Vitiligo Advocate Natalie Ambersley On How She Lives the Life She Wants, With Vitiligo

Natalie Ambersley got vitiligo when she was just three years old. She has only one picture of herself without vitiligo—and that baby seems unrecognizable to the London-based vitiligo advocate who has spent her whole life with the condition.

Growing up, Natalie struggled with her skin, choosing to hide it. After a classmate on the playground said he didn’t want to touch her skin, negative thoughts and insecurities spiraled through Natalie’s teen and young adult years. She covered her vitiligo with camouflage and makeup, avoided swimming in the daytime, and spent decades believing that the life she wanted was out of reach because of her vitiligo.

Eventually, the fears and insecurities themselves became too heavy of a burden. Natalie felt tired of keeping her vitiligo a secret, and decided she was ready to start living the life she wanted—spots and all. Through intentional mindset shifts, connections with the vitiligo community and an opportunity to tell her story in a big way, Natalie began changing the way she felt about her skin.

“I embrace my skin now,” said Natalie about her life with vitiligo today. “My vitiligo is part of my identity—we are friends. I no longer dislike it, I no longer see it as an enemy, and for me my skin tells a story.”

Today, Natalie is passionate about helping others with vitiligo cope with the condition so they don’t have to experience the same insecurities. As a vitiligo advocate, Natalie champions and supports those living with vitiligo through her work as a trustee with UK charity The Vitiligo Society. She also creates content on her Instagram and in partnership with Living Dappled as one of the founding members of the Dappled Darlings Collective. 

Watch our full Instagram live interview with Natalie and catch some excerpts of our conversation below.

Watch the Instagram Live Replay

Meet the members of the Dappled Darlings Collective in this six-part Instagram Lives series hosted by Erika Page, Founder and CEO of Living Dappled. Natalie Ambersley was diagnosed with vitiligo when she was just three years old. She spent years hiding her skin—and swimming in the dark away from judging eyes—before deciding that living a secret life wasn’t working for her. Today, the London-based advocate uses her story to help others be unapologetically themselves and live the life they want, even with vitiligo.

Watch Now: Natalie Ambersley on Living the Life You Want, With Vitiligo

Name: Natalie Ambersley
Age: Early 40s
Location: Essex, England
Years with vitiligo: 35+ years

Erika Page: Tell everyone a little about where you are today. What does life with vitiligo look like for Natalie right now?

Natalie Ambersley: Where I am now, I embrace my skin. My vitiligo is part of my identity—we are friends. I no longer dislike it, I no longer see it as an enemy, and for me, my skin tells a story, which is why I do all the work that I do in terms of advocacy and campaigning and really trying to share the experience of vitiligo so that I can help others, support others, and learn from others.

A little bit about me: during the day my day job is as an executive assistant working in communications and marketing for a major British newspaper. But outside of that, my passion lies in raising awareness, education. I’m also a trustee for The Vitiligo Society, which is the only charity in the UK (it’s been going for about 35 years) that supports people with vitiligo. I do public speaking, too. I really do champion why it’s so important to be comfortable and confident in your skin, and I like to see the journey through from when you develop your first-ever patch and you’re feeling uncomfortable, maybe a bit insecure, to letting people know that you can develop a mindset that allows you to really love and nurture your skin.

EP: I love that idea of being friends with your skin. I think that’s a hard place for many people to get to, and I know that for most of my life, I did not feel that way. I think that being friends with your skin would be life-changing for a lot of people.

NA: Absolutely! I so empathize with people who have just developed the condition and have maybe had it a few weeks or months and are looking at that [white] patch and thinking, “I hate this so much.” Looking back to my childhood and teenage years, they were so hard. I felt isolated, I lacked confidence, I had no self-esteem, I absolutely hated my skin. 

So to anybody that has just developed a patch, or still doesn’t feel comfortable [with their vitiligo], please know that that can change with time. It is a journey, so be kind to yourself and remember that it takes time to love your skin. You can get to that place.

Make sure you keep yourself in a support network, make sure you keep yourself around the vitiligo community; because they are the ones that are really championing you. I don’t know where I would be without the [vitiligo] community. 

Feeling lonely? Join the Dappled Darlings Community, Living Dappled’s private digital community for women with vitiligo.

EP: Being around people with vitiligo—it’s amazing what it can do! Let’s take it back to the beginning now, because people can get vitiligo at any age; you got it when you were just 3 years old. Talk to us about what that was like.

NA: I developed the condition when I was 3 years old, so as a tiny patch on the back of my hand, no bigger than a 5-pence piece. And I’m mixed race as well, so it was very, very milky white; very prominent on my skin. And for me, something that sticks out is that I have one photo, amongst thousands of photos, where I don’t have vitiligo. I look at that picture now, and I still look at that photo, thinking, “That doesn’t look like me.” I have no idea what it is like to not have the condition, so for me…it [was] life-changing.

As a little girl, I never realized I was different. You know, as children we’re very innocent. We don’t understand that people have physical differences and disabilities, and we have this beautiful feeling of just looking at people like they’re people. So I ran around in shorts and t-shirts. I was amongst friends and I didn’t think anything of [my vitiligo].

I had one significant event that happened at school where I was playing at the playground and a little boy went to touch me, and he jumped back, and said, “I’m not gonna touch you because I don’t wanna touch your skin.” So that was when I started to realize, “Oh maybe I am different.” 

But it was as soon as I hit 13 and went to secondary school that things changed significantly. I started to cover up [my vitiligo], I relied heavily on makeup, I didn’t want to wear shorts and t-shirts anymore. I felt very insecure, I thought people were judging me, I thought people would only be friends with me because they felt sorry for me—there was all of this anxiety, and emotional and psychological things playing in my mind that stopped me from being my authentic self because I was wrapped up in what I thought people thought of my skin, which was: it was unattractive and undesirable. So my teenage years were so hard, and I think people can really underestimate what vitiligo can mean for a person, because it is so much more than a skin condition. It’s emotional torment, it’s psychological torment, it’s life-changing.

EP: Thank you for sharing that, I can relate so much. Especially in those teenage years, just how difficult it is, and how much other people don’t see about what you’re going through. I so feel that. You shared a story with me at one point about swimming, and I would love for you to share that here.

NA: Yeah, so my mum, my parents in general, were just my rocks when it came to trying to feel comfortable [living with vitiligo]. But my mum in particular, being a woman as well—I can’t thank her enough for how much she supported me. 

And the story that you mentioned, that I absolutely love sharing, is… we used to go on holiday, just me and her. We’d call them “hot holidays,” where there’s the sea and the pool, and quite naturally I wasn’t comfortable going into the pool, especially if there were loads of other holiday-makers also swimming. 

So my mum would come with me at 6 o’clock in the morning as the sun was just rising—so the pool was still quite cold—and she’d come down to the pool with me, I’d have my dressing gown on, and she’d take me literally to the pool’s side, I’d give her my dressing gown and then I’d jump in and swim in the pool on my own. And as soon as anyone else came down, I’d jump out of the pool and she’d be waiting by the pool to give me my towel back so that I could go back upstairs and feel comfortable. So I still got to experience swimming because she was right by my side.

EP: I love that. Shoutout to all the parents of kids with vitiligo, helping them manage it as they grow up—you are everything. I also think that baby steps like this—swimming in the dark, or for me, it was going into a grocery store one evening without camouflage—it’s still a step. When you’re struggling to live the life you want, start with taking a step, any step, even if it’s the smallest step that you have—even if it’s 5 minutes panicking in a grocery store without makeup on your face, or getting in the pool before the sun comes up—take a step.

NA: Hearing your story, and the one that I just shared, really shows how much power people have over how we feel about ourselves, and how they determine what we’re gonna do. You didn’t want to get out of the car because of people, I didn’t want to go in the pool because of people. So it is about turning that narrative around and thinking, “I come first, I want to go swimming and I’m going to make every effort to make that happen.” And it’s liberating. It’s freeing, it’s empowering, and I wouldn’t change those experiences for the world, but I’m just so glad I am where I am today. 

EP: Such a good way of putting that: it’s about taking your power back, facing those fears. Speaking of which, you actually conquered your fears in a really big way, so share with us about that.

NA: I was at my absolute lowest point. I was in my 30s, and it was emotionally draining and psychologically draining. And I was just putting so much effort into covering my skin, not talking about it, ignoring it, pretending like it didn’t exist, and I just felt like I was living a life that was so un-authentic that I felt like I needed to do something to change. And an opportunity came along that completely changed my life, and helped me get to where I am today. 

So I was asked by The Vitiligo Society—I’ve been a member since I was 5 years old—to speak on a live news program about what it was like living with vitiligo. And I remember thinking, “Absolutely not. There’s no way I’m gonna address the public and talk about my skin condition when I’ve spent the last 30 years hiding it.” But for some reason, in a conversation with my mum again, she said, “Go for it. What’s the worst that could happen? Talk about your story and see how it goes.” And that’s what I did. I went onto the show, it was a news program, it went out live during the day and then during the evening so there were two chances for people to catch it.

I spoke about the journey and what it’s like living with vitiligo. And I was really open about it: using fake tan to cover my skin, what it was like going out and being in neon lights which really highlights vitiligo, all these small things…. And I really spoke about how it knocked my confidence, and how de-liberating it is, and how life-changing it is, and how much it really kind of strips you of being your true self.

The response after the show was incredible. I was getting lots of messages from people saying they have vitiligo, they were struggling, they were so glad they could hear my story—and for a long time I’d thought I was the only person in the world with it. I didn’t realize there were thousands of other people with this condition, and it was at that point that I was like, “Oh, there’s thousands of us here, there’s a community here, and I need to work on myself to try and overcome the anxieties that vitiligo gives you.” And that was my big turning point.

So it was from that moment that I created my Instagram profile, I started sharing my story, I started to show [my vitiligo] more publicly. I had my story in magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Metro (a UK newspaper), and it really started to build from there. And this really helped me to change my mindset. I went from a very fixed mindset of “My skin is just going to control my life,” to a growth mindset where I was able to eventually start wearing swimsuits, going swimming, going out in a pair of shorts. As I’ve mentioned before, connecting with the community was the biggest change, and the biggest thing that helped me overcome my anxieties.

Our minds can be so overwhelmed by trying to predict what other people are thinking. One of the things I do now when I find people staring at my hands—the first thing I used to think was: “Oh they’re looking at my skin because they think it’s ugly and unattractive and they think it looks really weird”—whereas now I flip that over and think, “Actually, they could be looking at my skin thinking it’s really beautiful, it’s unique, it’s lovely, and they could be feeling like it’s really inspiring to them.” 

So it is about flipping the switch a little bit and not constantly thinking about the negative, because we’re here to celebrate our uniqueness. 

EP: You’ve talked about how you’ve gotten to this place of really feeling like you are living the life you want. Do you still struggle with vitiligo?

NA: All the time. Vitiligo is never going to leave me, and I have come to accept that I’m going to have it for the rest of my life. There was a time when I thought I’d have treatment and there was that possibility that my skin might clear up, but I understand that that’s not going to happen. And I still can feel anxious—during the summer, I’ll put on a pair of shorts, I’ll go out the front door, and I know that someone’s gonna stare at me, someone might ask me a question…so I still feel those anxieties. 

But the thing that stops that is: “But I’m living the life that I want to live. I deserve to wear a pair of shorts, so I’m going to do that.” And in doing that I’m empowering myself, and I’m empowering anyone else who also feels uncomfortable with a visible difference (whether it’s vitiligo or not) to be comfortable and just live the life they want to live.