“Wait … I’m beautiful!”
I had been lying on the sofa in a late night stupor when a forgotten childhood event came to me in a flash. The setting was “Francis” making a rare visit to my mother’s flat.
“Your daughter’s beautiful,” Francis had commented.
“What about me?” my mother replied.
Francis went on to say a few words about mother being beautiful but that a twelve-year-old had a different, youthful kind of beauty. Continue reading
I listened in horror to my voicemail. Somehow, it had recorded a conversation between my father and a friend of his. The incisions on my tummy had only just become painless in September 2005. But no longer. Apparently, my body couldn’t take listening to less than flattering words from my own parent.
Later his friend tried to justify my dad’s behavior. “Devin” had expressed anger because my father was nowhere to be found while his daughter prepared for, then underwent, major surgery. Father was only reacting to that anger. “At any point in all this, did he ask how I am?” I inquired. Silence. Continue reading
I wasn’t worried when the orderly tied my feet to the bottom of my hospital bed. It was September 2005 and I had just had major surgery. Someone had put the emergency buzzer next to my hand but I was soon yelling for the nurses (or trying to). I simply couldn’t command my hand to move the required inch to grab the buzzer. The solution was to put the buzzer in the palm of my hand with my fingers wrapped around it.
Now the sheets on the perfectly made bed were pushing my feet into an uncomfortable position and I couldn’t find the strength to move them. So the orderly righted them, then tied them down. I even laughed when hours later one of the surgeons tried to carry me out of bed to take a few steps and I’d forgotten about my feet being tied to the bed frame. Continue reading
I can do anything as long as I can figure out what to wear for it. That’s right, I said it! You might think that makes me a ridiculously shallow fashionista. But it’s merely an outward expression of inner, even spiritual, preparation.
Wardrobes don’t have to be just for conventionally noble projects such as a job search, pregnancy or going on holiday. They could also be for meeting a long cherished goal or adjusting to a new lifestyle … like a downsized lifestyle. Earning a fraction of what you used to make when Bill Clinton was President or needing to tone down your designer looks in solidarity with your battered community isn’t so bad if you can figure out the appropriate clothes! Continue reading
Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.
–Jean Jacques Rousseau
As a counselor for the past thirty-five years, I have worked with many, many people who have overcome chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Through this experience, I have come to the conclusion that enlisting the aid of someone who can see the situation in a more detached and objective way is one of the quickest ways you can find your way out of the maze of CFS/FMS. Just treating the body without bringing the mind, emotions, and spirit into balance is, at best, a partial solution and often only a temporary one. Enlisting the aid of a guide or counselor, meanwhile, can help you figure out what you want and how to most effectively express those desires so as to enlist the help of others. This is not because one is broken and needs to be fixed, but because it is a shortcut to returning to a healthy and vital life and it enriches one’s life and relationships. Continue reading
“You don’t look sick.”
The woman who uttered those words to me had cancer that had spread. Now we’d met in a residential clinic both trying to get our lives back.
There was one other person at the dining table and there may have been more people in the room. I watched as her words seemed to hang in the air inviting me into a battle of wills. Continue reading
