My Thoughts

Living with Ménière’s disease means living with a world that can tilt, spin, roar, or collapse without warning. It’s an invisible illness, one that hides behind ordinary moments and arrives like a storm no one else can see. I wrote a poem titled, When the Room Lets Go, about this experience and you can find it in an earlier post on this site. Many people living with Meniere’s struggle with staying positive. It is incredibly difficult because when an attack hits, fear and drea

Alan Hewitson Today I woke up to news that I did not want to accept. A sentence that should not have been spoken for years to come. It hit me hard. My brain fogged over. My heart felt like it was splitting in two. One of my dearest friends had departed. No illness, no warning just a sudden parting that made my world tilt. After that call, my mind began replaying our times gone by, especially our first real encounter. It rose to the surface immediately, as if my memory knew ex

I thought coming back to Edinburgh would feel like slipping into a familiar coat, worn, warm, and perfectly mine. Instead, I landed and felt something I never expected, a quiet ache to return to São Paulo. Edinburgh is not just where I grew up, it is where my identity started to be shaped. My parents played a big role in teaching me life skills from an early age, a resilience that I was able to build on as I grew. My father, unable to work due to health issues, and my mother,

It was really a pleasant autumn afternoon here in São Paulo today, and as I had already been out for my walk this morning, I decided to go down into the grounds of the condominium. In this light with its soft golden hue, maybe I might write something, a poem or some notes for corrections on a story I am writing. The best place to catch the sunshine was next to the area that is used for tennis, ball games, or other activities. A group of boys chased footballs across the synthe

After my usual walk through the quiet streets around the condominium here in São Paulo, I finally turned to the small boxes and folders I’d brought from Edinburgh almost a year ago. They’d been waiting patiently in a corner, holding fragments of a former life. What should have been a quick 30–40 minute tidy became hours, as these things always do. You open a box and suddenly you’re not sorting, you’re travelling. Every scrap of paper demands to be read, every photograph insis

Ian`s veranda view Finding Stillness in a World on Edge I am currently sitting on my veranda, tucked away in the wooded embrace of Praia Vermelha do Sul in Ubatuba. The beach is only 450m away and the air is thick with the scent of blooming tropical flowers, aromatic woody resin and damp earth. Yet the noise is of a much older, kinder variety. The cicadas are in full chorus today, a shimmering wall of sound as they call for their mates. It’s a rhythmic, pulsing energy that fe

Two Notes, One World and a Lot of Noise The grit and surrealism of living with hearing loss, diplacusis, and tinnitus inspired this writing. It’s not a gentle thing. It’s rough and harsh, and I choose to be unapologetically honest. I now know noise as well as, or better, than anyone. You hear the world in stereo, I hear it with a confusion of sound. One musical note splits into two, like a truth that cannot decide what it wants to be. Diplacusis! Such an elegant name. It soun