We are always on the lookout for people from the ME/CFS and Long Covid community to share their story.

Your article should help people in some way. This could be by giving practical tips, sharing useful information or telling an inspiring story about how you navigate the challenges of living with a chronic illness.

If you would like to share your experience or words of wisdom the information below will give you more details on exactly what we are looking for.

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Here are some topics you could write about. The list is not exhaustive. We are always open to new ideas. If something has helped you there is a good chance it could help someone else so why not write about it!

It would be ideal (but not essential) if you could break your article down into subtopics. For example “3 ways to _____” or “5 tips for ____” with each tip being a subheading.

• Energy saving hacks
• My health often stops me from _____. Here is what I do instead
• Mobility aids
• Food prep, easy meals to cook
• Work – stopping work, returning to work, working for yourself 
• Dating and relationships
• Pregnancy – Was it easy to conceive? How was your pregnancy and your labour? What impact did it have on your health? What would you do differently if you had another child? 
• Parenting – how do you balance caring for your child with caring for yourself? What emotions do you feel and how do you deal with them?
• How you overcame depression or suicidal thoughts. Can you suggest any helpful resources or strategies 
• What helped your nervous system? How have you reduced your anxiety?
• What advice would you give to someone recently diagnosed. Or what advice would you give to yourself at the beginning of your illness? What would you do differently?

They can be mainstream or alternative. When writing the article you may want to include:

• How long the treatment took to work
• What percentage improvement you experienced
• What symptoms improved
• Describe how you were before and after treatment 
• Cost
• Practioner

Recovery stories are great and we will be featuring some of them but it’s also important to celebrate the wins throughout your healing journey.

• Perhaps you’ve gone from severe to moderate – tell us how you did it
• Perhaps you started working part time – was it hard? What advice do you have for others who are thinking of returning to work? 
• Maybe you found love or started a family – how did you achieve this while navigating the challenges of chronic illness?
• What is the best change you ever made for your health and what impact did it have?
• If you have fully recovered how did you do it? What helped you the most?

When family members become your carers it can put a huge strain on your relationship, especially if they don’t understand or even believe in your illness. This section of website aims to help educate people about the realities of living with ME/CFS or Long Covid and how to support people with these illnesses. Topics you may want to discuss are:

• What do you wish people understood about ME/CFS or Long Covid?
• What are some of the lesser known aspects of ME/CFS or Long Covid?
• How has your illness impacted your life, what emotions do you feel?
• How could family members help you deal with these issues?
• What could family members do to help you feel supported? And what should they not do?
• What has surprised you most about living with ME/CFS or Long Covid?
• What are some misconceptions people have about ME/CFS or Long Covid? Dispel the myths in your article by explaining the reality 

We would also love carers to share their story and explain what the people they are caring for could do to help them. Do you have any strategies that you and your loved one have implemented to make both your lives easier?

While living with ME/CFS or Long Covid can be tough, and these struggles will likely feature in your article, overall the article needs to be positive rather than negative.

When talking about a difficult situation say what you would do differently if the situation arose again or what you learnt from the experience. Don’t simply have a rant about how rubbish life is with this illness because we all know it sucks!

Articles need to be 500 – 1500 words. For reference this page is just over 1000 words.

If you don’t have the energy to write a full article but would still like to contribute then join our mailing list (link at the bottom of the page). Periodically we will email everyone asking if they would like to contribute their experiences for articles we are currently writing. For example we may be discussing a particular treatment and would be looking for people to share their experience of it – did it help them? Did it make them worse?

If you are interested in writing for us email an outline of your article to Charlotte at charlotte@livingwithmecfs.co.uk

She will say whether or not it is a topic we would be interested in featuring on the blog. If it is you can exchange a few ideas over email before you start writing.

We place a big emphasis on optimising articles for SEO (search engine optimisation) with the aim of having them rank on the first page of Google. You may be given a specific issue to include or questions to answer within the article based on the fact this should help it rank highly within Google.

Once the article is complete Charlotte will review it and make small edits where necessary. This is typically for SEO purposes to ensure relevant keywords are included. 

You will be sent a link to review the final draft and give your approval before it is published on the blog. In addition to posting the article on our website it will be promoted on the Living With ME social media channels – Instagram, Facebook, YouTube.