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Being Human
I spent this past weekend being human at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Healing. That is, I spent this past weekend letting go and not giving a fuck with Jennifer Pastiloff. Yoga instructor, author, and founder of the online magazine The Manifest-Station, Jennifer is known for her workshop, On Being Human, where women from all over come together to dance, to sing out loud, to write whatever comes to the page, and to share their deepest pains and enduring dreams. If someone were to ask me to choose a single word to describe Jennifer, that...
read moreThe Forgiveness Project
In my recent Google search for stories about forgiveness, I came across The Forgiveness Project. Founded in 2004 by journalist Marina Cantacuzino, The Forgiveness Project provides resources to help people explore and work through their own, unresolved grievances. The project collects testimonies from victims of all kinds of violence whose resilience acts as a powerful antidote to hate and brutality. The purpose of the project is an open-hearted one: to show that “restorative narratives have the power to transform lives; not only...
read moreMelissa Cronin in Conversation with Lynn Lurie, Author of Museum of Stones
Exciting news! My conversation with Lynn Lurie, about her latest novel Museum of Stones, is now live at Heather Feather Review. Check it out! Museum of Stones reveals a possessive/obsessive world of a love that must be released. An exceptional child collects too many rocks, invents a garbage recycler that runs amok, does not “play well.” His mother takes their relationship to extremes, threatening her sanity and health, a wrenching yet often funny account. Lynn Lurie is the author of three novels, Corner of the Dead (2008), winner...
read morePearl of Wisdom for Writers
As a writer, the hardest part for me is getting the words on the page, meaning this: my brain manages to arrange precisely what it is I want to write, but once I sit my butt in the chair, and face the screen, my brain slams its door shut. If only I had the key to that door, quick access to the words so beautifully aligned in my head. But, alas, I do not have such a key. Instead, I keep at it, and sometimes find myself sitting in front of the computer for an hour before coming up with a sentence I’m half-willing to share with the world....
read moreMeaning in Things
For some, the holidays can be hard, really hard. In the backdrop of all the holly-jolly, the eggnog and cookies, the faith-filled choral music, and Christmas carolers spreading good cheer through glittered neighborhoods, there are those of us who can’t help but feel a little sad as we think of loved ones we’ve lost over the past year. I lost my father in September, and my mother-in-law the day before Thanksgiving. So how do we manage our sadness, let ourselves be with the pain as it comes, often in unexpected ways and at...
read moreSelf-Care for Anxiety
I unabashedly admit that I have an anxiety disorder, two actually: generalized anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. While I’m not always a good student of self-care for anxiety, I do try my best each day to find little things to slow my mind’s engine from revving too high. If you’re among the anxiety disordered, you probably get it – the overthinking; the fretting over this and that; the what if, what if, what if; and the hyper-vigilance, if you have PTSD. The upside to all this is: You’re among good...
read more“Fix Your Gut, Fix Your Brain”
Just when you think you might know all there is to know about how to heal your brain after a traumatic head injury (or how to prevent your brain from a dementia downslide), there’s more. Last week, during Vermont’s 30th Brain Injury Association Conference, I sat in awe of how much I didn’t know when Chiropractor, Wellness Expert, and Clinical Director of Vizuri Health Center Dr. Bill Schenck spoke about the relationship between the gut and the brain. In his presentation, “Fix Your Gut, Fix Your Brain,” he could not have...
read moreConcussions
For some – especially those of us who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) – football is synonymous with concussion. And since football season is upon us once again, I thought this would be the perfect time to re-visit the topic of concussions. To get more to the point, as the Brain Injury Association of Nova Scotia asks of us – both the brain-injured and non-brain-injured – “Please keep this in mind …” A concussion is an invisible disability. Everyone’s brain and brain injury are...
read more“Tilt-A-Whirl”
I’m here to share some good news. My story, “Tilt-A-Whirl,” has been published in issue 12 of Tahoma Literary Review. How many of us have been to an amusement park? Do you remember the Tilt-A-Whirl? You know, that ride that whips you around and around, your body being pulled one way, your head, and brain, being pulled the other. For some reason, I used to love that vertigo-like feeling as a kid, but that was long before my brain injury. Now, forget it; I’ll take a ticket for the merry-go-round. If you haven’t had the...
read moreTraumatic Brain Injuries: Vision Therapy
It’s been nearly fifteen years since I sustained a traumatic brain injury, and though you would think my brain should have fully healed by now, that’s not the case. In reality, the healing process for most brain injuries is ongoing, a lifetime of ongoing. I’ve submitted to all kinds of therapies over the years – cognitive therapy, herbal therapy, meditation, yoga, medications, e-stim, the list goes on. Now, in my efforts toward continued healing, I am a believer in vision therapy. Fifteen years ago, even as recent as three years...
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