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chronic illness

  • My Sister’s Ghost
    Alisha Ebling

    My Sister’s Ghost

    Only you recognize that this is your sister’s nature, that she’s a fixer.

  • Grumpy
    Fae Myenne Ng

    Grumpy

    Here’s how not to get eaten by a gecko. Stand on the gecko’s head. I’ve learned that this applies to many situations.

  • How to Make More Room
    Beth Cranwell Aplin

    How to Make More Room

    Nowadays I am amazed by my former self’s blend of optimism and delusion. I wonder how I got the idea that kindergarten was some magical threshold where children and parents smoothly separate.

  • Off Record
    Susannah Nevison

    Off Record

    Think of this as an origin story without an origin. This is as close as you can get.

  • Don’t Dream It’s Over
    Michelle Mirsky

    Don’t Dream It’s Over

    One of the surest indicators of change on the horizon (per the standard tropes of dream interpretation) is being pregnant in a dream.

  • Big Pharma Wants to Date Me, And Other Quirks of Being Sick in America
    Jennifer Richardson

    Big Pharma Wants to Date Me, And Other Quirks of Being Sick in America

    The marketing of healthcare to Americans is, along with the prevalence of mass shootings, one of the most disturbing phenomena I have encountered since moving back to the US in 2011, after six years of living in the UK.

  • Strong Is the New Sexy
    Kelly Davio

    Strong Is the New Sexy

    I began to lack reality. I took to baggy tops and A-line silhouettes to hide my poking collarbone, my meatless hips. I took up as much space as I could in bulky sweaters. I compensated for my diminishing reality by…

  • Lauren O'Neal

    A Journalist Reports on Herself

    Last November, journalist Leonora LaPeter Anton profiled a woman named Gretchen Molannen, who had been living for years with an almost unbearable chronic illness: persistent genital arousal disorder. The day after the piece was published, Anton was notified that Molannen…