Category Archives: adverse childhood experiences

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Feathers

This is the final poem in my Falling Angels Dream Poetry series.

Some people say there are

Angels among us

I have faith in birds
I search for a nest
Hummingbird nest
the size of a nut
tiny, lined with spiderwebs
I love the herons too
great blue heron
flying lands in a tree
above me
I look through my mechanical eye
zoom in click click
and there is another
at the tree top
two in a tree
I move around
and there – one drops down
one flies
I am not distracted
a nest
a six foot nest
blessed
I move away gently

I wander back by the tree
gently
in the morning
in the evening
not one
not two
two in this tree
two in that
one in another
as many as five in a tree
six foot wing spans
a rookery of winged beings

angels among us
and why would we think
they would look like us?

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ring

I dream a night sky thick with stars

all the stars start falling

I think “That isn’t good.”
sore afraid

all the stars are angels falling

I think “That isn’t good.”
sore afraid

an angel falls close past me
in space
face at perfect peace

I think “Why do they fall?”
sore afraid

I am falling in space
head down
no earth beneath me
with the angels

crying, imperfect acceptance
sore afraid

I wake
I put the dream away

it comes back
in a decade

I write about wings
sore afraid

I try to understand
sore afraid

I am asked what my small self
my child self
wants

wings

I say yes
no longer
sore afraid

did you hear the bell?

yes

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hold me

poem: hold me

hold me, Beloved

hold me
I long for you
to be reunited with you, Beloved

to return to you

it is the children who hold me

here

the children
my children, grown
the hope of grandchildren
the damaged children
the new and young children
the old children in adults
who are so sad

it is the children who hold me

here

sometimes I am so sad, Beloved
I long for you

I do and I don’t
long for you
to call me home
and hold me

I know
that you hold me, Beloved
every moment

even when I cannot feel your touch

I know, Beloved
you will call me home

and hold me
now and forever
in your infinite embrace

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Straddle this place

Straddle this place, where we look at history again and again, admit horror and mistakes and cruelty, and work together to build a future.

Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2021: Reflecting on Indigenous leadership in labor

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: straddle.

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No pandas

Today is PANS/PANDAS awareness day. I wrote this a couple weeks ago.

Home
PANDAS PHYSICIANS NETWORK: PANS/PANDAS AWARENESS DAY

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No pandas

I don’t have PANDAS because in the United States we barely believe in it in children and we don’t at all in adults.

I don’t have PANDAS because even though one psychiatrist said I did, he retired, and the next one says I don’t. Then not sure then no. They don’t agree.

I don’t have PANDAS because my primary care doctor won’t read the guidelines even after I have been her patient for seven years.

I don’t have PANDAS because my pulmonologist has never heard of it.

I don’t have PANDAS because it would be a lot easier to put me on a mood stabilizer to shut me up than listen to me.

I don’t have PANDAS because I am labelled difficult because I am afraid to take a mood stabilizer because I do not get a fever or a white count so my main symptom of infection is that other doctors think that I am manic though I am hypoxic and short of breath. They want to fix my mood while I want to not die of pneumonia, so our goals are at odds.

I don’t have PANDAS because I am a doctor and if I had PANDAS my fellow local doctors would feel guilty that they have told each other that I am bipolar and manic for the last 18 years and have shunned me at the county medical meetings and won’t even send me the invitations, except for the one that forwards them. He says he has given them my email and he doesn’t understand why they don’t send me the invitations.

I don’t have PANDAS because Seattle Children’s doesn’t allow the Cunningham Panel to be drawn and they say there is not enough evidence yet.

I don’t have PANDAS because I can’t afford to pay $925 on my own for the Cunningham Panel and anyhow my antibody level is back to whatever is my new baseline, higher than before no doubt.

I don’t have PANDAS because the other doctors are frightened: if I have PANDAS then who else does and if I have chronic fatigue caused by hypoxia and fibromyalgia and it’s related to PANDAS then who else would they have to test and neuropsychiatric is a whole different thing from psychiatric and we swear that we don’t know what causes chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.

I don’t have PANDAS because I am an adult who lives in the US though if I was in Canada or Europe I could in fact have PANDAS.

I don’t have PANDAS because in the United States we barely believe in it in children and we don’t at all in adults.

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vast

Sometimes emotions are vast. I do not think our culture deals with grief very easily. Grief then becomes a vast pit, stuffed inside us. I sent the Falling Angels poems to friends and family. One older friend said that the poems were too sad and was I that sad all the time?

I replied, no, I am not sad all the time. The sadness is in the poems because there are very few people that I know that are comfortable with sadness and grief. So I put it in to poetry, because I do not want to stuff it. We need to let grief come out and let the tears flow and let it go.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: vast.

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Advice to Michael

This poem is about a dream that helped me after my mother died and through a divorce. It was not an easy process, to look at my childhood and what happened. It can be a very frightening place to go. Good luck and health to everyone who tries.