Why are young women using walking sticks? Maybe that’s the wrong question.

Last week, my walking stick arrived.

The timing is almost comical, because young women using walking sticks have suddenly become the subject of a rather heated conversation online.

Well, apparently I’m one of those women now.

I’m 38 years old, I teach yoga, and depending on the day you catch me, you might see me moving around relatively normally. I can scuba dive, I run my own business, and there are things my body can do that might not fit somebody’s idea of what a disabled person looks like.

There are also days when I struggle to walk around a supermarket.

Sometimes I can walk for a minute or two before my legs become jelly-like and wobbly. My joints can feel unstable, as though I’m struggling to support myself. Arthritis in my knee means I can limp quite badly. If I’m standing in a queue, I’ll often find myself looking for something to lean against because simply holding myself upright can become tiring and painful.

I’d been thinking about getting a walking stick for several months.

I’d even joke to my partner sometimes that I needed a wheelchair. Except underneath the joke was the uncomfortable recognition that actually, sometimes something like that would probably be quite helpful.

But I resisted buying the stick.

I’m 38, and rightly or wrongly, I’d always associated walking sticks with old age. I wasn’t prepared for needing one at this point in my life.

Somewhere inside me was also the belief that needing a mobility aid said something about my worth. That I was less capable. Less productive. Less able to contribute. Somehow less than other people.

Buying it also meant accepting something I didn’t particularly want to accept:

I need this support to make my life a little easier.

That is quite a lot to process.

What if people think I’m lying?

When the stick arrived, I actually thought it looked pretty cool.

There was even a small part of me that was excited. Perhaps this thing could give me some independence back. Perhaps I could go somewhere and walk a little further because I wouldn’t have to rely entirely on my body supporting me.

I used to love nothing more than putting my favourite music on and going for a walk in the summer sunshine. Just walking, listening to music, being outside in nature and feeling free. It was such a simple thing, and I don’t think I ever imagined there would come a time when I’d lose it.

Now, walking comes with calculations. How far is it? How much pain am I already in? How tired are my legs? If I walk away from the car, am I actually going to have enough energy and strength to get myself back?

So there was something genuinely hopeful about the stick arriving. Maybe it could give me a little bit of that freedom back.

But overwhelmingly, I was worried about using it in public.

I imagined people looking at me.

Why have you got a walking stick?

What’s wrong with you?

You don’t look disabled.

And underneath all of those imaginary conversations was another fear:

What if people think I’m lying?

That one goes much deeper than the walking stick.

Over the years, I’ve repeatedly felt that my symptoms weren’t properly listened to or investigated. I’ve often been left feeling as though I simply needed to suck it up and get on with things.

When your experience is questioned enough, eventually you start questioning it yourself.

I’ve become very good at downplaying how bad things are.

I tell myself it’s not severe enough. That other people have it worse. That I should be able to manage. That perhaps I don’t really warrant help.

So suddenly walking around with something that visibly communicates I have a disability feels enormously exposing.

Especially when I know that somebody could see me teaching yoga another day without it.

Disability doesn’t have to make sense from the outside

This is one of the things that particularly bothered me when I eventually looked more closely at what was actually being argued in The Times article.

One of the examples given is of a young wheelchair user who, when a station lift wasn’t working, was able to get out of her chair and walk up some stairs. The article presents this as something unexpected.

But this is exactly the misunderstanding that people with fluctuating conditions constantly come up against.

Using a wheelchair doesn’t necessarily mean somebody is completely unable to walk. Using a walking stick doesn’t mean I need it every second of every day.

I’ve used mine in public twice so far and I was extremely aware of it. A few people looked at me. Nobody actually said anything.

And do you know what?

It helped.

I didn’t use it constantly.

Sometimes I walked without it. When I needed additional support, I got it out. When I didn’t need it, I put it away.

The fact that somebody can do something today doesn’t mean they’ll be able to do it tomorrow. The fact that somebody can stand doesn’t mean standing isn’t painful or tiring. Being able to walk without a mobility aid doesn’t necessarily mean walking without one is the best option.

Someone might see me scuba diving at one point in my life and struggling to walk for more than a few minutes around a supermarket at another.

Neither version makes the other one a lie.

Human bodies are considerably more complicated than that.

Is the mobility aid creating the problem?

Another argument in the article is that focusing heavily on symptoms, combined with inactivity, could create a cycle where somebody becomes increasingly deconditioned and therefore experiences more difficulty when they try to move again.

I don’t think we should be afraid of conversations about deconditioning, physical capacity or the complicated relationship between our physical and psychological health.

But I think we also need to ask why somebody has become inactive in the first place.

Living with chronic illness often means living with periods of significant inactivity. Think about the last time you had the flu, a stomach bug or an illness that completely wiped you out. Did you go for a run? Did you push yourself through a workout? Probably not. Your body was already using its resources just to get through being ill.

Now imagine that isn’t something you experience for a few days before returning to normal. Imagine some version of that becoming part of your everyday life.

For someone living with chronic illness, “activity” might be making themselves something to eat. Having a shower. Doing the laundry. Going to an appointment. Walking around the supermarket.

Sometimes there isn’t another reserve of energy sitting there waiting to be spent on exercise. Daily living has already spent it.

That doesn’t mean deconditioning isn’t real or that maintaining physical capacity where possible doesn’t matter. But there’s an important difference between saying inactivity can contribute to physical decline and assuming inactivity is what caused somebody to become ill or disabled in the first place.

And we should be extremely careful about making that assumption when looking at somebody else’s body.

Because my experience of using a walking stick was almost the opposite.

I resisted it. For months.

And then when I finally used one, it didn’t make me less independent.

It allowed me to do more.

Without it, I may have needed to stop sooner. I may have needed somewhere to sit. I may simply have decided that walking around a shopping centre wasn’t worth the physical cost.

The stick didn’t create the limitation.

The limitation was already there.

The stick helped me navigate it, and that distinction matters.

Being left to figure it out yourself

A lot of the responses I’ve seen to this recent conversation have come from women living with chronic conditions talking about years of not being listened to.

Conditions such as ME/CFS, POTS, hypermobility, fibromyalgia and other complex chronic illnesses come up repeatedly.

Interestingly, these are some of the very conditions singled out in the article, which describes symptoms such as exhaustion, dizziness, brain fog and muscle pain as non-specific experiences that can overlap with sensations experienced by everybody.

And yes, symptoms can be complicated. Our psychological state can influence our physical experience. Human beings aren’t neatly divided into a mind over here and a body over there.

But I think there’s an enormous difference between acknowledging that complexity and looking at a population of people reporting disabling symptoms and wondering whether they’re simply interpreting ordinary sensations incorrectly.

Please.

Especially when so many women already have stories of struggling to be taken seriously when seeking healthcare.

This isn’t only something I’m seeing people talk about on social media. There is evidence of much wider problems in women’s healthcare. A 2022 UK study commissioned by King Edward VII’s Hospital found that 30% of those experiencing symptoms of women’s health conditions had yet to receive a formal diagnosis. Half of the women surveyed said getting help for a women’s health issue wasn’t straightforward, and more than a quarter had given up seeking medical support altogether. – Read the Full Summery

Perhaps most strikingly to me, 44% of women with a diagnosed or suspected condition had taken steps to manage their symptoms themselves through lifestyle changes and other approaches.

I recognise that story because I’ve lived my own version of it for a decade.

And it has been fucking horrendous.

Nobody should be left trying to navigate multiple chronic conditions with no explanation, inadequate support and very little understanding of what is happening to their body.

I’ve spent years trying to figure out how to help myself and manage what was happening to my body.

I’ve made substantial changes to how I eat and live. I’ve explored different approaches to holistic healthcare. Eventually I studied Ayurveda partly because I wanted to understand my own body better and find ways of supporting myself.

But really, I’ve had to change almost every aspect of how I live my life. How I work. How I socialise. How I rest. How I plan my days. How I budget the limited energy I have and decide what gets done and what has to wait. Even ordinary things require consideration in a way they never used to.

I’ve had to learn when to stop, when to say no, when to ask for help and when doing something I want to do simply isn’t worth what it might cost me afterwards. My life has had to be reorganised around what my body can realistically manage.

It has been a complete and utter restructuring of how I live.

Some things have helped me. Some things haven’t. But the point is that I’ve had to figure so much of this out for myself, while already exhausted, while trying to earn a living and run a business, and while still trying to understand what the hell is happening to my body in the first place.

And that has come at an enormous cost.

The cumulative impact of living with chronic illness, while repeatedly struggling to access appropriate support and be taken seriously, had a devastating effect on my mental health. For years, I lived with chronic suicidal ideation as a result.

I don’t include that for dramatic effect.

I include it because when we talk casually about whether young women are identifying too strongly with illness, becoming too dependent on support, or somehow interpreting themselves into disability, we risk completely overlooking what it can actually be like to live for years inside a body you are struggling to understand while desperately trying to find somebody who will help you.

I don’t know whether earlier intervention would have changed where I am today.

Nobody can promise me that.

But I do know what it has cost me to spend so much of this journey trying to work things out for myself.

Trust me, it’s not a fashion statement

Perhaps the part of this conversation I find most difficult is the suggestion that illness can offer young women something desirable: a way to feel different or special, escape the pressures of life or receive attention and care from others.

Because I know what disability has actually taken from my life. There’s another layer to this that I think we need to talk about.

We live in a culture that places enormous value on productivity.

What can you do?

How much can you work?

How independent are you?

How much can you contribute?

And when your body limits those things, it’s very easy to internalise the idea that you’re somehow a lesser human being.

I’ve had to confront that in myself.

I cannot work full-time.

That limits my earning potential.

That affects what I can afford, the choices available to me and therefore the shape of my life.

Disability hasn’t excused me from the pressures of life.

In many ways, it has made those pressures considerably harder to navigate.

So if you see a young woman walking with a stick and wonder whether she really needs it, trust me:

It’s not a fashion statement.

If I could choose whether or not I needed one, I wouldn’t.

I’d much rather not be disabled.

End of story.

But the stick also represents something else

I’m trying not to see my walking stick purely as evidence of everything my body cannot do.

Because actually, it represents support. It might give me some independence back. It might allow me to walk around somewhere for longer. It might mean I don’t have to desperately search for a wall to lean against when my legs aren’t cooperating.

And interestingly, the visibility I was so afraid of may also have a benefit.

My health conditions aren’t always obvious from looking at me. If I’m somewhere alone and struggling, the stick communicates something without me necessarily having to explain myself:

I might need some help.

I’m still getting used to that. I’m still getting used to allowing myself to be visibly vulnerable. But perhaps accepting support isn’t the same thing as giving up independence.

Perhaps sometimes it’s exactly what makes greater independence possible.

Maybe we’re asking the wrong question

The Times article ultimately argues that some young women who currently understand themselves as disabled may instead be capable of greater physical independence, and that encouraging them away from fear and towards greater activity could help them leave mobility aids behind.

But I think we’re starting in the wrong place.

Because before deciding that somebody needs to abandon the thing supporting them, shouldn’t we first be asking why they needed support in the first place?

I don’t think we need to spend more time analysing strangers and deciding whether their disability looks legitimate enough.

We need to move away from making assumptions about what somebody is experiencing based on what their body looks like from the outside.

You don’t know.

You cannot know simply by looking.

And perhaps instead of asking:

Why are young women using walking sticks?

we should be asking:

Why are our health systems failing young women with chronic conditions?

Why are so many women describing years of trying to get answers?

Why do so many feel that they haven’t been believed?

Why are people having to become experts in their own conditions simply to work out how to get through everyday life?

And why, when somebody finally finds something that makes that life a little easier, are we scrutinising the walking stick instead of asking what happened to the woman holding it?

I am one of those women.

My walking stick arrived last week.

I’m still getting used to it.

But I’m beginning to understand that using support when I need it doesn’t make me less capable, less productive or less worthy.

It just means I need some support.

And really, that shouldn’t be controversial.

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