Endometriosis is an invisible illness. You wouldn’t be able to tell that a person is living with endometriosis just by looking at them. But just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Endometriosis is a condition where cells are found in places in the body where they don’t belong. It’s all internal. It doesn’t necessarily present symptoms, but when there are symptoms, they can seriously affect those who have the condition, and how they live their lives.
Endometriosis is also notoriously difficult to diagnose. The symptoms can be wildly different from person to person, making it hard to pinpoint. In addition to being physically invisible, endometriosis presents other unseen problems.
One is that people rarely talk about it. This is made worse by the fact that those living with the condition don’t always feel they can be open about it. This is unsurprising, given that endometriosis is frequently dismissed as being ‘just bad periods’, if spoken about at all. The silence and misunderstanding surrounding endometriosis can also have a negative effect on mental health. People living with the condition can feel isolated, feeling that others cannot understand their pain.
There’s a common view among people with endometriosis contributing to this project, and that’s the encouragement of talking about the condition openly. None are willing to suffer in silence any longer, and all would urge those experiencing symptoms to reach out. There is always someone to talk to and someone who will believe you.
By speaking more about endometriosis, by bringing it out into the open, we hope to make it OK to have this kind of conversation and increase awareness.
To make the invisible visible.
