‘Mum, my brain’: how I learned to walk, talk and even dance again after a devastating stroke at 36

I was riding high as a music journalist with a new book in the shops when I had what I thought was a migraine. In fact, it was a burst aneurysm and I needed emergency surgery. Two years into my recovery, can I learn how to find joy again?

I am a dancer. The dark is usually a friend to me, allowing me to stretch and move my limbs into unfashionable positions as music washes over me. My music journalism career means I have spent more than two decades at gigs and in clubs, falling in love with music, contorting my body, two‑stepping, making any space into a dancefloor, then going home and writing about it.

Two years ago, when I was 36, I was riding high at the launch party for my first book, about housing, home and music, and I danced as R, my husband, DJ’d Tems, Asake and Burna Boy. The publishers had put up a billboard about the book; I remember walking to the petrol station to buy the papers and read the reviews, and feeling relieved that they were good. I began preparing for a summer of talks – oversized suits and heels at the ready. My next event was at a bookshop in Bristol to talk about the idea of home. But my body, unbeknown to me, was feeling very not at home.

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