A bone chapel promised to teach me about mortality. It took a life-threatening illness for me to learn.
illness
Posted inThe Atavist Magazine
The Unforeseen Something
When a little girl in Iowa was diagnosed with a rare incurable disease, her parents and their community came together to help her. They wound up making medical history.
Posted inEditor's Pick
On Loving Birds
“A couple of years after I began volunteering, I realized I was hell-bent on healing birds because they, too, had healed me—in more ways than one.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Long Haul
“Now I rarely let myself think of those Before Times. Describing what was once my life is like trying to recapture a sensation, a place that only ever existed in a dream.”
Posted inUncategorized
A Mother’s Exchange for Her Daughter’s Future
“Two lives bound into one story by immigration and illness.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
When the Doctor Doesn’t Listen
“The medical establishment has a long history of ignoring patients with ‘unexplained’ symptoms. Long Covid might finally bring about a global attitude shift.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Love, COVID, and Other Risks
Throughout the pandemic, Emma Healey and her immunocompromised partner — a liver transplant recipient — have constantly weighed and navigated day-to-day risks. As Toronto opens up, making decisions have become even more confusing. In this essay, Healey reflects on health, risk, and love. We are all making our decisions the same way—with one eye on […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Story
Disbelieving What You Cannot See: A Reading List on Ableism and ‘Invisible’ Disability
Start your unlearning here.
Posted inEditor's Pick
I’ve Fled New York with My Wife, Kids and Dog – Just as my Ancestors Fled the 1918 Pandemic
After covering the plights of refugees around the world as a journalist, Bryan Mealer finds himself a refugee, fleeing New York City for his childhood home of west Texas — where his great-grandmother and her oldest daughter died in the influenza epidemic of 1918.