EDS Awareness 2017: Reflections of a Partner to Someone with EDS
2017 EDS Awareness: Guest post by Kate Ten Eyck
Continue ReadingLove Is A Constant Struggle
I wrote this song this morning for Kate, called “Love Is a Constant Struggle”
I assure you this is not a bizarro, public way of acknowledging relationship friction, quite the contrary. It relates to a recent lecture I attended at Wesleyan called “Freedom Is A Constant Struggle.”
The New Administration, Butt Boils, and MLK’s Persistence
I have been attuned to the significance of Martin Luther King Day for my whole adult life. This year feels different, mostly because this occasion comes days before a particularly consequential change in our presidency. So that brings us, of course, to getting gross and painful butt boils.
Continue ReadingJoy Will Find a Way (and the Myth of Lukewarm Water)
I believe that joy will find a way in 2017. I really do. I also think there will be pain, some of it residual and bleeding into the New Year and some of it relating to new hurts that still lie before us. So much of the richness of life involves embracing the full scope of experience. Sometimes that means holding joy and suffering in tandem. This, of course, becomes harder to swallow as the suffering reaches the depths of despair, but in a sense that is when it becomes most important to remember. As much as Western binary thinking might challenge this, the existence of one does not negate the other.
Continue ReadingLove, Loss, and Courage
Farewell, Claire (and Mom. And Ana. Geez, this is hard)
Continue ReadingThe Election, Jazz, and Discourse Across Lines
Since the 2016 election, a lot of folks are feeling a lot of different feelings. And expressing a lot of feelings. And feeling very strongly about the distinctions between their feelings and others’ feelings. And in some cases trying really hard to figure out how to find that balance whereby they are true to their beliefs and morals and yet remain able to engage genuine dialogue* with other decent humans who feel (and in some cases voted) differently. And with Thanksgiving coming up, some who aren’t ready to attempt that engagement on a broader societal level will be forced to figure out how to find common ground in their own families. OMIGOD, HOW DO WE DO THIS? Okay, take a breath. And another. The answer, of course, is thinking like a jazz musician. Just work with me for a minute.
Continue ReadingPhoebe Snow, St. Peter, and the meaning(s) of “Legacy”
I’m a fan of Phoebe Snow from two different angles, angles that one might even deem at odds with one another. As I contemplate what in music resonates the most with me (something I do approximately 5 times a day) and ponder what life is about (something I do approximately 10 times a day), Phoebe keeps coming to my mind.
Continue ReadingAlternate Realities: EDS Awareness Month 2016
This year’s EDS Awareness Month post: examining what it means to speculate on “what might have been” without our adversity.
Continue Reading“Nice” Is Overrated: Farewell, Randi
On Monday I attended the memorial services that marked, in a sense, the last goodbye to my friend and colleague Randi Brandt. One conclusion is that Randi was not a nice person – and I mean that in the best way possible, for reasons I’ll explain here.
Continue ReadingWhose Burden Should This Be?
If you saw somebody carrying a heavy load, would you take your knapsack and put it on his or her back? Of course not. Should a healthy person walking up hill ask for a ride from someone in a hand-cranked wheelchair? Of course not. In situations that concrete, it’s pretty easy to assess who can handle more burden and who could stand to be relieved of some. So why do we so often do this with our words and our actions? Why do we take people already burdened by trauma or oppression and unload our own comparatively manageable burdens upon them? The “Love Wins” mantra to which I and so many others have clung for the last three years is predicated on compassion, and we mustn’t lose sight of that amidst philosophical arguments that ring hollow without it.
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