'Gabrielle Jackson's reporting for The Guardian on endometriosis helped us "blow the disease out of the water", according to one leading specialist, turning what had been known as the silent disease into a major news story read by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Women responded vociferously and in great numbers, showing that Gabrielle's work had tapped into a worldwide need for information on endometriosis and other women's health issues. This book could not be more timely or important.' - Katharine Viner, editor of The Guardian
'Gabrielle Jackson is a brilliant journalist and a wonderful feminist-and incapable of being dull.' - Emily Wilson, Editor of New Scientist
In 2015, Guardian journalist Gabrielle Jackson wrote a piece about her own struggles with the crippling pain caused by endometriosis. It triggered such an overwhelming response that the Guardian launched a world-wide investigation into the disease. This time the response was so huge it almost crashed their website. Thousands contacted the Guardian and hundreds of thousands more read and shared the material.
This was the catalyst for Gabrielle thinking more widely about women's pain and how it is viewed and treated not just by the medical profession but wider society. The stark reality is that women's pain is not taken as seriously as that of men's. We are more likely to be dismissed, fobbed off and denied treatment than men even though our bodies are vastly more complex. One of the most important things we can do to help ourselves is to understand more about how our bodies work.
