Category: community

activism, Choices, community, Determination, disability, Learning, long covid, Mindfulness, Take Action

Chronic Resistance: Notes on Surviving the Horrors

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Photo by Majestic Lukas on Unsplash

Half the US reels from this first week of mayhem. A good portion of the rest of the world too. As always, Democratic party leaders are unwilling to make the radical changes necessary to produce a coherent strategy. Grassroots organizers are paralyzed by attacks on multiple fronts at once, scrambling to serve already vulnerable communities now facing direct threats to their existence. And the failure of mass protests over the past decade to sway policy in a more humane direction has left many without a collective mechanism for voicing outrage.

Just as in the first sickening months of His Monstrosity’s first term in office, the goal is to keep us off-balance. To make us so dizzy with fear and confusion that we end up like Oz’s scarecrow: stuffed full of the shredded hopes of 100 million people, stuck in place and pointing in every direction at once.

Continue reading “Chronic Resistance: Notes on Surviving the Horrors” →
body, Brain, community, Determination, disability, health, long covid, Take Action

Joint Force: Notes on Recovery Efforts

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Photo by Eryk Fudala on Unsplash. Color photo from inside a stone culvert with a creek running trough it, looking out over a green hillside.

Halfway up the road to the lake, the ground caved in. It was our first summer running the YMCA summer camp in the mountains of Colorado. The new culvert system our regional Y had installed at a cost of $900K had not even had its first birthday.

Continue reading “Joint Force: Notes on Recovery Efforts” →
activism, Change, Choices, community, disability, health, long covid, Reading Beyond

To Spin a Yarn: Notes on Curse and Rescue

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Inside this illness, many of us inhabit two opposing states at once: grateful beyond measure for the knights and godmothers and helpful mice in one’s own tale. And burning with white-hot rage on behalf of afflicted siblings punished without end by the failures of our kings and the ones who permit their reign.

Photo by Yevheniia on Unsplash. Picture from inside a barred tower window with jagged edges looking out over a dark, adjacent tower and the countryside below at dusk.

You know how to spot the villains the moment they step onto the page. Briar Rose’s wronged fairy, Jack’s giant, an entire genus of jealous stepmothers who would rather kill their husband’s children than compete for scarce resources. All you have to do is look for the most jealous, greedy, power-hungry characters. The ones whose motives make your skin crawl.

You also know from reading these stories that the villain is a straw man. He draws your attention away from where the real threats lurk. The resident miscreant, no matter how vast his appetite, can’t hold a candle to the more dangerous elements driving the plot. 

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body, community, disability, Dogs, health, Living in the Moment, long covid

Know Happy: Notes on Voluntary Confinement

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Color photograph of a fennec fox curled up and sleeping on a brown, sandy surface with its nose tucked into its tail and its ears sticking up.
Photo by Clément ROY on Unsplash

The Visible app gives me a 2. Not the lowest score possible but It is a “Back to bed with you, Dear” kind of score. A score of knitted brows and wringing hands. Your body is out of balance today, the app tells me. You may want to plan a quieter day.

So I do. Even though the sun is up and the crepe myrtle blossoms are unfurling in the July heat, I down my morning meds and crawl back under the sheets. Eye mask, earplugs, more sleep. Fractured sleep disturbed by epic action-thriller fever dreams that shake my hold on reality, but sleep nonetheless. What else is there to do?

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body, community, disability, long covid

See Here: Notes on Long COVID

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Smoke and hand obscure face inside black hoodie.

46,000 of us on a Reddit sub. 60,000 on a private Facebook group. Tens (or even hundreds) of thousands still on Twitter despite the fallout from the buyout. Discord groups. Regional discussion boards. And circles absorbing circles as sub-types make homes in community with those suffering from ME/CFS, MCAS, and other illnesses.

These are just the collected few. We are always dealing with small clusters. Only 10-ish percent who get the virus will end up with post-viral syndrome. A percentage of those show symptoms severe enough, or enduring enough, to register among a baffled medical establishment as more than anxiety, aging, or “all your tests are normal, try meditation and drinking more water.”

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community, memory, neighborhood, Purpose, Relationships, spirit

Anniversaries are Dates on Steroids

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I overhear a woman outside chatting with two neighbors. She says, “Twenty-four years ago today, I lost my brother.” She slow-shakes her head. “It’s hard to believe, 24 years.”

One neighbor asks, “What are you noticing? What do you miss the most?”

“Having someone who cares.”

A year ago Thursday was the first day I kept my son home, one day ahead of the county-wide school lockdown. The previous evening, a Wednesday, we went out to our favorite Vietnamese place and sat down for bowls of pho. We knew something was coming to an end and that this could be our last time in a restaurant. For a year, now longer? I could never have imagined. Like the woman outside, I am slow-shaking my head. 

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Art, body, community, Creativity, Fitness, Music

Fan Dancer

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Back in March, we knew it would be a little while. Night clubs shuttered along with gyms, studios, and all the rest of public life. No contra dancing at the Glen Echo Park Spanish Ballroom on Friday nights. No proximity to my absolutely favorite Zumba teacher at the rec center on Saturday mornings. We’d have to figure something out. For this old gal, keeping the spirit intact means movement. Dance is as much a necessity as toilet paper and reliable wifi.

The irony was clear from the beginning: the businesses keeping their doors open were not ones I wanted to support. A few of my more savvy Zumba instructors went virtual, offering Zoom workouts at no cost a couple days a week. It was oddly comforting to catch a  glimpse into the kitchens and living rooms of people I’d only seen at the gym. I felt less alone in my own mess, swinging my hips in the tiny rectangle of space carved out in a condo which absorbed schoolroom, office, and the entire universe of entertainment options on two days notice last March.

That little while stretched into weeks. Then months.

I was definitely going to need new ways to dance.

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community, Friends, Love, neighborhood, Outdoors, Relationships, spirit

Through This, Together

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The weeping willow tree stands alone at the edge of the parking lot. In spring and summer, its feathered branches play with light. Now, in the cold, it sways its head of bare tresses.

In the Beforetimes, the willow held my morning. Waiting for the 466 bus to the metro, queuing commuters angled their bodies towards the stop sign up the block where the bus would eventually appear. We do this without realizing it, don’t we? Pin our attention on some absence we want filled by something beyond our control? It eventually occurred to me that fixating on that stop sign was a tragic waste of a few wide-open morning minutes. Holding my packed lunch and metro card, I turned to look across the street instead. The willow. Right there. It gave my gaze a bite of intrigue, some sustenance to carry me through the workday.

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community, Fitness, Mindfulness, neighborhood, Parenting, spirit

This Bubble, Spinning and Viscous

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Our governor gave us the stay-at-home order yesterday. With presumptive positives surpassing 1000 in the state, it’s a wise directive. That said, judging by the volume on I-66 right outside my condo, only a handful of my fellow Virginians are complying. And no, they still have not finished replacing the sound wall as they ravage the land around us for new express lanes. Which means even as spring explodes from the tulip poplar and cherry trees all around the complex, my balcony door stays sealed tight.

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