From Wheelchairs to Curtain Calls — and the Grotto That Held Us All







Let’s begin with an admission: I am not a dancer. 🙅‍♀️
My joints have been fiercely battered — whether by CVID, long-COVID, or just the daily wear of being me. The jury's still out (and I hope they're sipping tea whilst they decide). At my previous GP surgery, I was over 80 kilos and couldn’t walk ten steps without severe pain. Now? I walk. I stand. Call it progress, fragile and unfinished — but still progress. I still can't run, I still can't do all the things I should be able to do, but I am no longer crawling up my stairs in my home daily, having daily anxiety attacks, and absolutely housebound. I now just end up in bed sobbing 2 or 3 days a week when I have the ability to gently take care of myself when I do my infusions... sure I pushed through at Lourdes, running on excitement and adrenaline, 4 days after returning home though? I am in bed...typing this up on grammarly... fun... 


I am also having to do a lot of medical life-admin (ladmin).... namely where is my GP going to be now? I haven't exactly lucked out on the only GP surgery within my catchment... in fact for the last few years... they rationed my inhalers, refused me referrals to respiratory or to psych, and overall bullied me about weight gain when I was blue lit in from the surgery itself, for having an asthma attack I was accused of faking... which tends to happen if you don't have access to inhalers... among other things... I'm having to formally challenge a decision to send me back the despite the numerous failings I had documented with legit evidence... well.. not me fighting my corner anymore, I actually got fighting fatigue and had to ask someone with more social gravitas than me to do it... but I have asked for an exemption from going there despite the geography.... 
If you are going through something like this.... check the guidelines... you can, and should, ask for intervention if you are not getting medication for chronic diseases, and asthma can be pretty bloody serious... when you have something like CVID or any other immune complication, not having the simpler stuff under control, can seriously throw things out of whack. The NHS is supposed to help you regarding your health, not punish you over it. ✨🏋️‍♀️


Hotel Stages & Holy Guests 🌟🏨

In Lourdes, we performed Vision: The Musical in a hotel that doubles as sanctuary for pilgrims — those the world might label “disabled,” but there they're not disabled; they're honoured guests. As in, Very Important Persons. Because really — they are.

On opening night, in a sold‌-out room at the curtain call after the bows, I looked out — at the wheelchairs, the hundreds of faces illuminated by hope — and I broke. I wept in a way that had nothing to do with acting. 😭

Three holy shocks:

  1. The sheer number of disabled visitors. 🛏️

  2. The depth of care lavished upon them. 

  3. The kindness, the dignity, the reverence. ❤️

For so long, I’ve tiptoed around my own illness, worried I’d be “too much” — but here, nothing had to be hidden. These people were also so much worse off than me, and that too was a humbling experience, it was a  downright honour to perform for them, and for them to be in a theatre space when under normal circumstances such as back home... they wouldn't even be allowed, or able to visit these kinds of things, because these environments are straight up not accessible for them... and that's part of MY community too. As a performer, who, honestly should have been, and would have been at the West End by now, had it not been for a series of unfortunate events and questionable primary care.... I felt trapped between both worlds... and yet at the same time, deeply honoured to be standing before these beautiful people, these guests, many of whom praying for a cure... as to be honest, I was too... 

Four Chairs, Frozen Hearts, and Music That Soars 🎶

Our set was sparse: four bar chairs on a miniature stage with a bar. My role? a lot of “Freezing” — that scenic, silent presence. Yet even that felt weighty. To be onstage, buzzing with stillness, while the real story unfolds — well, it demands everything you have.

Then the music kicks in — haunting, electric, relentless. Vision spins St. Bernadette’s story at lightning pace, and even my skeletal frame was shaken awake. Sitting on a chair, frozen, trying not to upstage the main characters is an important job in itself. 
When my joints were crying, I was very grateful for that freezing recovery time! 







Thats me frozen... on the far right hand side! 

A Bug, Bottled Water, and Bedtime at 11 PM 🥶🍼

I’m usually tucked in by 9 pm with chamomile and Country Life. In Lourdes, bedtime stretched to 11 pm — thanks to a bug that refused to let me hold down food or my usual painkillers (brutal). Still, I was grateful beyond measure that the theatre company provided meals and accommodation next door. Without them, I wouldn’t have been there at all.
I soldiered through, but I felt really grim physically! hahaha

The Grotto: Spirit You Can Feel ⛪️🌧️

Maybe you believe in saints, or energy, or nothing — but at Massabielle's grotto, something sacred hums through the air. Pilgrims speak of being in "direct conversation" with the Virgin Mary, feeling She listens. One felt the sun break out "just for them." There is something there, whether you call it God, the field, or simply peace.

Recommended reading on Lourdes’ healing presence:

Curtain Calls & Reform’s Call 📈

That first curtain call? It changed me. The audience — those joyful faces, those radiant eyes, those wheelchair-bound souls who had lived the performance with us — reminded me: we need reform.

Disability care in the UK is in dire straits. How can anyone look into those faces and dare not to call them guests? Or people?

Change must come. And it must come with reverence.




Whatever You Call It, It Heals 

Illness may steal, but it can’t defeat who we are. I moved from immobile to mobile — not by miracle, but by will, by art, by being held by a community of “guests.”

My health remains a tenuous thread, but here I am, still standing — and that is progress. Lourdes taught me that even a broken voice can still sing. That frozen stillness can carry stories. That a place — spiritual, electrified, brimming with candles and prayers — can transform the way we move forward.

The water may just be spring water, but it flows from the same place Bernadette once dug with faith.

Its power lies not in chemistry but in love. And community. And surrender.




So here’s to being guest, not patient. 💖
To calling it progress.
To standing — and longing — for change.

With bedridden love (and an endless supply of chamomile),

Clare Alexandra

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