How one musician turned disability and isolation into a song

When people talk about disability, the conversation often focuses on symptoms, treatment and physical barriers.

Less often discussed is the loneliness that can accompany chronic illness and disability.

For singer-songwriter Nikki Rous, a wheelchair user, that experience became the inspiration for a new song exploring the isolation that can accompany disability and chronic illness.

“I think as a disabled person, and [with] many other people that suffer from chronic illness, chronic pain and disability, there’s a certain amount of isolation,” she said.

“It’s a very different lifestyle to when I was able-bodied.

“I just wanted to get that point across really about the loneliness and isolation and hopefully make some people feel not so alone.”

Her latest song, No Space Left, draws on personal experience, but touches on feelings that many people living with long-term health conditions may recognise.

For Rous, songwriting has become a way of processing experiences that can be difficult to explain.

“It’s quite cathartic for me,” she said.

“If I’m having a tough time, I’ll generally write it all out, produce a song and then I’ve kind of moved on from that place.”

The song is informed in part by her experience of living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a group of rare inherited conditions that affect the body’s connective tissues.

Connective tissue supports the skin, joints, blood vessels and organs, and symptoms can include chronic pain, fatigue and mobility problems.

Rous said EDS was the condition she was born with, although she also lives with other related conditions.

“It’s a genetic connective tissue disorder that affects your collagen production and the connective tissue throughout your whole body, so it causes multisystemic problems,” she said.

Although disability is rarely a subject heard in chart music, she believes there is value in writing openly about experiences that are often overlooked.

Asked whether that was part of her motivation, she replied: “Yes, I think so.

“Maybe part of that reason is because we’re too ill to get to that level. The touring, the recording and everything that goes with it.”

Her songs have long explored difficult subjects, including mental health and heartache, and she said audience members frequently tell her they recognise their own experiences in her lyrics.

“I did get a lot of people coming up to me after gigs and saying that they felt really seen and heard,” she said.

“They’ve not really spoken openly about things that were affecting them, and they can see that someone else is able to do that.”

Music has been at the centre of her life since childhood. Originally hailing from Tamworth, but now based in Shropshire, Rous has supported acts including Level 42 and Jamiroquai during her career, while continuing to write and perform original material.

Away from the stage, she has also spent the past eight years helping other artists find an audience through a songwriter showcase she runs at Albert’s Shed in Shrewsbury.

But since undergoing spinal surgery in 2019, she said both her mobility and pain levels have worsened, making some aspects of performing increasingly difficult.

“It might be getting to the point where I will no longer be able to play music,” she said.

“It’s getting harder to play guitar. My voice, obviously, that’s full of connective tissue, your vocal cords, so it’s not what it used to be.”

Despite that uncertainty, she remains determined to continue writing and performing for as long as possible.

“It’s really just to get all these ideas out that I never recorded,” she said.

“I will continue gigging [for] as long as I can.”

For Rous, No Space Left is an attempt to shine a light on an experience that often goes unspoken. Through her music, she hopes people living with disability, chronic illness and isolation will feel, as she puts it, “not so alone”.

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