Keep Showing Up and Protect My Heart

I have found two go-to principles to preserve whatever integrity, agency, and semblance of sanity I might possess. Keep showing up and protect my heart. The specifics are malleable and the moment-to-moment strategies are situational but I keep coming back to these things and it keeps helping. Showing up is maybe self-explanatory? If there are…

Continue Reading

The Power of “Wow”

Turning my “f*%*” into “wow” has been transformational. I’ve probably spent more time trying to craft that opening sentence (in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m trying to sell you something) than on the rest of this, but elaborating on a passing suggestion in Pema Chödrön’s latest book really has made a big difference…

Continue Reading

MLK and Hope for Humanity

In this moment I am conflicted about sharing my annual written reflections on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his legacy, and its applicability to living a more meaningful and moral life today. The violence worldwide (particularly the ongoing and overwhelming scale of killing of Palestinian civilians), the tenuous state of democracy both abroad…

Continue Reading

Tragedy and Choosing to Remember

This week I will turn 49 on the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting, a grim milestone to which I’ve been mentally counting down since December 15 of last year. I do not aspire for it to be a “happy birthday,” and I am rather ambivalent about even acknowledging the personal milestone in public, lest I subject myself to wishes to that effect or, worse, shift attention to me beyond the minimum extent necessary to share these thoughts and experiences that might have some relevance to others. I choose to remember this tragedy, on this and all other days, and below I’ll reflect a bit on what that looks like in practice.

Continue Reading

EDS Awareness 2022: Patch Kit and the Solidarity of Suffering

I had a different piece of writing planned for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Awareness Month this year, but reeling from a mass shooting (and the gut-wrenching awareness that anyone reading this will have to wonder even which one I’m referring to) has turned my head around and made me reflect on the nature of suffering as a societal phenomenon. A physical disability like EDS is so often a source of isolation (among its many challenges) and yet as I watch so many people trying to reconcile their grieving, I think about the capacity we have to connect in the face of suffering.

Continue Reading