IT MAY not look like it but Zosha Faith’s brain is trying to kill her.

The Southbourne singer suffers from a rare illness, Chiari Malformation, which means her skull is too small for her brain, restricting the blood flow and forcing her brain downwards, onto her spine.

“One moment I was singing at the ReCreate Festival, the next minute, before the last song, I coughed, got a huge head rush and fainted off the side of the stage,” she says.

Before this happened, three years ago, she had felt something was wrong although: “I could never pinpoint it. I’d get migraines, it was strange when I brushed my hair, things like that.”

“Over the next few months after the fall I would go to the doctors and different hospitals and specialists with not much luck,” she says. “A lot of them would say ‘it’s all in your head,’ or ‘it’s just stress.’ Being told that if I don’t think that I’m in pain I won’t be in pain, wasn’t something that I needed to hear through this worrying time.”

Eventually she was offered the MRI scan which revealed the worrying truth; “They could see I had no room in my head, that my brain was filling up the area where my spinal fluid should be flowing,” she says.

Naturally Zosha hadn’t heard of the condition but, she says, neither have many medics. “I ended up joining Facebook groups, that kind of thing to know more,” she says.

Since her fall, life changed rapidly for Zosha, who lives in Southbourne with her partner. She started suffering heart palpitations, fainting, and slowly feeling her whole left hand side ‘filled with pain’.

She now suffers permanent damage to her left hand due to the squashed part of her brain. “Along with this comes, tinnitus, breathlessness, migraines, speech problems and memory loss,” she says.

The condition has already meant she had to curtail her singing and abandon her dream career of becoming a teacher. “I’m in a desk job now,” she says.

But Chiari Malformation has brought other situations she didn’t anticipate.

“Because my illness is invisible, people take no account of it at all,” she says, citing a recent trip to London where no one would give up their seat for her on public transport, despite her obvious use of an aid to support her walking.

“It is especially hard because I look ‘normal,’” she says. “The constant judgement through having a blue badge and using a walking aid, isn’t something that me or my partner were ready for. The stares and comments are something I knew happened, but it’s very different when it happens to you.”

She says she feel judged when she’s using her blue badge but looks well enough to walk away from a vehicle. “People don’t know enough about invisible illnesses, and the fact that they are invisible makes things difficult,” she says. “People often just think you’re lazy because there’s nothing obviously wrong.”

Despite her difficulties she is determined to help others who suffer from an illness which is not visible.

“I want to help others through difficult times with invisible illness, as the judgement and life is not easy alone, but I also want to raise awareness of these illnesses,” she says.

She is recording her journey through her own YouTube Channel – Zosha Faith Vlogs. “I felt that helped me and others that are going through similar situations to come together through difficult times, as well as educate those who need to see,” she says.

She is also starting a business, selling T-shirts with slogans about invisible illnesses, with the profits going to an invisible illness charity of the customer’s choice. “If you want to know more, keep an eye on my channel, as updates about the business and my journey will be uploaded there,” she says.

And she is ploughing ahead with her album with RGM productions. “This has been a slow process as I’ve had to change my genre due to having less power in my body,” she says. “Singing is the something I still enjoy, however, it’s meant that my choice of wanting to be a singer has had to be seriously thought about, whether it is now something I could do.”

Before all this gets going, however Zosha has to face a major brain operation at Southampton Hospital. “My last CT scan shows my neck is weakening and so it may be a bigger operation than I expected,” she says. “It won’t be a cure but I hope it will relieve the pain, I still sometimes feel like a 24-year-old in an 80 year old’s body.”

* en-gb.facebook.com/ZoshaFaith/