Nakba Day Reflections

In advance of Nakba Day, I was reflecting on my learning journey about the Zionist occupation of Palestine. As a result, I made a very loose timeline to honor its significance in my life, and to encourage others to keep learning about Palestine, taking action to stop the genocide, and talking about it in their …

Dialectics of Liberation: Gentleness and Resistance for Endurance

Summary: In this post, I make my case for gentleness to exist alongside resistance. I provide dialectics that give us room to embody both of these qualities. At the end, I have compiled a dozen sets of links for us to take action -- I invite you to choose one. Photo by Holly Booth The …

Personal Foundations in Traditional Chinese Medicine: My Lineage, Interest, and Experience

Image by: Luna Hu Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM or 中医) is one of the world's oldest medical systems, which focuses on treating and preventing disease by restoring the balance of qi in the bodymind. My TCM Lineage Chinese Medicine was taught through the generations (家传) on both sides of my family. However, my great-great-grandparents’ generation …

The Paradigm Shift We Need For Understanding and Preventing Chronic Disease

Inspired from a thread started by Kathy Eagar, quoted with permission Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya A paradigm shift is needed for chronic disease. They are thought to be caused and prevented by lifestyle factors and individual decisions... But many “mild” infectious diseases can have devastating impacts after the acute phase, even years to decades later. …

2022: Years that Answer

Content Note: At the beginning of the Gregorian year, people in our generation tend to show off the highlight reels of their achievements and social lives. For those of us who have largely spent the last three years in isolation, this can be especially challenging to witness. We are simultaneously experiencing a mass disabling event …

When I Talk About the Pandemic, I am Ghosted

People get awkward about it. They leave me on read, they stop engaging, and I feel like I am speaking to the void. I know it makes people uncomfortable, because we're in the era of the great forgetting. We want to forget that the world ever saw covid disrupt our lives, and the trauma and uncertainty during those "unprecedented times." It might be easier to imagine that we are safe and can go about our lives without masks and without caution than to accept the opposite. Yet, even common sense tells us that ignoring something doesn't make it go away.

Tentative Beginnings

CW: ED symptoms Photo by Davide Foti Happy Daylight Savings, friends. This weekend was the first snow where I live. It’s a strange mood, and a tentative beginning to the season. I too, am undergoing change, having officially been discharged from partial hospitalization, ready to begin a period of intensive outpatient program. I'm thankful to …

Coda

This weekend, I bought a bicycle. My former friend, Woolly, had been worn out, through and through. Their tires had fallen flat time and time again, the rear wheel rattled, rust formed on their frame from the 70’s, the gears creaked and then gave out altogether, and to top it off, the chain fell off, …

Mount and Moon

Of course, when seasons of challenges are not so clearly demarcated, we still strive to make sense of potential patterns. Yet when I look back, this time of year is usually when I became overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible. ED is a bit different though. It's a mountain I love marking off as "finished," only you never step in the same river twice.

Growing Pains: Fire In My Bones

I did not expect to end my undergraduate career sleeping in my bed, with a belly full of growing pains. This is what outgrowing and moving on looks like: leaving Sodom in flames, without so much as a glance over my shoulder -- lest these old wineskins burst and ruin the new wine. Shaking the dust off my feet. When I was younger and still growing (height-wise), I would have leg aches. It made me want to stretch myself out, to kick something. My current body couldn't contain where I wanted to go, and it made me angry. Once again, my bones are groaning. Here I am, alive and kicking. I am out, restless and angry. Yet, what is this perfect peace that guards my heart?