🎭 Playing Nadia, Healing Me

 It's been a while... I have been busy, burnt out, joyful, stressed... chasing my tail and playing an absolute dream role... Playing Nadia Kovlova in Give Us a Sign has been an unexpected balm. She’s half Vlada Bulkakova, half Anna Chapman, with a sprinkling of that one inscrutable blonde Russian model on Instagram who always looks like she’s judging your fashion choices from a marble balcony. There’s something delicious about leaning into that stereotype—mocking my own Eastern European roots with a wink and a smirk in a sympathetic way. It’s been cathartic, even empowering. And lately, I’ve needed that.

Because offstage, things haven’t exactly been velvet and roses.

Just before I was told by the consultant that my lungs were miraculously clear, I’d had not one but two appointments with a nurse who could only be described as a battle axe in orthopedic clogs. She looked me dead in the eye and said I’d never get better. That pseudomonas would take me out faster than the CVID. That I’d never travel again. That my lungs were permanently scarred. Then, with a tone colder than a wet sponge in November, she added, “But you have pretty hair what I wouldn't give to have hair like that.”

My peak flow that day? Back to my personal best. And still—"Don’t count your chickens before they hatch," she warned with the dry smile of someone who thinks compassion is for fools. All the sympathy of a mid-tier HR manager denying your sick leave because your grandmother inconveniently died during the quarterly budget review. And as it turned out? She’d lost my sputum samples. And the notes. Both appointments. Gone. Like a ghost story no one asked for.

And then—weeks later—the consultant, calm and factual, told me my lungs were clear. That early intervention from my immunologist had likely made the difference. The sheer whiplash. Relief doesn’t begin to cover it.

But I’d already been spiralling, you see.

Work stress had been chipping away at my sense of self. I was overthinking everything—how I came across, whether I was meeting my own high standards, if I was being too much. That old demon, productivity guilt, had come creeping back in. Then one night, I listened to Luisa’s song in Encanto—"Surface Pressure."

The line that floored me? “I’m pretty sure I’m worthless if I can’t be of service.”

I bawled. It was like someone had reached into my ribcage and shaken loose all the grief I’d packed into a filing cabinet labelled "Later."

When my dad died in 2022, I coped by doing. I worked split shifts as a call handler—6am–12pm, 3–5pm, then 7–10pm, day after day. No weekends. No rest. Just grind. I was reading tarot for strangers on hotlines from home while holding my family together. It helped pay for half the funeral. Helped keep our childhood home. My dad used to do the banking. Suddenly, that was my job. Solicitor’s fees. Paperwork. Admin. Sorrow. Silence. I just got on with it. Because someone had to.

We all cope differently. That was my way.

And as the youngest daughter? I often don’t speak up. People assume I’m spoiled. That I do theatre because I’m a narcissist. They don’t see the stage fright. The panicked rehearsals. The brutal way I speak to myself. I’ve struggled so much with compliments. I deflect them. Reject them. Shrink. It’s a bad habit. But it’s one I’m working on.

In How to Be Sick, Toni Bernhard touches upon this subject, 

“Women have told me that they feel as if they must socially engineer situations in order to be taken seriously by medical professionals. They feel they must appear calm, polite, and even cheerful in the face of devastating symptoms, just to avoid being dismissed.”

I felt that, bone-deep. That nurse? She didn’t want to see strength. She wanted submission. A patient made smaller. And when I didn’t give it to her, she tried to chip away anyway. But Toni reminds us—we must advocate for ourselves. Even when it’s terrifying. Especially then.

And today—I quit my job at the crisis line.

It was messing with my sense of self. The emotional labour was starting to pull me under. I couldn’t keep giving when I was already running on fumes. The desire to be of use had become a trap. One I needed to step out of.

Under Keir Starmer’s watch, the disabled are quietly being told to "try harder." To carry on without fuss. Remote jobs are drying up. And I’ve found myself second-guessing whether my rare condition is really enough to complain about when others have it so much worse.

That’s dangerous thinking. Guilt dressed up as humility. And the truth? Some people do want to see you get sicker. Because your light offends them. (Read: Sick Enough by Jennifer Gaudiani if that resonates. It’s not just for EDs—it’s about how society invalidates invisible illness.)

Opening night of Give Us a Sign was glorious. I got to speak with the assistant director—who, as it turns out, is also a relationship counsellor. We had one of those rare, grounding conversations that leaves you dazed for all the right and wrong reasons.

I still struggle to let people in. But our team worked together beautifully. I love this character. I love this craft. And I’m learning to love the parts of me that are tender, too.

With love and pressure,

C x