A place for stories about chronic illness, disability, mental health, and neurodivergence.
Poetry
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In which our protagonist enters the Zoom room for a psych evaluation, eager and nervous to uncover the next phase of her healing journey. Poet and author Clara Olivo details what happens when nothing goes as planned.
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“Music is my liberation/the medicine to my soul/the bridge between two realms in which/I coexist.” Poet and author Clara Olivo is back with a poem about music, chronic pain, and resilience.
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Does your anxiety stick to you, like glitter or sand? In their new poem, Staying Sparkly, Sojourner “Hughes” Davidson details their relationship with anxiety and how closely it adheres to their skin, however often they try to wash it away.
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So often, neurodivergent folks have to mask who they are in order to fit in. In her poem Try to Understand, poet and author Clara Olivo touches on how she hid her inner self in order to appear neurotypical, to the point she began to believe it was necessary.
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Author Julián Esteban Torres López wrote this piece, Neurodivergent, intending it to be an auditory experience. Please feel free to listen to the audio below while reading along to the words below.
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As a stage IV cancer patient, Pacific Northwestern poet Lara Haynes Freed learned of a new metastasis. Her poem Resection chronicles her experience with her diagnosis. Freed holds an MA in linguistics from the University of Kansas and has been published in multiple literary magazines.
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Sojourner “Hughes” Davidson’s poem, Ache Awake, deals with the speaker’s chronic pain, migraines, and insomnia. A DMV-based poet writing about the mind and the body, Davidson has previously published two poems in the Guilford College lit mag, The Greenleaf Review.