Facebook Live: Guilt and Chronic Illness
So many of us feel so much guilt. As you know, I wrote a post about guilt — particularly writer guilt — a little while ago, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I took at the Facebook. In this month’s #AskLene, we talked about guilt, chronic illness, and how to let…
In Which I Regain A Part of Me That Had Been Lost
I watched The Meg yesterday and it was life-changing. But I should start at the beginning. I love film — I mean, who doesn’t? — and used to go to the movies all the time. Especially after I moved downtown to an area that has a discount movie theatre. Once a week or so, I’d…
How to be a Photographer with a Disability: The Gear
Updated march 15, 2021 How do you manage to be a photographer — doesn’t your disability get in the way? Every now and again, someone will ask me a variant on this question. The answer involves a number of factors. Today I’m going to talk about the gear — both the cameras and the tools…
#AskLene July 2018
This month on the #AskLene Facebook Live, I talked about disability benefits — what’s good about them, what isn’t, and what it takes to qualify — as well as what to do when people don’t believe you have a chronic illness.
4 Ways to Use Respect and Dignity in Caregiving for Chronic Illness
When you have a chronic illness — or know someone who does — help can be part of your relationship. More commonly, the word caregiving is used when there is an element of caring for someone who has physical limitations, such as chronic illness. Giving and receiving care is much more than just the physical act…
Becoming Bionic: A Story from the Dark Ages of Rheumatology
Updated May 19, 2020 When I was 16, I had both my hips replaced. When I talk about it, I usually focus on the way they liberated me from more than two years of lying in a hospital bed. They enabled me to sit in a power wheelchair and to go home. I don’t talk about…
Sex and RA: Asking for Help with a Delicate Issue
Updates June 12, 2020 We all have at least one. Your nemesis, if you will. That one thing that you can’t do because of your chronic illness or disability. Well, of course there are probably more than one, but the others may not bother you is much. Or maybe you found a way around it….
What Okinawa’s 80% and Mary Kay Taught Me about Writing with Chronic Illness
Updated September 28, 2021 I ran out of spoons around the middle of June. Then I spent the next six weeks teetering on the line between having just a few and being deep in energy overdraft, while mentally (and repeatedly) chanting just hold on until August 1 and not quite understanding why I was flaring…
Independence with RA and Disability: Reachers
One of the biggest frustrations of living with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and disability is how it eats away and that your independence. Whether it’s the inability to open a jar, or needing others to pick up an item you dropped on the floor, the gradual erosion of independence is like the death of a thousand…
If I Need Help, I’ll Ask for It: An Encounter with a Self-Obsessed Ableist
Updated September 27. 2020 I was on a small excursion, among other things returning books to the library and while I was there, I picked up another one. After getting checked out, I moved over about a meter and a bit to get out of the way so the person behind me could get to…
I’ll Be Over Here, Next to the Potted Plant
Say that you’re At a small family gathering and across the room sits a member of your family with whom you haven’t had a good chinwag in a while. What do you do? At a party where you don’t know anyone and don’t feel like spending any more time standing by yourself with a glass…
Oh, Brother: Disability and Romance
Updated June 14, 2020 “Is that your brother?” We get this all the time, The Boy and I and I don’t know why, except that we are both somewhat rounded and wear glasses. Well, that’s not actually true, because I do know why. It’s because able-bodied men don’t date women in wheelchairs. To be even…