Guest Post: by Monica Roberts Synder {Maybe it was over dinner rolls or near the crackling, cavernous fireplace but it was at a writer’s retreat when I first met Monica. At the time, I knew nothing of her testimony. However, I’ve come to know her incredible journey, part of it being her life with a debilitating condition known as Chiari, and other conditions called, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Tethered Spinal Cord,...
Read MoreGuest Post: by Susan Stilwell {I remember when I first met Susan Stillwell, in Diane Bailey’s hotel room at Allume last year. Obviously, we were a dangerous group with one bed consisting of Caryn Jenkinson, Amy Breitmann, Susan, and me, huddled together. The other half of the room, Diane, Lindsey Hartz (mine and Amy’s roommate), Shelly Miller, Jennifer Lee, and Emily Wierenga, crowded ’round the other bed....
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“Though I recommend it to no one–and I do not need to, for it arrives unbidden into many lives–depression compelled me to find the river of life hidden beneath the ice.” Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak Nobody comes to the end of one’s self, in a rush. Instead we come sliding in sideways, breathless and wide-eyed. We come here because we are un-done and we are done with our old life. We come because...
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When I was young, I dreamt of flying. Some weeks, it was every night. I woke up thinking I still could. I flew above rooftops, slipped through massive power lines into a sky that was neither bright or dull. I was free, suspended as if an astronaut outside the shuttle, floating. There was no steering. No superwoman cape. No control. Just a soft rising. But the dreams turned nightmare when black clouds crept up the horizon....
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Ya’ll, I wrote about life after legwarmers and let me tell you, my “research” to refresh my memory back to the day (because hello, decades ago), was nothing short of eye soreness. Videos of what I used to know about health, exercise, and fashion made me cringe and laugh at the same time. From our remote and cell-phone-less cabin in the Kiamichi Mountains of south-eastern Oklahoma with the provided grill...
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