Jade O’Connell was born with Tourettes Syndrome, and it affects her everyday life, but she has turned it into her success by making the world laugh.
New Zealand (07 July 2020) – At times, social media can be a weird place, but it is filled with wonderful people. Jade O’Connell, a 19-year-old from New Zealand, joined social media to share her life. Jade has Tourettes Syndrome, and she shares her experience with the disease to give people a laugh but also to educate them.
Tourettes is one of those diseases that has been featured in Hollywood movies because it allowed a character to say obscene things. It has always been the punchline. Jade decided this was her story and her punchline.
Tourettes is far more complex than just shouting out swear words and insults. It is a nervous system disorder involving repetitive movements or unwanted sounds. The uncontrollable repetitive movements or unwanted sounds (tics) include repeatedly blinking the eyes, shrugging shoulders, or blurting out offensive words. Someone with Tourettes will be diagnosed in their childhood and spend a lifetime using various therapies to control it.
In Jade’s case, she beeps, swears, insults, and loses control of her arms, head and neck. Most days she can laugh it off with her family. Other days, it causes her distress and pain. While Jade has shared the laughter with her fans, she has also shared her bad days where her tics take control, and all she can do is cry as her body moves without her control.
Like many people her age, Jade joined Tik Tok and started sharing videos of herself, family and friends. She rose to fame because of her Tourettes content and eventually went viral. This led to her making the baking with family video that has put her on the global radar.
When we saw the video, we unsure if we were supposed to laugh and then we couldn’t help ourselves. Jade’s family laugh through the entire video and it is incredibly healing to witness. Like every family coping with a disease, they embrace all of Jade’s quirks, even when she throws insults in their direction.
We marked the story as not safe for work (NSFW) but also know that many people are still working from home, so maybe just warn your pets that there is a batch of swearing coming; moreover, this is probably not for your children’s ears.
Take a look at Jade baking a pavlova with her family below.
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