Gather. Discover. Cultivate.
Right now someone is packing for a research trip to Antarctica. Swimming with dolphins. Having their first dance.
Someone is falling in love on a bridge in Venice. Ziplining off a treetop platform. Spelunking in a cave in near total darkness.
Someone’s life disappears into the shadows of another’s big moment.
When the unit of measure plucked from the shelf, someone always falls short.
Continue reading “The Incredible Shrinking Woman”
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”
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”
This last night of 2023 also happens to be my last evening off before returning to work. Three months of medical leave has been the best gift of the year. Because “going out” is no more than a fading memory from a distant land, I’m staying in tonight to answer five questions you haven’t asked yet (but maybe were going to) about Life with the Mystery Sick.
Continue reading “5 Answers to 5 Questions You Didn’t Ask”
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.
“You’re doing your best,” they say. You nod, you shrug. Okay, sure.
Inside, you sneer.
“Your best” belongs to brighter days. Not so far off, those days, but somehow also remote. Like they belong to someone else.
Best You learned things. Made decisions snap-snap. Took on the project. Invited people into your home. Best You learned a new language, the names of trees, how to roll sushi, and the most exhilarating route through Manhattan by bike.
We saw everyone around us smiling and repeating “I’m fine! I’m fine!” and we found ourselves unable to join them in all the pretending. We had to tell the truth, which was: “Actually, I’m not fine.”
It pulls in all the bad stuff: guilt, despair, shame, anger, disappointment, confusion, worry, exhaustion, and pain of all varieties. The ShopVac of Suffering. It sucks into its belly the cobwebs from the corners and the black mold from the basement and the decades-old crud buried deep in the carpet.
Engine growling, it whips this mix into misery soup.
The enemy does not live in you.
Your life is not your foe. Not your wounds or mistakes, not even the hurt you caused.
Not your temper. Not your failures. Not the paths you taken or those you’ve passed on, not your reckless love or your absent god.
The enemy does not occupy your mind. The enemy does not govern your chemical imbalance. The enemy never existed inside you. You didn’t let it infiltrate, storm the gates. You are innocent of that, if not of everything.
On my son’s first birthday, a stomach virus knocked him flat. For the next few days, he couldn’t keep anything down. Even though he begged for the comfort of nursing, I had to ration his time on the breast. We fed him Pedialyte from a dropper. He screamed in protest until thirst overcame his resistance.
After a few days, he rallied. Small portions of pureed food stayed down. Great quantities of breast milk too. He resumed scooting all over the house and tormenting the dog. The doctor had said he’d get over it, and this seemed to hold true.
Except that he kept losing weight.
We are the compulsives. The chameleons. The deluded. The wounded.
Addicts. Bigots. Enablers. Aggressors.
Gossips. Accommodaters. Over-sharers. Fixers.
We are the guarded. And the stuck.
We are passive. People-pleasers. Avoiders. Myopic.
We envy. We compete. We keep secrets. We give up.
Liars. Caretakers. Impulsives. Fanatics.
Re-enactors of traumatic events.
Prisoners of mindsets we refuse to reject.
Continue reading “CrazyTown and the Ambassadors of Acceptance”
Shannon E. Williams 