Columns

My whole life changed after I had a double-lung transplant three years ago. When drastic life changes occur, they can shake us to the core. We can struggle to understand the implications of what we are going through until we’re already facing the aftermath. That’s what happened to me when…

This column is brought to you by anxiety. My anxiety isn’t very nice to me. She knows I need to write a column today, and that it’s the only day I can do it, but also that I have a mile-long to-do list I need to finish quickly. She knows…

When I was asked to write this column over two years ago, I was thrilled, but I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write about. I knew I would have some leniency to tackle different subjects, and I didn’t want to be boxed in. But I also wanted to…

My friend wrote a column about me and it goes like this: “Have you ever sat and actually stared at the sky, following a cloud, watching it transform and dissipate? Have you ever seen a flower wilt in decay? Have you ever felt so physically miserable that you actually had…

I wonder what it would look like if our mental health struggles were visible to the outside world. Most of the time, they aren’t. In school, we weren’t taught how to manage our mental health. There was no subject about being healthy mentally or emotionally. Western medicine has led those…

“I need to change my language.” I said this to my rehearsal director the other day after realizing I said the word “adaptive” again. “I hate the word adaptive,” I kept saying with increasing intensity. “It denotes that something is more and something is less.” In dance, we use the…

She seemed cool and collected when her big surgery date was confirmed. And the next day, Britt seemed better than fine — super, even. She was a blond blur of energy, a real firecracker, flinging jokes this way and that in her thick New Englander accent. I…

I am having surgery in a few weeks. Again. It will be my third surgery in roughly eight months’ time, though I don’t know why I’m counting. I dislike people who count these things. Are we bragging? Am I bragging? Sort of. I tend to say “I average about…

I knew life would be different after my double-lung transplant three years ago, but I didn’t expect it to feel like a completely new life. The change has been intense. I feel like I barely have cystic fibrosis anymore. Feeling disconnected from the CF world has been an interesting…

“How do you keep going?” This is a question I know all too well. I’m not sharing this question in the same way that my eldest daughter “complains” about her extra-long eyelashes. (Like, we get it. It’s so hard.) I’m sharing this because sometimes sharing is all we can do…