My cousin Rebecca Bass Ching, an incredible Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist who is responsible for turning me on to IFS and introducing it to me as "game changer," just wrote a beautiful piece about being bullied- by someone else or by yourself- and how today's trying times can bring up emotions from past bullying encounters.
In comments on things I write about, I'm noticing something I want to make a distinction between. Sometimes I write something about the social responsibility of vaccination to protect the vulnerable and marginalized, for example. Or I write about anti-racism...
In the Healing With the Muse community, our intention is to alchemize uncertain times into creative gold for the purposes of healing and being “makerly,” leveraging both the joyful and painful experiences of our lives (the last year has been chock full of them!) into opportunities to write and make art straight from the raw, cracked open heart.
If you’ve been following what I write, you know I’ve done A LOT of writing about Covid, public health recommendations (including vaccination), and social justice and human rights lately. This is not my typical gig, but given the intersecting disasters we face, it’s felt more important than what I usually write about. That said, what I usually write about (Whole Health) is more relevant now than ever!
If you’ve been following what I write, you know I’ve done A LOT of writing about Covid, public health recommendations (including vaccination), and social justice and human rights lately. This is not my typical gig, but given the intersecting disasters we face, it’s felt more important than what I usually write about. That said, what I usually write about (Whole Health) is more relevant now than ever!
If you saw the rom-com Groundhog Day, you know that this movie explores the question, "What would it be like if you woke up every day to the exact same routine?"
Because I couldn’t find the poem on Google, I transcribed the incredible poem read by the youngest Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman at the Biden/Harris Inauguration today. You can listen to her here or read it below. The Hill We Climb When day comes we ask...
If you’ve been following what I write, you know I’ve done A LOT of writing about Covid, public health recommendations (including vaccination), and social justice and human rights lately. This is not my typical gig, but given the intersecting disasters we face, it’s felt more important than what I usually write about. That said, what I usually write about (Whole Health) is more relevant now than ever!
I want to respond briefly to all the people who have responded to me lately with criticism, contempt, and sometimes abuse because "I trusted you to promote health sovereignty and now you've sold out." Or "You teach about the dangers of fear, yet you're going to kill me by scaring me every day when you talk about how many people are dying of Covid." Or “I thought you were critical of corruption and capitalism in health care and Big Pharma, yet you’re promoting Big Pharma’s vaccine, so you’ve let me down.”
In response to the State of A Pandemic essay I posted from my friend Rick Loftus, MD, a front line COVID ICU doctor, virologist, epidemiologist, immunologist, and researcher who used to be on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic, many of you asked questions about autoimmune conditions, allergies, and anaphylaxis risk with regards to the Covid vaccine.
This essay is written by one of my close friends, a doctor I trust who reads my Facebook comments and asked for permission to respond to all those who are vaccine hesitant. This opinion is my friend's opinion, so please don't attack me for sharing what my friend asked me to share as a public health broadcast. Also, please don't ask me questions, as I’m not resourced nor experienced enough to answer them, and neither are my friends on the front lines.
In a statement by the President of the Ford Foundation For Social Justice, Darren Walker writes, "I have long believed that inequality is the greatest threat to justice—and, the corollary, that white supremacy is the greatest threat to democracy. But what has become clear during recent weeks—and all the more apparent yesterday—is that the converse is also true: Democracy is the greatest threat to white supremacy... Yes, the ideal of democracy is the greatest threat to the ideology of white supremacy; neither can long endure in the presence of the other.
Even as an empath, it's hard to imagine the seething outrage, helplessness, disgust, terror, powerlessness, horror, and understandable hatred Black and Indigenous People of Color and Jewish people must have felt while watching video footage of white supremacists and QAnon followers egged on by a sitting President of their country while some in law enforcement practically rolled out the red carpet for them.
Rick Loftus, MD is in the same Finding Meaning in Medicine circle with me and our mutual teacher, Kitchen Table Wisdom author and The Healer's Art founder Rachel Naomi Remen, MD. Given his epidemiology background, his smart brain, his position on the front lines, and his huge heart, Rick is my most trusted source for current information about the pandemic, so I wanted to share with you all what he just shared with the doctors in our inner circle.
This week, I took a hike with someone I've known for many years, someone who is convinced the conspiracy theories are true, someone who has been red-pilled. We've shared a dance floor and bumped into each other at the same spirituality conferences for many years. I like him. He's a good guy with a sensitive heart, someone who hates conflict and can't stand seeing everyone fighting. Like me, he wishes everyone could just get along.
When I posted my review of the Chris Hedges video "The Politics of Cultural Despair" on my blog yesterday, I had no idea how prescient the timing of that would become. Like my BIPOC sister, I was horrified but not surprised by yesterday's deadly QAnon and Proud Boy coup attempt. I was not shocked that shirtless white supremacists dressed in bull horns, KKK symbols, and QAnon markings waved Confederate flags in the seat of our democracy.