This is a photo taken of my me and one of my little girls (my dogs) the other day. I find it such a cute photo the way she is looking at the camera and her tounge is sticking out, melts my heart.

I did not realise until after the photo was taken thar you could see me quite clearly emptying my catheter into a bottle in the photo. No comments on the colour of my urine please, hydration has been a life long issue for me, mainly due to my own issues with excepting my incontinence.

My incontinence is a part of my disability that I have always struggled with. I have no doubt that this is due to societies view of incontinence. I struggled so much with this that I had several minor procedures years ago in order to avoid avoid having any type of permanent catheter in. Eventually I had to put my medical needs over my own social anxiety and have one though, and it was the best decision.

But photos like this still make me nervous. Being open about my incontinence still makes me nervous. This may come as a shock to those who know me, and to those I am open about my incontinence with. When I talk about my incontinence I do so abstractly, as if I’m not even a part of my own experiences with it.

I’m trying to get better at it though because I believe incontinence is nothing to be ashamed of. But sometimes it’s hard to live by the things we believe. But I’m trying to do better, this photo is a way of me trying to do better.

Here’s another photo from about a year or so ago, again with my little girl. In this photo my pad is visible. I actually didn’t realise that anything I might not want the world to see was showing in this photo until after I shared it. While I ended up leaving the photo up, it did cause me a great deal of anxiety at the time. If this was a photo of just me and not me and her I would have certainly removed it.