I became email “pen pals” with Rose in the very early years of being sick, after a mutual high school friend put us in touch. We were both young and driven twenty-somethings living in NYC and dealing with serious diseases. We wouldn’t meet for a year or two because one or both of us was [...]

Categories: Life

After writing about Part 1 of Arthur Frank’s At The Will of the Body here, I was thinking I’d be writing this Part 2 as healthy-ish Alicia and not in-the-thick-of-illness Alicia. Sometimes I think this is somehow “better” though because it challenges me to really believe and stick to what I’m writing, when I’m so [...]

Categories: Life

Minus the “(Part 1)”, the above is the title of yet another Arthur W. Frank book that has profoundly changed how I think about my health and my body. I first read The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics in 2010, when I was incredibly ill and still 6 months away from the first surgery; [...]

Categories: Life

[First post of 2012! I have had "write blog post" on my to-do lists since January, but then my blog platform was hacked and plagued with spam, and it took some time to figure out. Recently when I have logged in, I have had to re-type my password and click that box "Remember me" so [...]

Categories: Life

Time has gotten away from me during another busy holiday season! A few links worth mentioning: I did a Barnes & Noble crafting event for our latest book, Microcrafts! Speaking of Barnes & Noble, their crochet book/kit I contributed to, Yummy Crochet, finally hit stores and is already in a 2nd printing. I surpassed 2200 [...]

Categories: Life

I have a list of 6 blog posts I want/need to write, but the one that actually has a self-imposed deadline is my birthday post; I’m turning 30 next week, on November 2! Last year, when I had my colon taken out in December, I did the math for the other two surgeries that would [...]

Categories: Life