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Flexibility is Key—Creating with Chronic Illness
Happy New Year friends! I’ve been thinking about the importance of flexibility with chronic illness, especially when it comes to taking care of my health and making time for my creative pursuits.
January seems like the perfect month to share some updates, as well as what I’ve found helpful on my health journey recently. I hope these reflections are helpful for you too!
I’m thrilled to be participating in A Chronic Voice’s link up again this month. This link up is a way for chronically ill bloggers to connect by writing posts based on the same prompts. I love the creative challenge offered by the prompts and seeing what others write!
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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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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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May 2019 Musings – Regrouping, Investigating, Boosting, Setting & Reviving
I’m excited to participate in A Chronic Voice’s link up for the first time! Link up parties are a fun way for bloggers to connect and write about similar themes, and this one is geared towards those of us in the chronic illness community. I’ve never had a chance to participate in one before, so I’ve been eager to give it a try. Let me know what you think of this style of post in the comments.
The themes for this month are Regrouping, Investigating, Boosting, Setting and Reviving.
It was a nice change to have guidelines “assigned” for writing a blog post. (I think Andy Warhol was onto something about having a “boss on retainer.” Having the framework for a post given to me felt a little more structured—like having a boss vs. winging it on my own.)
So, using A Chronic Voice’s five writing prompts for this month as a jumping off point, here’s what has been going on with me lately.
