Shwmae! I’m Erin – the real human person behind On a Roll, a blog about disability, dogs and dykes!

I’m 27 years old, and I live in Neath Port Talbot alongside my big brother and energetic Golden Retriever puppy, Catrin.

I lived an ‘ordinary’ life with my brother and parents, and while I always felt a bit ‘different’ compared to the people around me, I was largely happy and healthy.

However, when I was 16, I experienced something that not even doctors could explain to me – it was as if my life just stopped. I dropped out of school, stopped spending time with friends, and began to spend most of my life in my bedroom.

After my health crashed, I became too exhausted to mask, and traits that had been largely hidden began to be noticed by others. While I had always been autistic, at 18 years old I actually received a professional diagnosis.

But even this wasn’t enough to entirely explain what was happening to me – I still had no idea why I was so exhausted, why my body hurt, and why I could no longer do the activities that I enjoyed.

Then, seven years after my crash, I was finally professionally diagnosed with MECFS. It took years of being misdiagnosed, dismissed and ignored, but finally I had words to describe what I was experiencing.

It was some time after my diagnoses, in the car with my mother, when the lack of post-diagnostic support for either of my conditions hit me. While venting, a thought suddenly came to me: What is stopping me from providing support?

This thought snowballed, and now I am the proud founder of Neath Port Talbot Autism Hub – a project that offers the peer-support that I wish I’d had. We are currently in the process of applying for charity status after a year of operation. It’s a very exciting time!

As the years have passed, I’ve explored my identity as a disabled person more and more. This has only made me more passionate about accessibility, inclusion and support for disabled people across the whole spectrum of experiences. However, while I have big plans, I also need to be realistic with myself – there are limits to what I can physically do, as a person with a fatiguing condition.

That is precisely why I decided to create this blog.

While I lack the energy to enact many of the ideas in my mind, there is far less stopping me from putting my pen to paper – or, more accurately, fingers to keyboard – and sharing my life. Through my words, I hope that people can understand what a disabled life may look like, and I hope others who feel isolated can see that they’re not alone — there are people like them out there.

But, of course, while my conditions do impact my life in huge ways, they aren’t everything about me!

I’m a big fan of Doctor Who, Star Wars and Hoyoverse games. I’ve also recently been getting back into Pokemon Go! I love music, especially Bastille, The Crane Wives and Adwaith, and as you may be able to tell, I love writing – both fiction and non-fiction!

And let’s not forget the love of my life, my puppy Catrin. She is truly the goodest of girls.

If you ever see a girl with a pink bunny hat or a cap in the lesbian pride flag colours, rolling around in a wheelchair with yellow wheels, alongside a bouncy Golden Retriever, that’s probably me – feel free to say hi!

But if you don’t want to wait to catch me in the street, feel free to drop a comment to let me know what you think at any time!