Tag: chronic-pain

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

Chronic Resistance: Notes on Surviving the Horrors

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

Know Happy: Notes on Voluntary Confinement

smirkpretty
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?

Continue reading “Know Happy: Notes on Voluntary Confinement” →
disability, health, Learning, long covid, Reading, Writing

Chronic Illness Storytime: Sick Lit Memoirs

smirkpretty
The Authors. Top L-R: Lunden, Mailhot, O’Rourke, Jaouad; Bottom L-R: Foo, Ramey, Henley, Chong

To become chronically ill is not only to have a disease that you have to manage, but to have a new story about yourself, a story that many people refuse to hear—because it is deeply unsatisfying, full of fits and starts, anger, resentment, chasms of unruly need. My own illness story has no destination.

– Meghan O’Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom

Imagine falling into a well, tumbling deeper until you crash down into the ghostly ballroom of a towering manor. You come to in the middle of what appears to be a murder mystery party you definitely did not RSVP to.

Continue reading “Chronic Illness Storytime: Sick Lit Memoirs” →