a little bit of a hiatus

i realize that i haven’t been posting much, or at all.  hold on folks, more is on the way…soon…i hope. 

the idea of the blog stems from a personal place - my own experiences of times of health and illness - hence the title… so, right now, i have been going through a period of health issues.  i’m supposed to slow down with everything that i am doing and am told to eliminate things in my life that create more stress which in turn create more intensive health situations.  i realize that this blog, then, has taken sort of a backseat position.

it is difficult to explain the daily stresses and pressures of living with an autoimmune disease - or, actually maybe it’s one, but maybe it’s fibromyalgia which isn’t actually an autoimmune disease - ok, let’s just say it’s hard to live while being named as “undifferentiated” - my current “diagnosis.”

Do our diagnoses lock us into certain positions and futures as Petra Kuppers, faculty in the English Department at U of Michigan, claims in her book the scar of visibility:  medical performances and contemporary art?  Or, does a diagnosis relieve us of insecurities and help us move on, thus creating a path of healing for ourselves?  This is an especially pertinent question for those of us who experience diseases that were once labeled as psychosomatic. 

We question our bodies’ experiences - is this real? is this made up?  Is there a label for this?  We cling desperately to the knowledge imbibed through our body’s pain and sensations, telling ourselves that this is real.