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Feerless
Update: May 21, 2020: Feerless is no longer available. You might want to try other trauma-trigger apps like “Warn Me” or “Soothe” at psafe. Do you watch Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, Boardwalk Empire, or any show of the kind that involves blood, war, sexual assaults, car crashes, pedestrians being flung across the road by a runaway vehicle ? If you have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and react at all like I do when watching those kinds of scenes – head buried into a pillow, hands...
read moreAutobiography of my hungers: Rigoberto González
“Like many Mexican children, I cleaned the piedritas out of the uncooked beans before they went into the pot – my meal-prep duty to help my overwhelmed mother as she spun around in the kitchen. The process was simple, but time-consuming: a pile of beans was placed at the edge of the table. I’d hold a bowl just below the edge to drop in the clean pieces, and I’d pick off the debris – dried-up seeds, miniature twigs, tiny stones – all the undesirable, inedible stowaways. These would be set aside in a pile of their own, to be tossed at the...
read moreTraumatic Brain Injuries and Homelessness
On February 2, the groundhog declared, “There is no shadow to be cast. An early spring is in my forecast!” This is good news for homeless people, who endure long, cold days trying to keep warm, crouched in the corner of parking garages, curled up on floors of abandoned houses, or huddled together in makeshift tents. But for more than half of homeless men, they have even more to contend with than weather – traumatic brain injuries. With 600,000 homeless Americans shivering on the streets on any given night, this issue commands attention....
read more“Failure breeds success”
Do you ever berate yourself for failing, tell yourself that you should quite while you’re ahead? Has your writing been rejected by literary journals, magazines, and newspapers time and again ? If you’re a writer, you know what I’m talking about. Yes, we get rejected, a lot. Failure is inevitable. It’s inevitable for painters, dancers, musicians, for all creators. Writer, author, and inspirational speaker, Elizabeth Gilbert, failed – for six years she “failed at getting published.” She received rejection letters in the mail, every day. Are you...
read moreChoosing Wisely: Health Care
Are you concerned about how much you’re spending on health care? Are you wondering if the blood test, X-ray, or MRI your doctor recommends is absolutely necessary? Maybe you don’t make it a habit to discuss the pros and cons of testing with your doctor because, after all, he or she is your doctor and always chooses wisely what is best for you, right? I do trust my own primary doctor’s recommendations, because she listens to me, closely. And she carefully considers whether or not a test is needed, then explains to me the reasons...
read moreWhat Not to Say to Someone with a Brain Injury
At the Vermont Brain Injury Conference last fall, a TBI survivor, who sustained his injury years ago, spoke to an audience of nearly four hundred people. He didn’t have any visible scars, difficulty with speech, or an obvious limp to his gait. He spoke clearly and eloquently, and, in fact, was back in school pursuing a college degree. Because he appears healthy and strong, he explained how those without a TBI often don’t know what to say to him when they learn that he sustained a TBI. I recall him saying to the audience something like,...
read moreNational Novel Writing Month
I wrote a novel in thirty days last November. Yes, you read that correctly. Thirty days. How did I do it? The drive to write, determination, and encouragement – from family, friends, and the staff at nanowrimo. Nanowrimo, or National Novel Writing Month, begins every year on November 1, when participants begin working toward the goal of completing a fifty-thousand-word novel by midnight on November 30. Anyone can participate, from novice to veteran writers. All you need to do is sign up, create your novel on the website, and, of course, write...
read more“To Be or Not to Be”
Every day, at least eight black people, three gay people, three Jewish, and one Latino person is a victim of a hate crime. A hate crime is defined as “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” In celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Ilyasah Al-Shabazz, a community organizer, social activist, and motivational speaker, brought a church full of wide-eyed listeners to a standing applause as she articulated the byproducts of injustice: “Hatred is a...
read moreVisual Art and the Brain
Do you enjoy drawing, coloring, painting? So what if you are not a Picasso or a Van Gogh. What I’m about to share with you just might inspire you to head out to your local art shop for colored pencils and a drawing pad. Research suggests that creating visual art enhances memory, and improves interactions between certain parts of the brain. Based on feedback from a small group of retirees, improvement in brain functioning may also strengthen one’s psychological state of mind. This seems logical. After all, as researchers say, “The creation...
read moreMedical Literary Messenger
I’m happy to share with you that my essay, “A Faded Scar with Palpable Edges,” is now available to read in The Medical Literary Messenger, a web-based journal associated with Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, and whose aim is “to promote humanism and the healing arts through prose, poetry, and photography.” The essay is about my struggle to overcome Anorexia Nervosa, an eating disorder affecting between one and five percent of female adolescents and young girls. The deeply contemplative and...
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