Blog
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December Wrap Up: Preparing For the New Year
Happy New Year! I’m sharing a wrap up post with highlights from my December, including what I made, what I found challenging, and festive photos. Looking back can help us move forward. So I’m reviewing the last month of 2020 before next year’s fresh start.
This post is inspired by A Chronic Voice’s linkup party, which is a way for bloggers to connect and write about similar themes. I’ve decided to write on three of the linkup themes: Beginning, Enduring, and Revealing. I’ve also decided to add two themes of my own: Creating and Celebrating.
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Practical Gift Ideas for Someone with Chronic Illness
I hope this list of practical gifts for chronic illness is a helpful guide, whether you’re looking for Christmas, birthday, or “just because” gift suggestions. I’m also sharing four tips for choosing practical gifts for chronic illness.
My health conditions include fibromyalgia, POTS (a form of dysautonomia), myalgic encephalomyelitis (aka chronic fatigue syndrome), and asthma. I know that it can be challenging to know what will be helpful for those of us dealing with limitations due to our health, especially those of us with a lot of allergies. I’m sharing some things I’ve found particularly helpful, things I’ve been gifted, and things on my wishlist. (You can read more about my health journey here.)
Before we dive into gift suggestions, here are helpful tips for gift giving to keep in mind when your recipient has chronic health conditions.
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How To Stay Connected From A Distance-Holiday Edition
The holiday season is coming, and I want to share some fun and creative ways to stay connected even from a distance. It can be challenging to stay connected while apart. Chronic illness can limit our ability to travel or visit, and risk due to the pandemic adds another layer of restrictions.
Thankfully, technology provides a lot of ways to keep in touch so we’re not isolated. I’m going to share ideas for virtual Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas parties.
I’ve been thankful to be able to meet up with a few friends outdoors in the last month or so for socially distanced get-togethers. Now the weather is getting colder (too cold for this asthmatic to be outdoors here in Washington). So I’m thinking about ways to make virtual get-together’s into holiday parties.
I hope these ideas inspire many fun celebrations!
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Longing for Light: An Example of Mythology Pointing to Jesus
Ever since I was little, I’ve loved reading mythology. The epic stories, heroic deeds, and imaginative worlds captured my imagination and solidified my love for fantasy books. But even better is when you can tell there is a beautiful truth underlying myths. I want to explore an example of mythology pointing to Jesus and how every human heart longs for light to vanquish darkness—a timeless theme of good overcoming evil.
I love when mythology points out a universal theme. In dark times, we ache for the arrival of dawn.
This seems especially relevant right now, as we’re all longing for a little more light in the world. Things have been pretty dark lately, what with the pandemic, racial injustice, divisiveness and more. So where can we turn as we’re looking for light?
Tricky Characters and Myths about Light
The examples from mythology I want to look at all tell the story of rebel gods stealing fire or light to bring it down to earth.
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Ups And Downs: Summer, Chronic Illness, and a New Normal
Hello friends, I’m so excited to be able to join A Chronic Voice’s link up this month. Summer is finally here, but unfortunately, that doesn’t mean a vacation from chronic illness. So I’m going to share what I’ve found helpful and how I’m coping with the new normal.
This link up is a way for chronic illness bloggers to connect by writing posts based on the same prompts. I found it so helpful last month to use the prompts as a jumping off point to not only write a blog post, but also to do some journaling for myself to process everything going on in the world and my own life.
This month, I’m using the prompts to share a little bit about what I’ve been up to lately creatively, what I’ve been struggling with healthwise, and how I’m continuing to adjust to the new normal.
The prompts for this month are Bothering, Demanding, Telecommunicating, Tolerating, and Nourishing.
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Mid-Year Reflections In A Year Of Pandemic: June Linkup
I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I joined A Chronic Voice’s linkup for the first time! I’ve been meaning to join this way for chronic illness bloggers to connect since, but life intervened (aka symptoms have severely limited my writing time). This month, I was thrilled that not only did I have the mental bandwidth to participate, but also that the prompts aligned with several things bouncing around in my head. Chronic illness in a pandemic presents its own unique challenges. (PS here’s my last linkup post.)
I hope you all are doing as well as you can be. Those of you who love the sunshine, I hope that you are also enjoying the warmer days. I love that the weather will be warmer (in upper 60s or 70s) for about three days, and then rainy for two days—this gives me a good dose of vitamin D when I can sit and walk a little outside.
The rain gives me a break from feeling like I *have* to get outside; we call that pressure to soak up as much warmth as we can “sun guilt” in the Pacific Northwest. The cottonwood trees had the air filled with tufts of white that looked like slow-drifting snow up until recently. Everything is blooming early, including my beauty bush, which is covered in bees and hummingbirds. (Ok, I’ve seen THREE hummers at once, so not exactly “covered!”)
In the world beyond my yard, things are moving ahead as Washington counties move into Phase 2 of coming out of quarantine/social distancing. (My county was added to the list June 5.) High risk populations are to “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” through Phase 3. I’ll talk more about this below.
Let’s dive in. The themes for this month are Searching, Hoping, Honoring, Traumatizing, and Responding.
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The Story Behind My New Blog Name: Starlight through the Storm
Ta-da! You may have noticed that my blog has a new logo as well as a new name! I thought I’d share a behind-the-scenes look at the inspiration behind both. I hope this will give you more insight into what you’ll find on my blog, as well as help you know a little more about the person who runs it.
I’ve literally been trying to pick a name before I even started blogging—over two years ago! (Yep, my blog had its anniversary in March and I kinda let it slip by. Oops!) I’m sure glad I didn’t wait until I had the “perfect” name picked before I started my blogging journey. (I think you should dive into blogging even if you don’t feel 100% ready.)
From poems to PR pieces, the titles have always been a challenge for me. So I’ve been brainstorming (for, ahem, years)…how to choose a blog name that sums up living with chronic illness, and not just surviving but thriving? I wanted to choose a name that sounded specific enough but was also broad enough that it would allow me to talk about all the things that bring me joy when my health turns life upside down—such as my faith, my love of words (and books!) and creativity.
Here’s the story behind coming up with a name for this blog, and why it’s special to me.
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How “Choosing” Helps on Bad Days + Free Printables
“Today I choose to”—these are powerful words to reframe thinking. I’ve started reminding myself that “I have a choice” to help me get through bad chronic illness days, and today I’m sharing my tips for “choosing” when we feel stuck. Plus, I’ve created three free printables to help you choose what you want to focus on, whether you feel stuck because of chronic illness, being at home because of social distancing during quarantine, or whatever challenges you might be facing.
I’ve found that I can tolerate most things if I feel like I have a choice. In other words, when I reframe my thinking and choose how to respond, I feel more in control and able to cope with a situation, even if that situation is far from ideal.
What got me thinking about this? Not too long ago I was lying in my recliner, where I spend a lot of my time due to dysautonomia, fibromyalgia, ME/CFS (myalgic encephalitis/chronic fatigue syndrome), and other chronic conditions. And I was frustrated because I did not want to be there, just watching TV. My mind was buzzing with all of the things I wished I could be doing. I didn’t want to rest, I wanted to do things!