Mast Cell Action are thrilled to share this new Community Stories session with you.

Alice McLaren will be sharing her story on Friday 16th August between 11am-12pm.

Alice has been volunteering for Mast Cell Action for around a year, she is one of our Community Champions who hosts our Creative sessions and our Thursday Community support sessions. Alice would like to share her MCAS story with you which she believes was triggered in childhood trauma. Alice’s symptoms started around the age of ten with horrendous nose bleeds, nausea and fatigue. Despite only getting a diagnosis in September 2023, Alice is bubbly, full of life and optimistic about the future. She has found art to be incredibly therapeutic and is painting, creating, and is in the process of writing a book of poetry.

In early 2016 Alice had specific trauma counselling where she was diagnosed with complex PTSD. Alice’s faith is really important to her and has contributed hugely to her healing. Alice is very much a 'glass is half full' person and will share how her focus on the positives in her life and practicing daily gratitude has shifted her perspective.

Alice has started her own You Tube channel, check it out here. 

Trigger warning: This Community Stories session contains mention of domestic, physical and sexual abuse. No detail about this abuse will be shared.

Trauma Coach, Antoinette de Barr will be on hand during the session in case anyone needs to speak to her.

There should be time for questions at the end of the session, if you would like to submit questions in advance then please send them to charise@mastcellaction.org 

What you need to know

We will be running these sessions virtually through Zoom, you are welcome to attend with your microphone and camera off if you feel more comfortable doing so. We will email out the Zoom link to join 1 hour before the session start time. Please check your spam folder if you can't find this link.

Please book a place for everyone who will be attending online, even if you'll be attending using the same device. This helps us keep the event running smoothly and safely and also helps us to decide what kind of events to organise in the future.

Please note: We will be taking a register so if there are a large number of participants, it may take a while – please be patient if you are in the waiting room. It will make the process of admitting people and taking the register much quicker if you could change your name before joining, to the name you used when booking. You can access a step by step on how to change your name here.

This session will be recorded for our You Tube channel, we will announce when we are going to start the recording and when we will end it, so if you do not feel comfortable being in the You Tube video then feel free to turn your camera off.

Please contact events@mastcellaction.org with any questions.

Attendance is free, although donations are much appreciated as this helps us to keep the lights on and to keep delivering essential support and services for people living with MCAS. If you are able to do so, there is an option to make a donation, when booking your spot.

Places are limited, so please do let us know if you change your mind or your plans change so we can offer the spot to someone else.

How Mast Cell Action Uses Your Data

We will collect the information you provide on Ticket Tailor to gather statistics about how many people attend our events and how many people return to our events and also demographic information about who is attending Mast Cell Action events. These statistics are vital to helping charities like Mast Cell Action demonstrate the impact of our work, and we use them to report to our funders and other groups to demonstrate the difference that funding support can make.

In our database, your name will be stored along with these statistics but identifying information is never included in reports. We don’t collect or store more information than needed to generate these statistics and have no access to any financial information you provide to Ticket Tailor.

All information is stored in line with our GDPR policy.

Unless you ask us to, we won’t sign you up to any mailing lists and will only send you information related to your attendance at this event. If you want to hear about more events like this in the future, please sign up to be a friend of Mast Cell Action.