Author: Stephanie
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Ridiculous Shoes
I’m addicted to shoe shopping. The shoes in my wardrobe fall into two categories: the Beautiful and the Comfortable. The Beautiful ones stand around gathering dust. The comfortable ones only exit my life due to structural collapse. This is the case because I have Problem Feet. They are long, flat, strangely shaped (the technical term…
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How To Master Pain
ately, I’ve been tackling something way harder than forearm stands–fear, anxiety, and pain. When I notice myself doing things like surfing social media for hours, reaching for sugar, carbs and alcohol, finding ANYTHING to do except the next thing on my task list, that’s a red flag. I’m suppressing feelings that I don’t like having.
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Permission to Wallow
Even if you haven’t said anything, I see you. Even if you don’t want to bother anyone, because it’s more of the same, and people’s patience is bound to give out. Even if depression is a cliche, even if it’s seasonal, even if you have damn good reason. Your brain, evolutionarily speaking, DOES have…
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The Biochemistry of Rage
CW: sexual assault When I was in my early twenties, a friend of mine started having neurological problems. Intermittent, acute idiopathic pain, fatigue, and intermittent paralysis. Doctors could not find a cause. Some accused them of making it up to get attention. At the same time, this friend started having flashbacks. Memories, long buried, of…
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Satirical Aerobics
For years I have had a dream. It strikes me that most exercise videos are excessively earnest. Perky! Sincere! Cheerleader-esque! There seemed to be few, if any, home workout routines for people with a healthy sense of irony, and a taste for the absurd. My people. For too long I lacked the time, the equipment,…
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Lazy, Self-Indulgent Workaholics
I’m signed up for a lot of Inspirational Mailing Lists. My inbox is inundated with a symphony of earnest healers and coaches, all urging me to “Slow down to speed up! Take some time for reflection! Don’t be busy for the sake of it!” If they only knew. Sometimes I think the systems I’ve created…
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Doing Voodoo On Your Spine (Not)
In the fifteen years since integrating Reiki with my bodywork sessions, I’ve only had one client get creeped out by it. Oddly, she was a craniosacral therapist, and thus (I thought), should have known better. Craniosacral therapy, like other forms of “energy work,” is..subtle, and attracts attention from Quackwatch. The practitioner puts her hands on…
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On The Bleeding Edge of Science
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by
Twenty years ago, a friend of mine stopped being able to walk. It happened intermittently. She’d be fine for a few weeks or months, then collapse. She had intense pelvic pain that doctors couldn’t find a reason for. Some thought she was faking it and sent her to the psych ward, or gave her…
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A Pansy Grows in Philadelphia
When I was struggling with a partner who was chronically unemployed, Kate Jesuele put me in boxing gloves, turned up the boom box, and told me, “Leave it all on the bag.” Two weeks later I kicked him out. When I was having panic attacks after separating from my partner, Terrie Lewine of Back to…
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The Trash Heap of the Soul
Ten weeks ago, our new back yard was a weed-choked wasteland. We moved in late April; it took a couple of weeks to unpack. By the time we tackled the yard, it was already late in the season. We turned over some beds, threw down some seeds, bunged in a few starters (“bunged’ is a…