January Was Slow But Not Gentle: What I Learned By Focusing on Health As My Body Fell Apart
A recap of the things I shared and did and thought this month and a roundup of writing that inspired me on the topic of understanding what health means ...
At the beginning of the month, I shared a newsletter about my plans for 2025, emphasizing that although I had lots of ideas, I would be taking it slowly and gently.
You can read about that here:
I did take it slowly, then I didn’t, then I did but not because I really wanted to. I have so many things that I want to do creatively, projects I’m launching, ideas I want to share, ways in which I want to connect. I want to do so intentionally and with care for my own health. My eagerness doesn’t always match my energy. Rarely do they really match my life circumstances.
Instead of dwelling on what’s not yet done, I’ll share what I did do in January. The theme for my writing was to explore what exactly I mean when I talk about health. This changes and shifts over time and it’s important for me to revisit my definitions and beliefs periodically - for myself and for clarity in the work that I put into the world.
I wrote two key articles about this:
What Else Would My Body Like to Tell Me Through Pain?
Ironically, or naturally perhaps, in the weeks of thinking deeply about all levels of health, my body seems to have decided to fall apart on me. The litany of current complaints that makes me feel old and sick and whiny and not gentle at all with myself even though gentle is what I need includes:
I fractured my foot more than two years ago and suddenly it’s newly in serious pain again. I need to go get an Xray, I guess.
I have constant heartburn no matter what I eat or don’t eat, how I sit or sleep, sometimes bad enough to make me vomit, and I don’t have any kind of clear reason or resolution for this. I need to get some tests, I guess.
There’s something really wrong with my elbow/shoulder/hands? My elbow is typically in pain. My shoulder sometimes hurts and always feels like its not in the right place. My hands regularly go numb - mostly when I sleep because I sleep on top of my arm even though I know it’s making it worse because I don’t know how to not sleep this way despite reading all the articles and tips. Some or all of this seems to be cubital tunnel syndrome or repetitive strain from crochet/typing/phone/whatever and I’m changing those habits but its slow going.
I’m someone who needs sleep and I’m not getting enough of it. Leading to all kinds of additional problems.
I had switched psych meds and the new ones were better than I ever could have managed so I tapered off of the old ones and that went fine except this month I’m not sure if its fine. I know that I’m feeling my feelings and something makes me cry every single day (like commercials) and I don’t feel depressed like my usual experience of depression but I’m irritable. Is this overall bad health? Normal reaction to really difficult stress going on? Something else? I have an appointment with my psychiatrist next week.
At any given moment in the day, at least three things hurt. Random sore throats and headaches and body aches and aches from standing and aches from sitting and aches from laying down.
Maybe Life is Just Sick and Painful Right Now
Without going into too much of any of it, in January … my family was deeply affected by the LA Fires and my anxiety spiralled as a result … my finances became even more precarious than usual for the freelance life and I don’t feel like there’s much of a safety net and its scary … Politics … I was overly scheduled mostly with things I really wanted to do and enjoyed although I canceled some anyway … And its cold. California cold not real cold but still it is cold.
I have to resist the urge to erase this entire message. I don’t want to be whiny or ungrateful or annoying or that sick person who doesn’t stop talking about being sick and is she really all that sick anyway? I don’t want to write about my body or my mind or my stressors … not with complaints and not with resilience, not at all.
But this is what health is. This is what my health is right now. It’s a series of difficult things that are in my body and outside of my body and acting upon my body and coming up from my body and all tied up with my mind and my emotions and my experiences.
I deeply want to understand the complex relationship between my health and my creativity and in order to do that I have to understand what health means to me and in order to do that I have to be willing to look at my health and discuss my health and explore my health in ways that are sometimes really uncomfortable.
Here’s what I currently want to say about this, I think:
My physical health sucks right now and I vascillate between enthusiasm for making changes that I think might help and frustration with the realization that I’m blaming myself for something that might not be fully in my control.
I would like to get answers and solutions and thoughts from professionals but also every time I go to my doctors I come out more frustrated, usually with more pills to delay figuring out the problem, often feeling dismissed.
I would like to change doctors and see ones that I like better/ trust more/ feel heard by. My health insurance makes this very difficult. I don’t have an option outside of my insurance. I would really like to see a holistic doctor that doesn’t chop me into pieces and send each piece to a specialist to determine separately what pill is required. This does not seem to be an option with my insurance.
Finding doctors, going to doctors, making changes all feels very exhausting.
I am so grateful for the people who provide support and care and understanding and mirroring and all of the things during all of my different feelings about all of it. Big hugs for the people in my Substack chat group would have offered words of kindness and validation that have honestly made my days more bearable.
I am worried that I sound hyperbolic. A lot of wondeful moments happened this month. These truths about my health don’t discount that.
I’m writing regularly but its hard and some days my mind really tears me up with words about the pointlessness of it. Sometimes the writing helps and sometimes it doesn’t. I’m finding solace in crochet and collage … except that the whole repetitive strain pain thing is making that less helpful.
There is a deep intertwined connection between what’s going on for me emotionally, psychologically and physically. It is deeply impacted by the stress and anxiety of immediate loss and grief and bigger global pressures. My financial health is tanking and this is not separate from the rest in a chicken-egg sort of way. The friends and sorta-strangers who have provided all levels of loving generosity are also not separate from this and if my health were moving along levels that definitely boosts me up a level or ten.
Other Things I Shared This Month
Gratitude to
for sharing my guest post Are You Brave Enough to Face the Page through Fog and Fear? A quote from that piece:“The brave action begins with a single word on the page. And then another. My bravery is in choosing to show up again and again, recognizing when I’ve let writing become a monotonous task that dulls its brilliance.”
Gratitude to
for sharing thoughts with me in this interview:Art Meets Psychology Interview with Jianna Heuer
What’s working for me in my writing routine right now is complicated and also simple:
One of the things that had to give this month was the work I wanted to do for THREADSTACK. I had five newsletters planned for sharing the amazing creativity of our yarn and thread, fiber and fabric community. I only managed the month’s intro post:
Things On Health Others Wrote That I Read
It’s helpful to consider the thoughts and ideas of others as I puzzle through my own. Over on Substack, these were some of the pieces that stood out to me in January relative to health:
Favorite Reading: : “a conversational newsletter spanning mind, body & spirit” that shares interviews which always ask:
“What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
A few of the recent responses:
“Being aware of how I feel mentally and physically, and acting based on my current state.” - Sofia Anna Dolin
“Ease of movement. Willingness to be active. Motivation. Good mood. A positive mental state usually reflects my overall health. Irritability, lethargy, and sadness usually point me to some deeper happening — be it mental or physical. - Lu Rey
“Health is where my heart takes center stage and the voices in my mind are in the mezzanine, being told “shhhh” whenever necessary. Accepting the outcome regardless, remembering all emotions are passing.” - Jenna Lyn Horoky
In Secret Life of an Anonymous Speechwriter to the Stars by Claire Rudy Foster over on , there’s an indication that health means being fully seen and accepted in community in whatever state of “health” you might be in …
“The only place where I didn’t need to moderate my tone, where I could speak freely, was in my addiction recovery community. Through the first, dramatic stages of my transition, when my voice broke and when I was so afraid that my anger and panic was unwelcome in the world, the friends I knew there listened to me and encouraged me to keep sharing. They understood that, for people like us, honesty is lifesaving. People who swallowed their feelings relapsed, disappeared and died. I lost many friends to overdoses and substance-related accidents and suicides, silent deaths that went unacknowledged outside of our community. I kept showing up, and I kept talking. Tears, bile, all of me was welcome.”
This is, often, the crux of therapy. Therapists have many different approaches, utilize many interventions and techniques, have years of education and experience to support their clients but ultimately the most healing thing, at least from my experience and what I’ve seen, is their ability to simply hold space for you to be exactly as you are without judgment. This acceptance, ironically, leads to potential for change, which can mean potential for greater health. The acceptance itself is healing.
From in this post, more about community as critical in our healing:
“I came here, with my child and all my journals and photo albums, to flee the smoke and fires. And then I got quite sick, I have Covid. It’s been completely surreal to have a fever in this context, without things like a tea kettle. Nothing like my friends who lost everything, just difficult timing.
I don’t think these group chats are unrelated to our collective survival. The same women with whom I discuss relationships, sex and freedom I am now texting about air quality and shock and practical plans for getting though this (as well as unrelated topics: Are we allowed to talk about other things? asks my Jordi, who doesn’t know if her house is still standing. Yes, we must or we’ll go crazy.)”
On Writing/ Creativity As A Key Part of Health …
“Many of us are at a stage of life where we are asking a lot of questions and don’t have a lot of answers. We are struggling to remember who we are at our essence, before marriage or motherhood or menopause; we aren’t sure where we should focus the beam of our very limited energy. Creativity, dream-chasing, and writing projects often feel like luxuries we can’t afford.
I suspect most of us usually know how that ends. When we turn our backs on our voices, writing, and passion projects, there is usually a consequence, and it often shows up in our physical, mental, or emotional health.”
at in Reclaiming Your Voice in 2025
“Creativity is contagious, and sharing time with other writers, poets, artists and film makers can trigger ideas that are otherwise trapped in our daily habits.
And the best way, if possible, is to meet in person. Studies show that the heart’s energy can reach about three feet outside of the physical body and can be detected in another person sitting nearby. When in creative flow, your heart rate is regular and your body feels energized but calm.” - From Creativity is contagious by
The piece “Do Creatives Need a Mentor” by
is about the writing journey and the question of having mentors as writers/creatives but what jumped off the page most for me was:“Becoming a writer has made me someone who can take profound care of myself. My absolute dickwad of an inner critic has been softened and made to feel safe by a new voice that I cultivated; she is mothering, caring, and inherently wise.
The fact that no one scooped me up and said, “I see something in you, let me introduce your work to a few people”, has meant that I had to say those words to myself first.”
This is a part of health, this learning how to care for ourselves, including the learning how to care for our creative selves.
One of the most inspirational voices I’ve found on Substack as relates to living with debilitating chronic illness is The Bed Perspective by and I appreciated the piece Our tiny power as disabled people and why it matters more than ever
“I grieve everything I have lost to chronic illness. I grieve everything I’ve had to give up. It’s important to grieve and acknowledge our losses and suffering.
But it’s equally important to recognise our tiny power. I am saying this as much to myself as I’m saying it to you.
Our lives, as people living with chronic illness and disability, are incredibly meaningful and important. We show the world what suffering can look like, but we also show the world that suffering is not necessary if only people were kind, compassionate and if we got the help, treatments and support we truly need.”
What this brings up for me is how our health is linked with power. Personal power, perceptions of our own power by ourselves and others, mistreatment by those with more external power …
In a powerful essay describing living with endometriosis, shares information about the gender bias in health research, writing, in part:
“In 2020, just 1% of healthcare research funding addressed female-specific conditions beyond cancer4. Yet, for every $1 invested in women’s health, the economic return is estimated at $3. Better health leads to increased productivity, fewer sick days, and lower healthcare costs. By investing in women’s health, the report states that societies and economies can see greater returns in terms of overall economic growth. I’m not here to push a productivity agenda; rather, I believe the mental health benefits would be worth so much more than this.”
Inspirations From Elsewhere:
“Live Through This is a collection of visual and written essays by women artists who have dealt with self-destruction, and lived to tell the story. It was initially meant to focus on what I like to call "rage to page" —how one can use the same energy it takes to self-destruct and convert it towards creation. However, as the submissions came in, the book also became a study in the relationship between creative and destructive impulses: the necessity and the balance of the two in the journey of discovering yourself.” - Sabrina Chap
“There is no firm line between sanity and insanity. We all live on a shared continuum; our place on it varies by the extent that we learn to impose order on the psychotic chaos into which we are all born. Some people, through a complex interaction of genes and environment, fall toward one end of this continuum, struggling to form the mental structures that allow them to reliably distinguish dreams from reality. For these people, their waking logic retains the boundlessness of the psychotic core. We tend to refer to these people as ill and give them labels like "schizophrenia." Others manage to create the necessary structures to distinguish inside from outside. They create these structures so well, in fact, that they come to believe there is only one real world, the external one where we have friends and jobs, schedules and budgets. We tend to refer to these people as normal.” - Alexander Kriss
“We speak mostly of happy and sad emotions, a divide that suggests a certain comic lightness to the one side and pure negativity to the other, but perhaps we would navigate our experience better by thinking in terms of deep and shallow, rich and poor. The very depth of emotion, the connecting to the core of one's being, the calling into play one's strongest feelings and abilities, can be rich, even on death-beds, in wars and emergencies, while what is often assumed to be the circumstance of happiness sometimes is only insulation from the depths, or so the plagues of ennui and angst among the comfortable suggest.” - Rebecca Solnit
“What pushed the musician I was toward a care profession wasn't a moral imperative but something natural, instinctive; something innate. Music, in the curved form of the cello, became my life, and stood like a bulwark against absurdity, disease, and death, to try to reach the thing that lies beneath, the thing that resists. Subterranean. Bedside music.” - Claire Oppert
I’ll be sharing much more from The Schubert Treatment in a February newsletter, energy permitting …
The health & creativity thing is such a fine line to walk sometimes. I too know the similar thoughts of, I am not creating so I am not worthy.
I am trying to get better at listening to what my body needs as opposed to what I want it to do. Sometimes that works, sometimes that does not.
I hope you get some medical assistance, of the kind you need not what your insurance demands
💕