TW: Childhood abuse, pet illness

I became disabled in 2019, and my world changed.

I was in the final year of my Undergraduate degree in History as an off-campus student of an interstate university, and by some small miracle, completed my degree with outstanding results. I immediately applied to complete Honours in 2021 at a local university so I could study on campus. Those plans changed when Covid-19 hit Australia, and we were forced to study off-campus, but my marks were high enough that I qualified to apply for entry to the PhD program, and I did. After the intensity of Honours, the idea of continuing felt like I was building on my Honours work and a way to remain inside a thinking, writing bubble.

I had, however, underestimated the effect of ongoing mental illness on my ability to actually complete a PhD. Since becoming disabled, I had been seeing a psychologist regularly to deal with complex PTSD and clinical depression. Becoming disabled retriggered flashbacks of childhood abuse and trauma because, as a child, my pleas for help were ignored. Now, as an adult, my symptoms were being ignored, as were my pleas for help. I found myself trapped in that cycle all over again. This time, though, I was dealing with clinical depression and menopause. It was not one manageable problem but rather a convergence of three serious issues, an unholy trifecta that made ordinary life feel like a battle and the sustained cognitive labour of a doctorate feel impossible.

My original PhD proposal evolved from my Honours thesis, Cultural wars in videogames: an examination of ideological contestation of game ownership and the right to play. The research would have examined video games as contested cultural spaces. I was interested in how the expectations of gamers and the commercial practices of developers differ when games are no longer being maintained, or are abandoned, and what happens to those games that are being lost to history in this way. I was deeply invested in the topic, but it required sustained clarity, endurance, and a stable mind.

It became obvious very quickly after being accepted that I would not be well enough to do it.

The realisation that my brain had changed

My brain had changed to the point I was no longer able to think in logical sequences or hold a thread long enough to build an argument. This was not only regarding academic writing, but I would get in the car and forget the route to a place I had been to many times. I forgot words mid-sentence, I walked into rooms and forgot why I was going there, and it took me longer to cook recipes I had made for years. I was constantly doubting myself and was concerned about my deterioration.

Mental illness robbed me of my confidence, my ability to function, and my hopes for my future. It forced me to recognise that I had pushed myself through Honours at a cost I did not fully understand at the time, and in hindsight, it feels like a miracle that I even made it to the end, achieving the results I did. I could now see how much I had been running on adrenaline, stubbornness and determination, and how none of that was sustainable, and how it led to my burnout. 

The university was very understanding about the complex health challenges I faced, and did not pressure me at all. The decision not to pursue a PhD at this stage was about me recognising I was too unwell to succeed, and having to let go before I destroyed myself trying. The lack of logical sequencing, the brain fog, the memory lapses and forgetfulness that comes with even one of these conditions were so debilitating that it was clear I could not study at that time because I did not want to become sicker, or never recover.

I immersed myself in sewing and watercolour painting, trying to gently make the broken parts of my brain reconnect, and they taught me how to sequence again, because I had to learn to do things in a particular order, and I had to repeat it constantly. Painting and psychotherapy were helping, and I resigned myself to the idea that I should be grateful for these small improvements. Then I started working with an assistance dog, and this changed my life.

Coping with traumatic life events

When my assistance dog Sammy almost died in March 2025, it shook me to the core. He is not just a dog to me; he provides regulation and grounding when I am struggling, he gives me routine, and safety when most days I can’t function. He is the difference between me coping with life or collapsing because of it, so when the situation escalated from him not eating his dinner to us rushing him to the vet hospital, fighting for his life, it felt like the thin façade of control I had built around myself was crumbling. Having to leave my boy with the vet, not knowing what was happening, was devastating.

We came home, and I sat in my study crying inconsolably, the kind of crying that empties your soul. And in that moment, it wasn’t just that I was crying for my dog, I was grieving all of the loss, all of the pain and all of the things I had been forced to endure. I felt like the progress I had made living with an acquired disability and improving my mental health, much of which was due to Sammy, was about to be stolen from me, and that I could not take another loss.

I had had enough; my heart and my brain could not cope with anything extra, not a single thing. At that stage, everything around me felt like it was exploding. I felt like I was living in a war zone. 

So, I started writing. And just like when I was a child, writing became the one place where the pressure could go, and sentence by sentence, I could put the chaos somewhere other than in my body.

Sammy survived and came home five days later, still very sick and requiring 24/7 care at home for ten days after he was released from the hospital. Our house was covered in tarps and plastic, the sickest dog I have ever seen lay in the chair next to me. While caring for him in shifts, I wrote. I wrote in the small hours of the morning, I wrote when everyone had gone to sleep. I sat, and I cried and typed, night after night, because the words were the only thing that moved as I saw them flow onto the page, and everything else felt stuck. The world was still exploding around me, and I wrote.

Then the pain clinic broke me.

I waited seven years to get in, passed the assessments, and went through all of their hoops. It was meant to help me, but I was discharged from it before my second appointment. Why? I was evicted for having “high pain literacy”. And this time, that is what broke me because it was cruel, and because the messaging was that knowledge in a disabled body is defiance. Being informed or educated makes you dangerous and unacceptable, and even though you did everything else right, knowing about your condition meant they could discard you at their discretion. They were not accountable to anyone when they took away my hope of recovery. 

I was due to see my psychologist because I was so unwell as a result of this decision. But due to the grief, the depression, and complex PTSD, I was unable to speak about what happened at the pain clinic. Since I could not even get the words out of my mouth, I sent her the chapters of my work that could speak about it.

Finding a new path to a PhD

When my psychologist read my work, I am not sure what I thought she would think when she read about my experience. I supposed she would understand what I couldn’t yet speak about. I didn’t expect that she would suggest this writing could be my PhD.

As a historian, a creative work PhD never occurred to me, partly because I was trained in more academic writing, and partly because my brain stopped thinking about doing a PhD at all. I had compartmentalised that issue into a box labelled something I used to want but could not now do. Hearing her say those words to me felt like she had opened up a window in a room I was suffocating in, and that I could finally breathe. In that moment, I felt something I had not felt in years, a glimmer of hope, a cautious, fragile hope that I was scared to reach out for in case I broke it.

 Writing about my feelings and the calamities that shaped my life was possible. I could do that; I was already doing that in my professional life as an advocate. Speaking about my life wasn’t exactly fixing me, but it gave me somewhere to put down what was happening in my life to help me make meaning of it. It gave me permission to stop sanitising what was happening to me, look at the absurdity of it all, and see it for what it really was: ableism, discrimination, and harm. I recognised in that instant that I could write a creative PhD about my experiences as a disabled person because, fundamentally, all I had to do was write what I lived and how I felt.

That afternoon, I sat down and brainstormed what a thesis could look like. I made a huge mind map of the questions it could answer, and within a couple of days, I was applying. And if my supervisor was a little shocked at this dramatic change, he didn’t show it; he was supportive and saw promise in what I proposed.

In the years between resigning myself to the fact that I would not be well enough to undertake any meaningful further study, I worked hard to rebuild my ability to think in logical sequences. I credit watercolour painting and sewing with much of that.

Watercolour forces you to think constantly about order, what has to go down first, what needs to stay light, and what can wait. You must manage water, wetness, and timing in real time, so whatever plan you start with is constantly interrupted by the reality of the page. Your focus flicks between the overall structure of the painting and the immediate problem of what the water is doing, and over time, that back and forth helped my brain practise sequencing again.

It also redirected my attention away from pain, as I live with a pain condition that is there every moment of every day. When I am painting, pain is not the first thing in my head; it slips to second or third place, and that change matters. Daily painting practice and continued psychotherapy helped me piece together a way my brain could learn to function again.

Conclusion

Why did I try again to do a PhD? Why did I think this time might be different? That moment of recognising this new possibility hinged on two things: my psychologist and my ability to recognise the current state of my mental health.

I still live with clinical depression and complex PTSD. That has not magically changed, but I am on the tail end of menopause, and many of those symptoms have been easing, which improves my quality of life more than I expected. I have also had a stable psychologist for years now, and I trust her; she has a PhD, and she teaches at a university. If she believed I could complete a PhD based on the work I was already doing, I knew she would not say that lightly, and I trusted she would not set me up for failure. Her belief in me made a difference because sometimes having one person in your cheer squad is the thing that gives you the confidence to get moving again.

In 2022, when I first applied, I was still learning to live disabled. Before my accident, I was able-bodied and did not identify as a disabled person. I have now been disabled for seven years, and I manage my mental and physical health differently. I understand my capacity more honestly. I know how to pace myself, what I need, and how to ask for help more confidently. 

Delaying study didn’t make me lazy; it was an act of survival. The path to study for disabled people might look less traditional to others, but that doesn’t mean it is less serious. It reflects that the work only becomes possible when the method fits the body undertaking it. Commencing study in 2026 is not about pretending my mental health is fine; it is about accepting it is not, and putting supports in place so I am not carrying it alone. I am not cured, but I am better supported, and that makes all the difference. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement 

I used Grammarly to refine my writing and correct spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors as needed. I used speech-to-text transcription to avoid prolonged typing due to inflamed tendons in both hands. I then copied and pasted text into the document.

Biography

Christine is a disabled artist, advocate, and assistance dog handler based in Ballarat, Australia. She serves on numerous committees focused on disabled access and gender equality. She has commenced a creative practice PhD that uses memoir to examine structural inequality and procedural ableism. She hopes to highlight the everyday mechanics of exclusion in systems and institutions. Her work is grounded in the lived experience of disability and trauma, with a focus on accessibility, inclusion, and the hidden labour of navigating the world as a disabled woman.