Health

Pickles Taught Me the Art of Self-Preservation

I was not suspended in a timeless brine like my pickles. I was not a stoic javelin of cellulose waiting to strike a bored palette. My answers would not be in rigidity, in control.

Sep 22, 2022
Uncovering the Secrets of My Chromosomes Through Genetic Testing

I couldn’t fight off the sense that there is a certain absurdity to getting tested for a disease for which there is currently no cure.

Sep 08, 2022
The Two Sides of American Health Care

This dichotomy in American health care is well-known to patients with chronic illness.

Aug 29, 2022
Conversations with Friends with Endometriosis

All my life, I had looked for answers in books, and I was no different when it came to endometriosis.

Aug 11, 2022
Medical Care Needs More Space for Patient Narratives

I want medicine to meet me where I am, not where it wants me to be.

A Family History of Fear

I got a D in math and my sister got cancer. These aren’t causalities, only things that happened one right after the other.

Learning to Live in a Body That Fights Itself

I have spent most of my life hating the fact of having a body. It makes sense that my body would eventually start to hate me back.

Apr 05, 2022
In the US Health Care System, You’re Not a Patient. You’re a Consumer

On some level I know the system is designed to break me down, but I feel guilty because I am good at letting it.

Mar 28, 2022
We’re the Last Good Girls Alive

Who will remember a girl’s pain when the evidence disappears?

Mar 24, 2022
Covid-19, Memory, and Remembering My Grandma

Can I trust the sparse memories in my long-Covid brain? If I don’t record this, will my Frankenstein-ed memories escape, just like Grandma’s did?

Mar 16, 2022
All the Things I’ve Loved to Death

Am I ever going to know where I hope to escape to? I understand that I’m trying escape from reality, but I’m still not clear on what the destination is.

Jan 25, 2022
Hayao Miyazaki’s Characters Help Me Grieve My Chronic Illness

“Howl’s Moving Castle” and “The Legend of Korra” are about protagonists living with magic and fighting for the fate of the world. To me, they’re also metaphors for dynamic disability.

Making Peace With My Writing Career One Walk at a Time

With every step, I realized I didn’t have to be juggling All The Things to be a worthwhile member of society. I just needed to exist.

Dec 21, 2021
I Turned to TikTok When Motherhood Felt Out of Reach

In the emergency room waiting for a potential diagnosis, I soothe myself with loops of pudgy toddlers tripping into the antics of babyhood over and over again.

Dec 09, 2021
Dev Patel in ‘The Green Knight’ Helped Me Manage My OCD

Many times I could have said the same as Gawain, terrified in the face what was to come, “I’m not ready. I’m not ready yet.”

Nov 23, 2021
How Do We Survive Suicide?

How much does my fear of owning this darker voice hinge on a cultural insistence that it’s unhealthy, even unnatural? What if I’m all of it?

Oct 26, 2021
The Script Characters with Cancer Are Told to Follow

Nora Feely on unrealistic storylines and tropes of characters with cancer, what it means to "survive," gratitude and toxic positivity, and more.

Oct 25, 2021
My Radical Instagram Sangha: A Love Letter

A space has been created by this unflinching journalism, this unabashed Instagram memoir.

Sep 15, 2021
God Wants You to Be Thin (and Other Lies the Evangelical Church Taught Me)

I believed I had been nurtured, like a lamb, for one purpose: Mine was to be thin.

Sep 09, 2021
What Could It Mean for My Child to Inherit My Anxiety?

And does asking these questions make me a good mother?

Jul 19, 2021