By Brittny Lee | Featured Contributor
Trees still grow
Flaming crimsons and candy apple greens
On a street where she loved
and lived and sang with the stars
Her dream consumed her
A temptress all in white
Blush red among alabaster cheeks
becoming love tumbling down hills with her dream
Heart beating vital blood
Tendons stretching and breaths coming out in rasps
She reached her goal
By Jason Lewis | Guest Contributor
Seniors face a lot of challenges that bring on stress, depression, and anxiety. Worry about illness or finances and grief over lost loved ones can have a negative impact on both physical and mental health. Loneliness and isolation can even drive older people to risky behaviors that put them in danger. And some seniors are dealing with issues from their past, such as substance abuse, that put them at risk for many additional problems.
There is one option that doesn’t cost a thing and can benefit seniors in many ways: going to church. It is even good for your physical health. Research shows that regular weekly church attendance can:
Improved physical health is just one of many ways that attending church can help seniors.
Continue reading “How Church Attendance Can Improve Senior Health”
By Sharon Jeremiah Anuye | Featured Contributor
Sunlight blinding my sight
Skin glowing like diamonds
The trees swaying side to side
With the cool breeze blowing
Thinking out loud about
Where I was before.
By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor
Depression is a complex weave, and I have explored it in various articles on Phoebe, MD. The grief of watching my mom decline with Alzheimer’s and the grief of infertility. However, did you know that some symptoms of depression can also result from a diet high in sugar and simple carbohydrates, which in some people can lead to postprandial hypoglycemia (extremely low blood sugar after a meal)? This has been another life challenge for me.
Continue reading “Feeling ‘Hangry?’ – Hypoglycemia, Mental Health, and the Importance of Diet”
By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor
Depression developed and flourished because I grieved so much over loss of fertility.
Women who are childless miss out on a great deal. They never feel what it is like to have a life growing, kicking and wiggling inside of them; to cry out during the birth of a baby (a rite of passage to celebrate with girlfriends); to watch over and even to grow with a child through sickness and health, all the milestones of birthdays, graduations, marriage, and the births of grandchildren. I have even grieved not being able to be the tooth fairy, help my kids find Easter eggs, read them bedtime stories, take them to the zoo.
Feeling apart from and not a part of the tribe still saddens me. I find I am left out of conversations about all those life passages women around me have. I feel I have little to contribute. I have attended and hosted many baby showers, but my mind always wanders to my losses, making it difficult to be fully present to the joy young mothers feel. Women form strong bonds with each other and share in all the rituals around birthing and raising children. I feel like an outsider at times, like I am more an observer than a participant in these sacred passages.
Continue reading “Broken Womb, Shattered Soul: Living with Infertility (part 2)”
By Colin Chappell | Featured Author
He listened;
He understood;
He befriended;
He cared.
All the courage he gave me,
By just being there,
Made me feel like
I wanted to live.
He gave me so much
Yet… had so little to give…
But his time.
I realized later
There was so much more.
I was indebted to that man
And… what’s more,
To experience the caring
of someone unknown
made me wonder.
Who else was out there alone?
By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor
As we grow and develop, we learn how to identify with many labels or roles, such as daughter/son, aunt/uncle, mother/father, and grandmother/grandfather, to name a few. It seems as though our stories are written before we are born to conform to these labels. In a way, these roles become rituals that comfort us as we agree to them and even expect our lives to go “as planned” based on our social codes and blueprints for survival.
I know I certainly expected my life to unfold much like my mother’s life did with marriage and family. She had seven children, and being the second oldest and oldest girl, I was able to help with all the babies she had. It never occurred to me that I would never be able to have my own children. Little did I know that my helping her at the ages of 9 and 10 with my youngest siblings would be my only times to experience at least part of what a mother does for her kids. I am not sure I appreciated this time because as much as I loved playing mommy, I also wanted to be with my friends.
Continue reading “Broken Womb, Shattered Soul: Living with Infertility (part 1)”
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