Advocacy doesn’t have a singular look — it can be quiet or loud; it can happen in your homes or on Capitol Hill. In this can’t-miss conversation, Kat and Skye have the honor of speaking with Morgan Fitzgerald, a migraine advocate, neuroscience Ph.D. student, and creator of the Life With Migraine community. Morgan shares her migraine journey — a tale of both hope and recovery — and how she stumbled into advocacy and gained confidence along the way. Come for the pep talk, and stay for the goblins (just trust us, OK?).
You can also listen on our Spotify for Podcasters page and on Apple Podcasts.
Additional Reading:
14 Ways to Become an Advocate for Your Medical Condition
Episode Transcript:
Skye Gailing
Welcome to Health and (un)Wellness.
Kat Harrison
A podcast brought to you by The Mighty, where we put the human back in health. I’m Kat.
Skye Gailing
And I’m Skye, and we are your hosts for this season, Mighty With Migraine.
Kat Harrison
Between the two of us, our heads have over 33 years of experience being a pain in our brains.
Skye Gailing
Yours too? Let’s be friends who wear sunglasses inside.
Kat Harrison
Now onto today’s episode, where we’ll be discussing communication, language, and advocacy around migraine.
Skye Gailing
Hello, Kat.
Kat Harrison
Hello, Skye.
Skye Gailing
Do you know how you get smarter?
Kat Harrison
How, Skye?
Skye Gailing
You bring on people who know more than you!
Kat Harrison
Yes, it’s my favorite. Really excited for today’s episode. Listeners, we have a truly spectacular guest that we’ve been saving toward the end of the season. For this very reason, I am just so pleased to introduce you to Morgan Fitzgerald, who is a neuroscience PhD student committed to improving the quality of life for individuals who live with migraine. She is the founder of Life With Migraine – one of my favorite Instagram accounts – an online advocacy platform that serves as a central resource for people to connect, access information, and share their experiences. Welcome, Morgan.
Skye Gailing
Welcome, Morgan!
Morgan Fitzgerald
Hello, thank you so much for having me.
Kat Harrison
You are so welcome. This is going to be a delight. Skye and I have so much to talk about. So we’re going to start with the really important stuff first, which is, what is your dog’s name?
Morgan Fitzgerald
Thank you so much for asking. I agree that this is vital information. My dog’s name is Scout. He is a Papillon. He’s only six and he is currently sleeping behind me.
Kat Harrison
OK, I guess we have to talk about migraine now, but would love to know just a little bit more about your story, Morgan, since the listeners are very, very familiar with Skye and I. So I guess my first question is, how many years have you been diagnosed?
Morgan Fitzgerald
So I am 27 now and I have been diagnosed with migraine since I was 12, so most of my life.
Kat Harrison
Least favorite migraine symptom.
Morgan Fitzgerald
Least favorite has to be pain. It’s also just the one that I struggle with the most.
Kat Harrison
That’s fair. That’s fair.
Skye Gailing
What is the most annoying question you get asked about migraine?
Morgan Fitzgerald
Probably something along the lines of, “Wait, isn’t it just a headache?”
Skye Gailing
Oh, oh!
Kat Harrison
Classic.
Skye Gailing
That’s the one. That’s the cringe.
Morgan Fitzgerald
Yep, that one gets me every time.
Kat Harrison
Is that the same for you, Skye? Would that be your answer?
Skye Gailing
Yeah, that and the, “Why aren’t you better.”
Kat Harrison
My favorite is, “Have you tried cutting out gluten?” Or really, you could substitute “gluten” with, “Have you tried cutting out dairy?” So Morgan, one of the reasons why we wanted to invite you on is one, I really, really admire your advocacy – not just for people living with migraine, but I feel even more importantly, for people that don’t live with it. I feel like you explain it in a really technical but approachable way. And the other thing I appreciate about you is that you have a story of hope when it comes to migraine and I don’t always feel like we get to hear those. So I would love to hear a little bit about your journey and how you got here.
Morgan Fitzgerald
Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for those incredibly kind words. I feel like advocacy and sharing a – in terms of migraine recovery – success story is a delicate topic because I know that there are so many people who are struggling immensely. But as I mentioned before, I’ve had migraine since I was 12 – and they were just episodic attacks – and they really kind of came up around the time of puberty and dissipated for several years until I was 16.
Halfway through high school, I started having two-week-long migraine attacks. So very, very extended. Most people with migraine say that they have attacks for an average of about three days, but these were two-week long, very debilitating, and so I then got on some preventative medications that helped tremendously. I went back to episodic and then it wasn’t until my junior year in undergrad that I had this thunderclap headache. I call it a headache, because that’s truly the medical term that’s used to describe the event. It basically felt like a volcanic eruption of pain on the left side of my head and it was a level of pain that I’ve never experienced before.
And at the time, I just thought it was a really severe migraine attack so I took my acute meds, and took a break, and just tried to return to normal life a few days later. But it was actually the start of something called refractory migraine, which is, you can think of it as a migraine attack all the time, some kind of migraine symptom 24/7. So a few months later, I was really struggling in undergrad with this and so I ended up dropping out. I had to move home back into my childhood bedroom with my parents and I ended up being completely bedridden for almost two and a half years, saw all the best doctors and all the top Western medicine doctors that I could access, and really, no one knew what it was. No one could help me. And it was a very, very slow and long process of trying all different treatments, and kind of inching my way through recovery. It really wasn’t until 2018 when we finally had migraine-specific preventative medications come on the market.
Kat Harrison
Why did it take us this long, people?
Morgan Fitzgerald
I know. I know. It was incredible to finally have that option. Fortunately, it came at a time in my recovery where it was able to help me. I wasn’t so far down the road, I was able to access them. I was already in the medical system and my neurologist was able to get me on them as soon as they came on the market – and these are the CGRP monoclonal antibodies for people who might be wondering – and they didn’t “fix me.” It’s by no means a cure, but it tipped the scales a little bit and started to knock down that – anywhere from seven out of 10 to 10 out of 10 – pain that I was having every single day for years at this point.
I slowly, after getting on those medications, started to improve. I felt like every step that I took after that in terms of trying a new treatment or trying some kind of lifestyle management started to compound and my recovery gained speed in really quite an exponential manner. So eventually, I was able to return to undergrad. I ended up graduating. I was, albeit, kind of limping through at the time. It was very hard.
And then the pandemic hit, and everything shut down. I was working from home and stress levels were at an all-time low because I had a job. I had graduated and I was just living with my family. I know it was a really hard time for a lot of people, but it ended up being really, really critical in terms of my recovery because I basically got to just prioritize my health and work to sustain myself, but at the same time, take breaks and ensure that I was prioritizing my health. My recovery gained a tremendous amount of speed in those years during the pandemic and it actually enabled me to be well enough to enter graduate school, which I did this past fall.
That’s kind of where I’m at today; I’m managing quite well. I would say I’m now back to being episodic. So to go from daily refractory migraine to now two or three attacks per month – basically, from being completely disabled to someone who’s living 85 to 90% normal life with migraine – is something that I try to tell people that it is possible to go from the absolute depth of the disease to returning to a life that provides a lot of happiness and a lot of joy for myself.
Kat Harrison
Oh, Skye, doesn’t that just make you smile?
Skye Gailing
It does. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Kat and I talk a lot about how we’re like, “Huh, what is thriving with migraine?” and then we get to talk to Morgan and we’re like, “Oh! That’s thriving with migraine.” Based on all your experience that helps you to be the amazing advocate you are, how did you get into migraine advocacy?
Morgan Fitzgerald
Yes, advocacy is an interesting thing for me to talk about because it was nothing that I planned on doing. I didn’t anticipate it becoming this really hardcore passion of mine and something that – my PhD obviously competes for my time with advocacy but oftentimes my heart sits in advocacy, sometimes even more than my own research. I just kind of stumbled into it because throughout my journey, and, you know, seeing the community online and also in person in terms of migraine – and then also in my own health care and even at the “top” medical institutions, that health care around migraine was severely lacking. I just saw this huge gap in understanding and education around migraine and I knew it was impacting my health care even as a very educated female. My undergrad degree is also in neuroscience so I really felt like I had an advantage, and it was still detrimental to my progress in terms of doctors dismissing me and people not believing that migraine was real or worthy of treatment. It just lit a fire under me and I felt like I had the privilege and the education and the background to be in such a strong position to try and educate, raise awareness, and empower patients that it was something that I just had to do, essentially. The path unfolded before me and I just started running down it.
Kat Harrison
Let’s take a quick break and then dive back in.
Ubrelvy Migraine Mid-Roll
Hi, I’m Ali Raisman. I’ve been living with migraine for a while. As an athlete and gymnast, I was taught to just power through the pain. Now I use Ubrelvy or Ubrogepant to treat my migraine attacks. As soon as I feel a migraine attack, I take Ubrelvy, which provides me with quick relief. Once I get relief, I go on with my day. I’m partnering with Ubrelvy to share my migraine story.
Ubrelvy quickly stops migraine in its tracks within two hours without worrying where you are. Most people had pain relief and some even had pain freedom within two hours. Ubrelvy treats migraine attacks in adults and is not for prevention. It’s available by prescription only. Do not take with strong CYP3A4 inhibitors or if allergic to Ubrelvy. Allergic reactions can happen and may occur hours to days after use — get medical help right away if you have swelling of the face, mouth, tongue, or throat or trouble breathing. The most common side effects were nausea and sleepiness.
My hope is that by sharing my migraine story, and the relief I get from Ubrelvy, it can help someone else. Ask your doctor about Ubrelvy, the anytime, anywhere migraine medicine. Find more product information at Ubrelvy.com or call 8444-UBRELVY. Sponsored by AbbVie.
Kat Harrison
And we’re back. So we asked our community if they felt confident enough or “educated” enough to explain migraine to other people, and the three choices we gave them were, “Yes, because I live with it,” “Yes because I love someone who does,” or “No, I don’t.” And I was actually really surprised by the percentages of people who don’t feel like they have the confidence or don’t know enough about it. 27% of people said they didn’t feel confident. And so I guess I wonder, Morgan, over time, have you gained more confidence in sharing about migraine to others?
Morgan Fitzgerald
Oh, absolutely. When I actually started Life With Migraine, I kept it entirely separate from my own personal Instagram, for example, and I felt like it wasn’t safe to talk about because it’s so stigmatized and so misunderstood. I wonder if those people who are saying that they’re not comfortable or confident enough to explain migraine, is it really that they don’t understand the disease or is it that they’re so unsure of how people may react – or they feel so uncomfortable because of the stigma that they’ve been brought up in around this disease and how we see it portrayed in media or misportrayed? It’s really a shame to see that people who are living with this disease don’t even feel comfortable enough to talk about it, and that’s a really big part of why I started my page, and why I do share so vocally, and do so many outreach activities, is to try and bring people into a space of, “It’s OK to talk about.” People are not going to understand because there is this stigma, but if we all start talking about it, and we all start having these kinds of conversations, then we really can change the narrative.
Skye Gailing
Yes, stigma is such a key part of either lack of education or lack of confidence in a person’s understanding of migraine, even if they live with it themselves. But I know Kat’s also a big migraine advocate, and Kat, you’ve tied your like personal social media presence in with your experience with migraine and as an advocate. Would you also share some of your advocacy story and experience with us, please?
Kat Harrison
Oh, why? Thank you for asking, Skye. So what’s really interesting, right, is like, yes, I do consider myself a migraine advocate, but not nearly in the way that I would say Morgan is. I feel like I go more for the heart of advocacy and chronic pain and chronic illness in general, to be honest. I don’t feel well enough to post a lot on social media these days. I did want to make the comment, we keep mentioning Instagram, and wow, what a world we live in now where we can advocate for a neurological disease on social media and people actually listen and engage. That was not a thing 10 years ago, and it’s really, really exciting that we’re there. But I think my advocacy, to be quite frank, came a lot when I joined The Mighty. I think I realized that when I started talking about what I was going through, it wasn’t necessarily that other people started speaking up at first, but they really started to understand me better. And that kind of gave me the confidence and the fire to be like, whoa.
If I say something, that gives it more power, and when I give words more power, other people take it more seriously. And so I would say I’m not thriving with migraine whatsoever. I have a lot of other health conditions that complicate my experience with pain. So I’m not quite in the position that Morgan is, but I think it’s OK. And I think that’s kind of the beauty of advocacy, right? Not everyone’s story is like yours, but not everyone’s story about migraine is like mine, either. Or yours, Skye, right? And I think that that was part of why I wrote my picture book, “Migraine and Mia,” because I wanted to create an accessible way to be an advocate, in a way that felt very tangible, in a way that was very approachable to people who either live with it or don’t. So I guess my moral is, there’s no right way to be an advocate, and if you just start speaking about it, the world is going to be a lot better off. But we didn’t bring up the bad side of advocacy, which is, it’s really exhausting. It’s really tiring. How much time do you put in, Morgan, would you say, normally?
Morgan Fitzgerald
Oh, gosh. So advocacy for me – like you said, obviously, Instagram is a huge part. I also have a blog. I do some longer-form writing for different sites on migraine. I also do episodes on podcasts like this and some speaking engagements to educate companies about migraine and their workforce. Advocacy for me spans so many different avenues. While it ranges so much week to week, I would say on a light week, it would be maybe six hours a week and on a heavy week, it would be more than 15.
Kat Harrison
That’s a lot.
Morgan Fitzgerald
It is a lot.
Kat Harrison
When advocacy is not your normal gig that you do during the week. It’s exhausting and I think a lot of the burden unfortunately is on the patients to be advocates, publicly, to be advocates for themselves, to be advocates for the people in their lives, to be advocates for medical professionals. You actually posted a stat yesterday that made me fall out of my chair, metaphorically, Morgan. How much time do medical professionals spend studying migraine?
Morgan Fitzgerald
So the average doctor, say, a general practitioner or your family medicine doctor only has an average of two hours of education on migraine.
Skye Gailing
Excuse me?
Morgan Fitzgerald
But 80% – I think the average is 80 to 85% of people seeking treatment for migraine go and see a family doctor or a general practitioner because they either can’t get a referral to a neurologist or their insurance won’t cover it. It’s a rough statistic, but I think it’s really important to educate because it does give patients, I think, some empowerment, and just knowing if I have lived with this disease for anywhere more than three months, then I have to know more about what this disease means for me than the doctor that’s sitting across from me if they only have two hours of education on the disease.
Skye Gailing
Wow, yeah, that just really put a lot into perspective for me. My goodness.
Kat Harrison
That’s like a movie, like a long movie’s worth. Two episodes of television that you’re binging on a disease that affects so many people globally. It’s really frustrating, but I think that that makes sense why we’re so fired up to tell more people about it. It’s not really hard to find people who live with it.
Morgan Fitzgerald
No.
Kat Harrison
We would not be getting likes on Instagram. Most people don’t engage with that content purely because they’re interested, quite frankly. Usually, it’s because they’re finding validation and finding some level of being seen in what we’re putting out there, advocacy-wise. But two hours, Skye.
Skye Gailing
Yeah, so I had not read that statistic before entering this recording booth and I don’t even know what to say. I was not prepared for that low number. But I guess, thinking about that… Morgan, you spend like six to maybe even over 15 hours being an advocate and that’s just the one aspect of your life and who you are as a person. On top of being an advocate, you got, being Morgan the person and dog parent on top of being a Ph.D. student, and then also living with migraine. How do you get the spoons? How do you balance all of it?
Morgan Fitzgerald
It’s a question I ask myself probably every week, and it varies. In some weeks, I prioritize my partner and my dog and my social life, and other weeks, like this week, are really big advocacy weeks for me. I find it kind of ebbs and flows and I think I’ve been doing it long enough now that I have a pretty good system in terms of, OK, this week, I’m doing blog content. This week, I’m doing Instagram content. Let’s batch. Let’s schedule all the podcast interviews for another week. I kind of try to compartmentalize so I can use the talking energy in my brain for one week when I think it’s a lower stress week in terms of my Ph.D., and vice versa. I would say most of it is just managing sleep and exercise and rest in the moments at which I have downtime, and I have to be really intentional about giving myself breaks because I do still live with migraine and I do still have flares and bad weeks. I will slow down and cancel things if I have to when the weeks are a little bit rougher, and that’s just part of being a chronically ill advocate. I have to prioritize my health and sometimes that means sacrificing meetings in terms of my PhD, sometimes that’s sacrificing advocacy events. And at the end of the day, if I just look at the overarching average, as long as I’m still aimed in the right direction and taking steps towards all of my goals, and I still feel really fulfilled in what I’m doing, then it’s all worth it.
Kat Harrison
I feel like that is the exact illustration of advocacy. Sometimes you prioritize advocating for the disease for others who live with it, for people who don’t live with it, and sometimes you have to advocate for yourself because you live with the disease. I think it’s really healthy to do that. I will say when I am on Instagram, which isn’t a ton these days, but when I do see you post something like, “Hey, I haven’t been around much,” or you know, “I’ve been taking care of myself,” that allows me actually to go, “People are taking care of themselves out there. It’s not just me wanting to take care of myself,” because I do feel a lot of pressure. And by the way, we haven’t said this yet, but you don’t have to be an advocate. I do want to say that very strongly. I do not believe that every person needs to fight for public policy and needs to try and make change in the world. It’s OK to just listen to those who are and just advocate for yourself. I think everyone in their own little microcosm is making steps forward about migraine, and what do they say about legislation? Sometimes the strongest things we can do are in your own community, in your own household. I think that that is the same here as well.
Skye Gailing
I was about to say, I definitely do not consider myself an advocate nor do I advertise myself as one, so I’m enjoying learning about it all from you two.
Kat Harrison
Morgan, one thing we’ve talked about in prior episodes is the terminology around migraine. Obviously, we are all referring to it as a singular. I’m really, really happy to see more and more people adopting that. It’s OK by the way – we’ve talked about this before – if you add an S on the end. It’s not the end of the world. I think it’s more about just understanding why and trying. But I’m curious. Can you tell me a little bit about what you did with Grammarly?
Morgan Fitzgerald
Yes! So Grammarly, as many of you will probably know it, is this writing/editing software, I guess is the best way to describe it. It has this Chrome extension, and it will just edit your emails and pretty much anything that you type within your browser. It’s a really fantastic tool to help you write and I noticed when I was using it to edit all of my blog write-ups and emails about migraine that it would always autocorrect “migraine” to “migraines.” I thought, this is something that seems fixable, so I did contact the company a couple [of] times. After a few emails and poking them a bit, they did change it so that it no longer autocorrects to “migraines.” That was a big win in my book because it’s a huge platform that I don’t know how many 10s of 1000s of people use, and now they’re not autocorrecting “migraine.”
Kat Harrison
That’s so awesome. It’s like a subtle thing, right? I think that’s the other thing. Not all advocacy has to be really splashy; something as simple as writing a text message and using it, modeling for someone else how to use it. So I think it’s pretty badass that you did that, Morgan.
Skye Gailing
Oh, yeah.
Morgan Fitzgerald
Oh, thank you.
Kat Harrison
Very cool. I think that that brings us to another thing that I wanted to make sure we brought up. So aside from the terminology, how we talk about migraine, how it makes us feel – visceral, imaginative, creative language really helps to describe it. I don’t know about your experiences, and I’d be interested to hear, but if you tell someone I am in pain, I don’t think that means anything to anyone, I’ve learned. I don’t know your experiences, but I feel like pain is so abstract. What does pain mean? I don’t know. Has the person ever experienced the level of pain that I have? Maybe not. I’m curious if either of you have any really strong descriptions or how you describe your migraine to other people.
Skye Gailing
I’m pretty boring when it comes to that. I’ve kind of… I don’t want to say I’ve given up on trying to make people understand, but somewhat. I’m a bit tired of it. As I’m sure you two know that feeling all too well. I’ll actually be annoying and be like, “Hey, you want to know what happens to blood vessels when they dilate and what they look like?” So I go with that route and try to – I don’t want to say try to freak them out with body horror and science… but I think that’s my method.
Morgan Fitzgerald
Oh my gosh, I love that. Just get so biological that they’re horrified with the mechanism. I think this is a really interesting point. So everyone that you describe pain to – although migraine can be more than pain. I obviously mentioned that it’s my most disabling symptom – everyone that you meet that you try to describe migraine to is going to be viewing it through their lens of pain – what pain means to them. Some people, the most pain they’ve felt is breaking a bone or some people have tremendous pain with a paper cut. Both of those experiences are valid, and maybe that’s what their 10 on a 10 pain scale is. So when I try to describe migraine for me, I say, “It is the most intense experience in terms of nervous system dysfunction and it feels like my head is cracked open. It feels like I’ve been spinning in circles for five minutes and now I’m trying to walk forward. It feels like I’m wearing those drunk goggles. All of those are happening at the same time during an attack.” I try to relate it to like very tangible experiences that people may have, or may have seen either in the media or just in life, and give them some kind of way for them to translate it into their own lens of their own experiences.
Kat Harrison
That’s such a good point. One reason I knew that you both would get along is because you both have science minds. I would never talk about my nervous system when describing it to someone so I love that you both actually naturally go there. But we asked the community – and just a trigger warning that these are very, very visceral – but I want to read them because I do think that they describe migraine to a tee in terms of a lot of people. “It feels like I’ve been head-butting a brick wall.” “Someone has their thumb behind my eyes and is trying to push my eyeballs out of the socket.” “I’m in a tiny little room inside my brain where a group of goblins beat the crap out of the inside of my skull with their huge battle axes.” What else, “A dental drill through your skull.” “Driving a railroad stake.” So lots of violent imagery. When I hear those, I cringe. I just realized no one on this podcast can see me but I’m cringing because they make you feel something, and they don’t make me feel good. They make me feel bad. And I think that elicits an empathetic response, which I think is what we’re going for. That’s why we tell people how we feel so they can go, “Oh, OK, that really sucks. How can I help you?” Or at least that’s what we’re hoping they’ll respond with.
Skye Gailing
One of my favorites was somebody talking about the nervous system overload they have and somebody commented, “Like a circuit breaker box. It’s overloaded and about to trip off the breaker.” And that reminds me, Morgan, of what you said, how this nervous dysfunction is happening. That’s such a good way to explain it. I’m gonna take that.
Kat Harrison
Morgan, I would love for you to tell us, where are some good resources that people can go to? They can be advocates, they can be websites, just to learn more about the disease scientifically or other people’s experiences if you have any suggestions.
Morgan Fitzgerald
Absolutely. Where I got a lot of my information when I was starting my journey with migraine was actually the Migraine World Summit, which is a fantastic annual event. It’s free. It’s in March. It’s virtual. They interview a series of experts over five days and they cover every topic in migraine from preventative meds, to diets and exercise, to pain reprocessing therapy they covered this year and I think they covered cannabis as well. So the whole gamut of topics around migraine and the forefront of leaders in terms of migraine research. It’s a really incredible event and it’s free so I highly recommend everyone mark their calendars. Miles for Migraine is another great free resource. They have a lot of educational webinars. You can sign up for their newsletter and they’ll let you know. They’re usually in the evenings, so very accessible to people who work full-time.
Kat Harrison
Do you have to walk? Is that a walking activity?
Morgan Fitzgerald
Good question. There is some confusion around it. So Miles for Migraine is a fundraising nonprofit. They do have Walk/Run/Relax events throughout the US but you do not have to walk. They also have throughout the year totally free webinars that are educational in terms of migraine. They bring on – kind of similar to the Migraine World Summit – they will to bring on experts and talk about how to use mindfulness for migraine, or what’s the latest treatments that are coming down the pipeline for migraine. They’re usually about 30 to 45 minutes, and they’re all throughout the year instead of the Migraine World Summit which is all in this bundle of five days in March. That’s a really, really fantastic resource. Migraine Pal is another website that I like a lot. It’s actually written and operated by a guy who also runs Migraine World Summit, but it’s really, really accessible information around migraine. And the last website I’ll mention is CHAMP, it’s the Coalition for Headache and Migraine Patients. I mention this one in particular because they have a lot of resources for insurance. Approvals, appeals, how to deal with denials, and I think they even break it out by state, so that is a really great one to check out if you’re struggling with insurance denials.
Skye Gailing
Yes. Wrote that down.
Kat Harrison
I’m pretty sure that Skye and I just both became the emoji version of the really wide eyes and open scream face.
Morgan Fitzgerald
I did see some wide eyes, yeah.
Kat Harrison
Those were really great, and I feel like those are not [the] ones that people always talk about.
Skye Gailing
And I have like a million more questions that I’m like, “The second we’re done recording, I have to ask Morgan, these five things.” I wish we could keep going.
Kat Harrison
Morgan, if you could give one piece of advice. There’s someone out there who is hungry to “become an advocate,” because again, everyone is an advocate, even if you’re silent. Because you live with it, you know it. You have lived experience. But what would be one tip for someone trying to get involved?
Morgan Fitzgerald
I think it would be to trust your gut and your intuition and remember that advocacy is not always public as we’ve mentioned. Advocacy can happen within your relationships, within the quiet corners of your medical appointments. If you feel like you need to set a boundary or you need to ask for something or you need to be more adamant about having a conversation in your health care appointments, then trust yourself. Trust yourself on that because you – as I said earlier on an episode – you know what this disease means for you. You know how this disease is impacting your quality of life, what you need, and how you need support from either your doctors or the people around you. Trust how you feel and speak out when your energy allows.
Kat Harrison
That’s so good. I think starting with self-advocacy is a great, great starting point. Practice talking to your doctor about migraine. Practice talking to your dog, to your cat, to your Iguana. See how it feels. See how it sounds. See how they react as your dog tilts its head because it’s really, really interesting. Morgan, where can people find you? How can they connect with you?
Morgan Fitzgerald
I am all over the internet to be honest, but the easiest place to find me is probably on Instagram. It’s @lifewithmigraine, no spaces, no dashes, all lowercase. I also have a blog if you’re interested in reading some longer-form articles of mine. It is lifewithmigraine.home.blog. I am always looking to connect to the community. I have a lot of IG lives and open question boxes to be able to connect with people and answer questions, so absolutely come find me and we can talk all about migraine.
Kat Harrison
Morgan, thank you so much for being here. It was a treat, the best part of my week, and I always learn so much from you
Skye Gailing
Yes, thank you so much, Morgan, for joining us. It’s an honor to meet you and to have you on this episode.
Morgan Fitzgerald
Thank you guys so much for having me. It was so exciting to be able to have this conversation and I look forward to continuing this conversation many years into the future.
Skye Gailing
And thank you out there to everyone listening. We hope you laughed and learned in equal measure and that your head is kind to you today.
Kat Harrison
Join us on our next episode where we’ll be talking about how to best support someone with migraine.
Skye Gailing
No pressure to bring your best self, just your authentic one.
Kat Harrison
Because we’re here for you in sickness and in health. Download The Mighty app for more