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My Coping Mechanisms to Help Manage Chronic Pain

I have been battling with chronic migraine, fibromyalgia and several other health issues for many years now so “pain” is part of my daily life. Alas, the life of a chronic health warrior! Treating chronic pain is like balancing a 3-legged stool — without one of the legs or with legs at different lengths, you risk reducing the efficacy of the plan of care. There are 3 components or the “3 Ps” of…

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My Journey with Kalimba

My Journey with Kalimba

There are plenty of articles or videos online that you can find to tell you what kalimba is, its history, its evolution and all that. I won’t attempt to recreate these information here. Instead, I’m going to focus this post on my personal journey with kalimba. My journey with kalimba (or in Chinese: 卡林巴琴 or 拇指琴) started in the summer of 2020. I was in the 2nd year of my chronic migraine journey…

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Kalimba Resources

I started to learn and play kalimba (卡林巴琴 or 拇指琴) a few years ago. I have been suffering from chronic migraine and other chronic health conditions the last 3 years. As I have been spending vast majority of my days in bed or in the house being debilitated, I started to look for a new hobby that I can do from the bed. And that’s how I discovered this portable and musical instrument called…

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The feeling of withering away

The feeling of withering away

So I’ve had a few consecutive bad weeks (health-wise); mostly house and/or bed-bound due to chronic migraine, chronic fatigue, dizziness, and a bunch of other debilitating symptoms. I’ve learned a lot over the last 3 years of this chronic health journey of mine, including how to cope with the anxiety and how to change my mindset. I am still work-in-progress in this area since I do still fall…

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Poem: Butterfly Heart

A poem I wrote in 1998. Butterflies in my heart, as I hear his voice, look into his eyes, or think of him. Wondering about him, as I lay asleep, or staying awake. My heart aches when he is not around, and it skips a beat when he is in sight. He captivates my imagination, and gives me reasons to believe and wonder. Fate brought us together, but yet apart. I ask why, or is it just destiny. I…

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Self love living with chronic illness or pain

Self love living with chronic illness or pain

Living with chronic illness and chronic pain, it can be easy to feel like our body has betrayed us or hates us. And so, we can end up hating it back. The truth is though, that our body love us. Think of all the wonderful things it does to keep us alive so that we can give and feel love and hugs, enjoy sunrises, sunsets, and flowers, and be part of all the wonderful things in life. I invite you…

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LEGO® Human Body

The older I get, the more I see my physical body as one constructed of LEGO® pieces. When I was born, all the LEGO® pieces were spanking brand new and fitted with each other perfectly. During the fist 10 years of so of my life, they worked fairly well albeit the respiratory pieces were weakened because of frequent colds, a bad case of pneumonia, and exposure to second-hand smoking. Over the…

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Totall random thought: who had to and remember reading “Heart of Darkness” and watching “Apocalypse Now” in (Canadian) high school, and had to write essay to compare and contrast the two?

That experience stuck with me mainly because I was not good in English and I remember getting half marks for some now seemingly silly (but obvious) writing about both main characters are named Kurtz. 🤣

I also remember getting half mark for a cute (maybe?!) answer to a Grade 13 Physics test about how planets and stars differ, to which I wrote: “stars twinkle and planets don’t”. 😂 ⭐️🪐

#MyTeenageYears

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The “disease” may be invisible but its “symptoms” may not be. They might start small and lead you to feel or behave differently than what you should be. If you aren’t aware of what’s happening, you don’t know you should be asking for help or how to cope with it. It can then further grow, metastasize and/or mutate.

If you think the paragraph above is describing a physical illness such as cancer, think again. It is about mental illness.

Mental health is real. It should not be a stigma. One should not feel ashamed or less than for having mental health issues. The society as a whole should view it just like its physical counterpart, if not with even more compassion.

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You were found in unmarked graves

Acts of genocide

Your precious lives taken

With spirits so strong

we heard your cries

To go home

Rest well little ones

And fly high with our ancestors

We will not forget you

You are sacred

#215 #KamloopsResidentialSchool

By: https://twitter.com/leahgazan

#EveryChildMatters

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Playing “Hear Me Cry” (by Cagnet, from the Japanese show “Love Generation”) on my Kalimba, my new hobby.

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My new hobby