IT'S TIME TO RUN OUR OWN STORY - AND PHOEBE GRIST IS SHOWING US HOW

Published: 27/03/2026 | By: Eloise Winter

Every year on International Women’s Day, we talk about what women give – their time, their energy, the way they quietly carry so much. But this year is also about what we gain, which for Phoebe feels especially personal. Her journey is one so many others are living through without even realising it has a name. For Phoebe, endometriosis has meant pain – both physically and mentally – but it has also meant persistence, resilience, and fighting to be heard. Now, by opening up about it, she hopes someone else might read her story and feel a little less alone.

Phoebe is not the kind of person who stops – up before the sun, training hard, showing up. So when her body began telling her something was seriously wrong, it took everything she had to slow down and actually listen. What followed was one of the most disorienting, and ultimately galvanising months of her life – and she wants to talk about it, because she knows she's not alone.

Her endometriosis story doesn't follow the script you might expect. On average, women wait eight to ten years for a diagnosis, facing dismissal, misdiagnosis and being sent home with a shrug and a box of paracetamol. Phoebe's path was different, though no less overwhelming. It began in April 2025 with a burst ovarian cyst and what became a distressing series of visits to A&E. "It took three or four attempts over about fourteen hours before somebody would listen to me and not send me away with just painkillers," she says. "They kept giving me antibiotics that obviously weren't working because they weren't treating the right thing." On her fourth visit, she was finally admitted. Four days later, a doctor ordered an ultrasound, which revealed a burst cyst in her fallopian tube, fluid pooling in her pelvis and an infection. She was told the body would absorb the fluid on its own, handed the correct antibiotics and sent on her way.

It did not get better. It got worse.

Six months later, she sat down with a gynaecologist. The word endometriosis had never once been mentioned to her. "In my head I was still thinking, I've had a burst ovarian cyst, there's still fluid, they just need to have another look," she says. Instead, she found herself being spoken at, barely able to take in the conversation, catching only the words endometriosis and surgery. Then came the pressure: sign today or go back to the bottom of the waiting list. She was on her own. She signed. "I walked out crying and rang my mum saying, I have no idea what conversation I just had."

After doing her own research that evening, the pieces began to fall into place. Her symptoms – extreme pelvic pain and lower back pain – were consistent with endometriosis. She had just never connected them because why would she? "I train every day, I go on runs, I'm healthy," she says. "You hear about people with endometriosis and you think, that's not me." It's a trap so many women fall into, assuming the condition only presents one way: heavy periods, chronic fatigue, years of obvious suffering. But endometriosis doesn't read the same on every body, and that silence around its many faces is costing women years of their lives. A letter from the NHS arrived to confirm that the waiting list for surgery was up to three years. Three years to find out whether you have a condition that is already turning your life upside down. "It just proves how many women are out there waiting," Phoebe says quietly. "Waiting to be seen. Waiting to be believed."

Fortunately, her employer offered private healthcare, and within two weeks of seeing a specialist she had an MRI that confirmed endometriosis. Surgery followed shortly after – a laparoscopy, keyhole surgery to locate and remove endometrial tissue. What the surgeon found was stage four endometriosis, the most advanced stage, affecting her ovaries, pelvis and bowel.

He removed what he could. But there is no cure. Hormonal treatment exists, but it isn’t suitable for everyone, and it isn’t the right option for Phoebe. "It's just a waiting game now," she says. "Surgery lasts one to two years on average, and then you need it again. Until there's more research, more funding, more time given to women's health, it's just this cycle."

She says it plainly, without self-pity. But the weight of it is real.

What nobody tells you about a chronic illness diagnosis is that the physical battle is only half of it. The other half is the identity shift – the quiet, brutal process of letting go of who you were before and figuring out who you are now. Phoebe had built her life around movement. The 5AM gym sessions. The weekly runs. The structure of a training plan as reliable as breathing. All of that had to change. "The fatigue I have now – some mornings I wake up and my brain says, you're just being lazy," she admits. "But no. You've got a chronic illness. You're fatigued. And that's okay." Her voice softens. "I've really had to learn to give myself grace. That's been the hardest thing. I'm so used to just being go, go, go. Now I've had to take a massive step back."

And here is what she wants every woman reading this to hear: slowing down is not giving up. Listening to your body is not weakness. Adjusting is not failing. "If you had a cold, you'd give yourself rest days without a second thought," she says. "This is more extreme than a cold. So please, give yourself the same grace you'd give a stranger."

Because here is the thing about Phoebe. She slowed down. She listened. She gave herself grace. And then she signed up for the Manchester Marathon with a Cambridge Half race before to test the water. Not in spite of her endometriosis. Alongside it. Why? "Because I can," she says, and there's a fire in it. "It just means I have to be smarter. I have to look at my recovery. I have to actually listen to what my body is telling me on any given day. But I can still do it." She pauses. "And so can anyone."

She doesn’t have to do it alone, though. The community she found through running has held her in ways she never expected. Her run club, Plod Squad, became a place where she didn't have to explain herself – where turning up without running was always enough, where people just showed up for each other. "Sometimes I'll arrive and I won't be running, and they don't question it," she says. "They're just grateful I'm there." But something else has happened too. Women from the group began approaching her privately, sharing their own worries, asking questions they hadn't known how to ask anywhere else. In opening up about her own experience, she gave others permission to take theirs seriously. In the giving, she gained something she hadn't expected: purpose, solidarity, and a community that grew stronger the more honestly she showed up in it. That is the quiet power of women sharing their stories. That is give to gain in its most human form.

And that is what she's running for now. Cambridge first, then Manchester. A full marathon – 26.2 miles on a body that has been through surgery, through waiting rooms, through the kind of exhaustion that doesn't show up on a training plan. And after that, who knows. A couple of HYROX races. Maybe a half marathon PB to prove – to herself more than anyone – that all of this was worth it.

Because the most radical thing Phoebe has done this year isn't running a marathon. It's refusing to let a diagnosis be the end of her story.

"I never thought I'd be doing any of this," she says. "Not even exercising three or four times a week, let alone running marathons. The fact that I've stepped outside my comfort zone and proved to myself I can – that alone amazes me." She smiles. "Set yourself a goal. It doesn't have to be crazy. A 5K might be your everything right now, and that is everything. We're all different. We're all at different points. But whatever you're carrying – you are still capable. Don't let anyone, or anything, tell you otherwise. And if something feels wrong, please: push for answers. Keep pushing. You know your body better than anyone in that waiting room ever will."