2025 Advent Calendar
We're kicking off our 2025 advent calendar with an advent reflection
We’re excited to announce that tomorrow we’ll be opening the first door on our 2025 #ThereForME Advent Calendar.
This year, each day throughout December we’ll be celebrating someone who has been #ThereForME, based on nominations from the community. We know that support for people with ME isn’t anywhere near as good as it should be - and we’re working hard to change that. But this Christmas we wanted to take a moment to celebrate those out there in the UK who are in our corner. So, a big thank you for helping us find our 2025 Advent Calendar Stars!
We’ll be opening the doors of our advent calendar every day on social media. You can follow along on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X and Bluesky. Or, if you prefer to take your advent calendar at a slower pace, we’ll be sharing each week’s calendar stars every Tuesday right here on our Substack.
Before we begin, today we’re sharing below a very special advent reflection, penned by the formidable Jenny Wilson. We’ll see you next time.
Advent Reflection for the ME Community
Advent is a season of hope, peace, joy, and love - a time to prepare for the coming of the Saviour, Jesus Christ. Yet for those of us with ME, Advent and Christmas often bring other emotions too: sorrow, isolation, and the sharp reminder of all we cannot do. While others gather to celebrate, many of us remain in darkened rooms, unable to tolerate light, noise, or company. It is then that the loneliness of illness feels most acute and can feel overwhelming.
And yet, Advent is precisely about light shining in darkness, and hope being born when all seems lost.
As a fifty-year veteran of ME, I have witnessed two parallel stories unfold. One is the steady progress of science, gradually uncovering some of the biological roots of this devastating disease during the last quarter of the 20th century. The other is a darker story - of denial, distortion, and stigma, as powerful voices from 1988 onwards sought to redefine ME as merely psychological, and bury the research and knowledge gained. This falsehood caused profound harm: patients were abandoned, disbelieved, and sometimes destroyed by the very systems meant to protect them, while parents endured false accusations of fabricated or induced illness (FII).
But now, the truth is coming to the fore again, and the knowledge, long buried, is being regained. A new generation of scientists is rediscovering the evidence; silenced voices are being heard. For the first time, there is genuine, evidence-based hope - of biomarkers, of understanding, of treatments to come. Though some still cling to the old dogma, the medical darkness is giving way to dawn.
This Christmas, as we await the coming of Christ - the Light of the World - we also wait for the healing of truth and compassion. The hope of Advent is not naïve; it is forged in endurance and kept alive by faith.
Let us hold fast to that hope - that soon, light will shine fully into this darkest of medical chapters, and no one with ME or Long Covid will be left unseen, unheard, or disbelieved again.
With love to all in the community,
Jenny