Tattered © 2003 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

Cry Me a River

Day 6 – Write about a time you had to take the high road I sometimes wonder at the irony of Sjogren’s syndrome, which often makes it hard to shed a tear, much less cry me a river. Whenever I cry now, I rub the tears into my eyes and

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Behind Glass © 2003 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

Disclosure – The Beauties and Perils of Telling All

Writing prompt – Disclosure post. How did you decide what to share? What do/don’t you share? I’ve been sick for a while now, at least 22 years that I was conscious of, but the depression bit started a couple of years before that. I’ve come out of a few closets in

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Depression #2 © 2011 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

Sjogren’s and UltraViolet, or How I Became a Vampire

Day 2 – Write about the weirdest thing about your health. When one’s health ‘goes wonky’, there’s lots of things that could no doubt be called weird. As someone who had trouble getting a diagnosis in the first place, I was used to the words ‘atypical’ and ‘undifferentiated’. Which I

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Alone In The Universe #2 © 2012 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

Compassion for my Younger Self #3

Our parents can’t save us, no matter how much we wish they had, or could. When I was 27, I descended into madness. It didn’t begin then. That process began so many years before, perhaps when I was born: the same and yet so different. There were stages to this

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Contraction © 2012 Jane Waterman
Interior life

Dark Matter

Recently, I heard it described that depression is a liar. It deceives us into believing all hope and joy is sucked out of the moment in which we live. I don’t know if it’s a liar so much as a thief, sneaking in on little feet, gradually drawing all the

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Interior life

Lessons from a Chaotic Life

I’ve seen chaos personified over the last few weeks. Through the eyes of someone I love dearly, I’ve seen fear of what might become, fear of change, grasping for the rigidity of what is right now, while all the time the world of work and bills and society keeps plodding

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Shame © 2012 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

Shame

I come to writing today wrung out, hollowed, disappointed, ashamed. I can forgive myself the days that lapsed since my last entry. I sank into the recesses of a cave, and there I went through the motions of life in the grip of a depression so strange I can not

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The Experience of Pain © 2012 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

The Experience of Pain

During a discussion of pain and pain management with a good online friend (you can see his remarkable photography here), my friend Michael made the remark that the efforts of those who cope with chronic pain are heroic. It’s certainly not a typical way to view ourselves. My frequent experience

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Purple Heart © 2012 Jane Waterman
Interior life

No Art Today

No art or photo today, which feels quite strange. I’ve been getting used to creating something, but alas work has taken what energy I have at the moment. Meditation was beautiful this morning. I have been cultivating the feeling of ‘no-thing’ quite successfully lately, but today I experienced quite a

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Purple Heart © 2012 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

Life

Yesterday morning I felt grounded. I observed that I had moved to give up my fear of falling. I had taken a step toward mastering the shifting ground of my past. By the evening, the world had fallen down. Pain and self-doubt arose – the nagging fear that something was

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