Episode #55: Corinne Gray
Corinne Gray is obsessed with solving the world’s biggest people and planet problems. She’s the Co-founder and CEO of Uncomfortable Revolution - a digital media platform for people living with chronic illness or disability. She has made it her life’s work to fight for society’s most neglected people. She’s a former educator who has worked with “at-risk” young people. She worked in Johannesburg mentoring and training migrant micro-entrepreneurs. And, she worked at the United Nations on innovations to improve refugees’ lives. Corinne lives with her husband and three stray cats in Barcelona, Spain. She loves to paint, and draw, and wants to run a Foundation or Impact Investing Fund when she grows up.
Corinne Gray was diagnosed with depression during her first year in university, but for most of her 20s, she didn’t deal with her diagnosis head on. That changed in 2013 when she started going to therapy and taking medication to help manage her symptoms. Since then, she’s not only grown more aware of her own neurodiversity, but she’s also sought to bring awareness about neurodiversity as a whole. On today’s episode, Corinne and I talk about what living with depression has been like for her, and she shares an incredible analogy that highlights a common misconception about depression. We also discuss her experience as a caregiver for her husband (who has leukemia), why they started URevolution together, and why change around inclusion is so important to her.
“We want to say that body positivity is also celebrating all of our neurodiversities and all of our medical conditions and all of our disabilities.”
Here are some of the things Corinne and I chatted about:
Her memories from when she was a child and teenager, when feeling sad was her baseline
Seeking help for her mental health for the first time, and being diagnosed with depression
Growing up in evangelical home, and how that complicated her experience post-diagnosis
Spending most of her 20s ignoring her mental health, or pushing it to the back of her mind
The moments when she started to pay attention to her mental health, and the steps she took
Learning to accept people’s limitations, including her mom’s beliefs about depression
The realization that she has to tell people how to be there for her, and when she needs them
Her analogy of how having depression is like drowning in a pool, and needing to be pulled out
Being a caregiver for a husband who has leukemia and deals with significant physical pain
The difference between how people perceive the seriousness of physical pain vs. mental pain
The neurodiversity movement, which needs people to share their realities and listen to others
Starting URevolution, a magazine reflecting the reality of chronic illness and disabilities
Why she only recently started to identify as having a disability, and how that came about
The importance of inclusion, and of understanding that everyone is wired differently
“The world isn’t designed to accommodate me when I might be anxious or depressed.”
Follow Corinne: Website / Instagram
Learn more about URevolution: Website / Submission Guidelines
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