#limits — Public Fediverse posts

The Healing Journey: Small Steps to Wellness

Last weekend, I hiked the easy Inman Pond trail in the Adirondacks. With an elevation gain of only about 475 ft., it was a manageable hike. A year ago, I would have found it painful and challenging; three years ago, the Inman Pond trail would have felt almost impossible.

Perspective Shift

The extent to which chronic migraine, lupus, and endometriosis have shifted my life and my perspective over the last six years is not as vast as I had once believed. Through the often relentless pain and suffering, I am still me; the inherent essence of who I am sits quietly behind the pain, behind the striving for healing.

The Still Point

This still point, a sanctuary amidst the chaos, is my anchor. It was from this point of calm and clarity that I began to make small but significant changes to aid in my healing journey. I have learned to listen to my body, understanding its rhythms and needs, allowing myself to rest when required and gradually incorporating gentle movements that foster both physical and emotional well-being.

Health Shifts

Of course, my doctors have prescribed medications to help control the symptoms of these ailments, which help but do not cure or obliterate the pain. These medications can provide temporary relief, yet the underlying struggles remain, weighing heavily on my daily life. I had lost so much strength, muscle, and ability, and no magic pill was going to bring that back.

Living Fully

Before lupus and the resurgence of my chronic migraine, I was heavily involved in community and physical activity. Helping with local school musical productions from set work to directing, while running 15 to 20 miles a week, attending multiple yoga classes, and engaging in vigorous strength training, I was on fire!

The Fire Goes Out

That fire didn’t burn out slowly; it was extinguished with a suddenness that took me by surprise. In a few months, I went from seemingly healthy—exercising regularly and enjoying life—to struggling to walk and speak, tasks that once felt second nature. Simple conversations became exhausting, and I found myself grappling with frustration as my body betrayed me. At its worst, I was sent to the ER because my doctor thought I was having a stroke, a harrowing experience that left me feeling both helpless and afraid for my future. Each day felt like a battle, leaving me to question how quickly everything could change.

Rediscovering The Still Point

The journey to reclaim my former self has been an uphill battle, filled with moments of frustration and doubt. I had to rely on my inner strength, digging deep to unearth reserves of resilience that I never knew I possessed. It was crucial for me to continuously find that still point amid the pain, a place of calm where I could gather my thoughts and recharge my spirit, reminding myself that each day was another opportunity for growth and healing despite the challenges I faced.

Incorporating Wellness Practices

Through these small steps, such as taking the stairs at work instead of the elevator, adding moments of reflection and meditation to my day, and shifting towards an anti-inflammatory diet, I have made tremendous progress over the last year.

Learning Patience

I was occasionally impatient with my progress; for example, I work on the eighth floor, so I decided that taking the stairs would be a good way to gradually increase my strength over time. I assumed steady progress would be the norm. However, on certain days when I could only make it to the fourth floor and had to take the elevator, I would feel betrayed by my body. It was frustrating to realize that despite my efforts, my physical limitations sometimes got the better of me, leaving me to wonder if I was truly making any progress at all. Each setback felt like a personal defeat, yet deep down, I knew every little attempt contributed to my journey toward better health.

Small Steps = Great Progress

These efforts, which seemed minor at first, have collectively contributed to a healthier lifestyle and improved well-being. I have found that the more I prioritize my physical health and mental clarity, the more energized and motivated I feel. As a result, I can finally get out and enjoy trekking through my favorite place in the world, the Adirondacks, where majestic mountains and serene lakes rejuvenate my spirit and provide a sense of peace.

The Beauty of Struggle

Had I had a life without turmoil, backsliding, or trauma, I would not be managing stress the way I can today. Every hardship in my life has taught me resilience, how to move through difficulty with grace and flow. Challenges taught me the importance of patience and critical thinking, and that most things are not as unbearable as they seem. Each experience, whether it felt overwhelming or insurmountable at the time, has carved out a deeper understanding within me.

Suffering as Wisdom

I discovered that suffering is a teacher, imparting wisdom that becomes a part of my very being. I spoke about ways of coping in the piece “Navigating Suffering Through Buddhist Wisdom” a few weeks ago, sharing insights that arise from reflecting on my journey. Using this framework, I can patiently and deliberately move towards wholeness, embracing not only the light but also the shadows that shape my existence.

Returning To Wholeness

My journey through chronic pain and illness has not only reshaped my physical abilities but has also profoundly influenced my perspective on life. The trials I have faced have cultivated resilience, compassion, and an understanding that healing is a multifaceted process that encompasses both body and mind.

Moving Forward

By embracing the small victories and honoring my body’s signals, I have discovered a renewed sense of purpose and clarity. The Adirondacks, with their rugged beauty, serve as a reminder of the peace that can exist alongside struggle. As I continue to navigate my healing path, I carry forward the lessons learned through suffering, committed to nurturing both my physical health and my spirit, and embracing each step as part of a greater journey toward wholeness.

Below, I have lovingly cultivated a list of gentle practices to help you embark on your healing journey. Please remember to be patient with yourself; healing is rarely a straightforward path. We meander and flow, gathering momentum and wisdom as we navigate our healing journey with intentionality and compassion

Gentle Ways To Begin Healing

• Listen to Your Body: Pay attention to the signals your body sends. Acknowledge when you need rest and allow yourself the time to recuperate.
• Incorporate Gentle Movements: Start with simple stretches or light activities that your body can handle. Aim to gradually increase your activity levels as your strength improves.
• Practice Mindfulness and Meditation: Set aside moments each day for mindfulness or meditation. Use this time to center yourself, breathe deeply, and cultivate inner peace.
• Focus on Nutrition: Transition to an anti-inflammatory diet that includes whole foods. Incorporate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins into your meals.
• Engage in Reflective Practices: Take time for journaling or reflection. Consider your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and how they contribute to your healing process.
• Seek Support: Connect with friends, family, or support groups who understand your journey. Sharing your challenges can foster a sense of community and belonging.
• Embrace Nature: Spend time outdoors in natural settings. Activities like hiking, walking, or simply sitting in a park can provide rejuvenation for both mind and spirit.
• Be Patient with Yourself: Understand that healing is a journey that takes time. Be compassionate toward yourself, acknowledging that ups and downs are a natural part of the process.
• Create a Healthy Sleep Routine: Aim for consistent sleep patterns. Prioritize restful sleep by creating a calming bedtime environment.
• Limit Screen Time: Reduce exposure to screens, especially before bed. This can help improve sleep quality and reduce fatigue.
• Practice Gratitude: Keep a gratitude journal to document what you appreciate each day. This can shift your mindset and enhance overall well-being.

If you are beginning your healing journey, I suggest starting with listening to your body. This is where we truly learn the wisdom held within ourselves. Our bodies possess innate knowledge that guides us; they know when we need rest, self-care, or movement. By taking the time to listen deeply to the inherent wisdom, we allow the body and mind to communicate with each other, opening the pathways to wholeness. This connection fosters a deeper understanding of our needs, cultivating an environment where healing can flourish. As you engage in this practice, you may discover signals that indicate emotional or physical states, helping you to navigate life’s challenges with greater awareness and resilience. Remember, each step you take in tuning into your body’s messages brings you closer to a harmonious balance, nurturing both your inner self and overall well-being.

For deeper emotional healing, I offer you this free guide to Somatic Experiencing, which delves into the profound connection between our bodies and our feelings. This guide is designed to help you understand how our physical sensations can inform our emotional states and facilitate healing. By engaging with the principles of Somatic Experiencing, you will learn practical techniques to process trauma, release tension, and foster a sense of safety within your body. Embrace this opportunity to explore a holistic approach to healing, enabling you to cultivate resilience and emotional well-being.

The Healing Journey: Small Steps to Wellness

Last weekend, I hiked the easy Inman Pond trail in the Adirondacks. With an elevation gain of only about 475 ft., it was a manageable hike. A year ago, I would have found it painful and challenging; three years ago, the Inman Pond trail would have felt almost impossible.

Perspective Shift

The extent to which chronic migraine, lupus, and endometriosis have shifted my life and my perspective over the last six years is not as vast as I had once believed. Through the often relentless pain and suffering, I am still me; the inherent essence of who I am sits quietly behind the pain, behind the striving for healing.

The Still Point

This still point, a sanctuary amidst the chaos, is my anchor. It was from this point of calm and clarity that I began to make small but significant changes to aid in my healing journey. I have learned to listen to my body, understanding its rhythms and needs, allowing myself to rest when required and gradually incorporating gentle movements that foster both physical and emotional well-being.

Health Shifts

Of course, my doctors have prescribed medications to help control the symptoms of these ailments, which help but do not cure or obliterate the pain. These medications can provide temporary relief, yet the underlying struggles remain, weighing heavily on my daily life. I had lost so much strength, muscle, and ability, and no magic pill was going to bring that back.

Living Fully

Before lupus and the resurgence of my chronic migraine, I was heavily involved in community and physical activity. Helping with local school musical productions from set work to directing, while running 15 to 20 miles a week, attending multiple yoga classes, and engaging in vigorous strength training, I was on fire!

The Fire Goes Out

That fire didn’t burn out slowly; it was extinguished with a suddenness that took me by surprise. In a few months, I went from seemingly healthy—exercising regularly and enjoying life—to struggling to walk and speak, tasks that once felt second nature. Simple conversations became exhausting, and I found myself grappling with frustration as my body betrayed me. At its worst, I was sent to the ER because my doctor thought I was having a stroke, a harrowing experience that left me feeling both helpless and afraid for my future. Each day felt like a battle, leaving me to question how quickly everything could change.

Rediscovering The Still Point

The journey to reclaim my former self has been an uphill battle, filled with moments of frustration and doubt. I had to rely on my inner strength, digging deep to unearth reserves of resilience that I never knew I possessed. It was crucial for me to continuously find that still point amid the pain, a place of calm where I could gather my thoughts and recharge my spirit, reminding myself that each day was another opportunity for growth and healing despite the challenges I faced.

Incorporating Wellness Practices

Through these small steps, such as taking the stairs at work instead of the elevator, adding moments of reflection and meditation to my day, and shifting towards an anti-inflammatory diet, I have made tremendous progress over the last year.

Learning Patience

I was occasionally impatient with my progress; for example, I work on the eighth floor, so I decided that taking the stairs would be a good way to gradually increase my strength over time. I assumed steady progress would be the norm. However, on certain days when I could only make it to the fourth floor and had to take the elevator, I would feel betrayed by my body. It was frustrating to realize that despite my efforts, my physical limitations sometimes got the better of me, leaving me to wonder if I was truly making any progress at all. Each setback felt like a personal defeat, yet deep down, I knew every little attempt contributed to my journey toward better health.

Small Steps = Great Progress

These efforts, which seemed minor at first, have collectively contributed to a healthier lifestyle and improved well-being. I have found that the more I prioritize my physical health and mental clarity, the more energized and motivated I feel. As a result, I can finally get out and enjoy trekking through my favorite place in the world, the Adirondacks, where majestic mountains and serene lakes rejuvenate my spirit and provide a sense of peace.

The Beauty of Struggle

Had I had a life without turmoil, backsliding, or trauma, I would not be managing stress the way I can today. Every hardship in my life has taught me resilience, how to move through difficulty with grace and flow. Challenges taught me the importance of patience and critical thinking, and that most things are not as unbearable as they seem. Each experience, whether it felt overwhelming or insurmountable at the time, has carved out a deeper understanding within me.

Suffering as Wisdom

I discovered that suffering is a teacher, imparting wisdom that becomes a part of my very being. I spoke about ways of coping in the piece “Navigating Suffering Through Buddhist Wisdom” a few weeks ago, sharing insights that arise from reflecting on my journey. Using this framework, I can patiently and deliberately move towards wholeness, embracing not only the light but also the shadows that shape my existence.

Returning To Wholeness

My journey through chronic pain and illness has not only reshaped my physical abilities but has also profoundly influenced my perspective on life. The trials I have faced have cultivated resilience, compassion, and an understanding that healing is a multifaceted process that encompasses both body and mind.

Moving Forward

By embracing the small victories and honoring my body’s signals, I have discovered a renewed sense of purpose and clarity. The Adirondacks, with their rugged beauty, serve as a reminder of the peace that can exist alongside struggle. As I continue to navigate my healing path, I carry forward the lessons learned through suffering, committed to nurturing both my physical health and my spirit, and embracing each step as part of a greater journey toward wholeness.

Below, I have lovingly cultivated a list of gentle practices to help you embark on your healing journey. Please remember to be patient with yourself; healing is rarely a straightforward path. We meander and flow, gathering momentum and wisdom as we navigate our healing journey with intentionality and compassion

Gentle Ways To Begin Healing

• Listen to Your Body: Pay attention to the signals your body sends. Acknowledge when you need rest and allow yourself the time to recuperate.
• Incorporate Gentle Movements: Start with simple stretches or light activities that your body can handle. Aim to gradually increase your activity levels as your strength improves.
• Practice Mindfulness and Meditation: Set aside moments each day for mindfulness or meditation. Use this time to center yourself, breathe deeply, and cultivate inner peace.
• Focus on Nutrition: Transition to an anti-inflammatory diet that includes whole foods. Incorporate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins into your meals.
• Engage in Reflective Practices: Take time for journaling or reflection. Consider your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and how they contribute to your healing process.
• Seek Support: Connect with friends, family, or support groups who understand your journey. Sharing your challenges can foster a sense of community and belonging.
• Embrace Nature: Spend time outdoors in natural settings. Activities like hiking, walking, or simply sitting in a park can provide rejuvenation for both mind and spirit.
• Be Patient with Yourself: Understand that healing is a journey that takes time. Be compassionate toward yourself, acknowledging that ups and downs are a natural part of the process.
• Create a Healthy Sleep Routine: Aim for consistent sleep patterns. Prioritize restful sleep by creating a calming bedtime environment.
• Limit Screen Time: Reduce exposure to screens, especially before bed. This can help improve sleep quality and reduce fatigue.
• Practice Gratitude: Keep a gratitude journal to document what you appreciate each day. This can shift your mindset and enhance overall well-being.

If you are beginning your healing journey, I suggest starting with listening to your body. This is where we truly learn the wisdom held within ourselves. Our bodies possess innate knowledge that guides us; they know when we need rest, self-care, or movement. By taking the time to listen deeply to the inherent wisdom, we allow the body and mind to communicate with each other, opening the pathways to wholeness. This connection fosters a deeper understanding of our needs, cultivating an environment where healing can flourish. As you engage in this practice, you may discover signals that indicate emotional or physical states, helping you to navigate life’s challenges with greater awareness and resilience. Remember, each step you take in tuning into your body’s messages brings you closer to a harmonious balance, nurturing both your inner self and overall well-being.

For deeper emotional healing, I offer you this free guide to Somatic Experiencing, which delves into the profound connection between our bodies and our feelings. This guide is designed to help you understand how our physical sensations can inform our emotional states and facilitate healing. By engaging with the principles of Somatic Experiencing, you will learn practical techniques to process trauma, release tension, and foster a sense of safety within your body. Embrace this opportunity to explore a holistic approach to healing, enabling you to cultivate resilience and emotional well-being.

The Healing Journey: Small Steps to Wellness

Last weekend, I hiked the easy Inman Pond trail in the Adirondacks. With an elevation gain of only about 475 ft., it was a manageable hike. A year ago, I would have found it painful and challenging; three years ago, the Inman Pond trail would have felt almost impossible.

Perspective Shift

The extent to which chronic migraine, lupus, and endometriosis have shifted my life and my perspective over the last six years is not as vast as I had once believed. Through the often relentless pain and suffering, I am still me; the inherent essence of who I am sits quietly behind the pain, behind the striving for healing.

The Still Point

This still point, a sanctuary amidst the chaos, is my anchor. It was from this point of calm and clarity that I began to make small but significant changes to aid in my healing journey. I have learned to listen to my body, understanding its rhythms and needs, allowing myself to rest when required and gradually incorporating gentle movements that foster both physical and emotional well-being.

Health Shifts

Of course, my doctors have prescribed medications to help control the symptoms of these ailments, which help but do not cure or obliterate the pain. These medications can provide temporary relief, yet the underlying struggles remain, weighing heavily on my daily life. I had lost so much strength, muscle, and ability, and no magic pill was going to bring that back.

Living Fully

Before lupus and the resurgence of my chronic migraine, I was heavily involved in community and physical activity. Helping with local school musical productions from set work to directing, while running 15 to 20 miles a week, attending multiple yoga classes, and engaging in vigorous strength training, I was on fire!

The Fire Goes Out

That fire didn’t burn out slowly; it was extinguished with a suddenness that took me by surprise. In a few months, I went from seemingly healthy—exercising regularly and enjoying life—to struggling to walk and speak, tasks that once felt second nature. Simple conversations became exhausting, and I found myself grappling with frustration as my body betrayed me. At its worst, I was sent to the ER because my doctor thought I was having a stroke, a harrowing experience that left me feeling both helpless and afraid for my future. Each day felt like a battle, leaving me to question how quickly everything could change.

Rediscovering The Still Point

The journey to reclaim my former self has been an uphill battle, filled with moments of frustration and doubt. I had to rely on my inner strength, digging deep to unearth reserves of resilience that I never knew I possessed. It was crucial for me to continuously find that still point amid the pain, a place of calm where I could gather my thoughts and recharge my spirit, reminding myself that each day was another opportunity for growth and healing despite the challenges I faced.

Incorporating Wellness Practices

Through these small steps, such as taking the stairs at work instead of the elevator, adding moments of reflection and meditation to my day, and shifting towards an anti-inflammatory diet, I have made tremendous progress over the last year.

Learning Patience

I was occasionally impatient with my progress; for example, I work on the eighth floor, so I decided that taking the stairs would be a good way to gradually increase my strength over time. I assumed steady progress would be the norm. However, on certain days when I could only make it to the fourth floor and had to take the elevator, I would feel betrayed by my body. It was frustrating to realize that despite my efforts, my physical limitations sometimes got the better of me, leaving me to wonder if I was truly making any progress at all. Each setback felt like a personal defeat, yet deep down, I knew every little attempt contributed to my journey toward better health.

Small Steps = Great Progress

These efforts, which seemed minor at first, have collectively contributed to a healthier lifestyle and improved well-being. I have found that the more I prioritize my physical health and mental clarity, the more energized and motivated I feel. As a result, I can finally get out and enjoy trekking through my favorite place in the world, the Adirondacks, where majestic mountains and serene lakes rejuvenate my spirit and provide a sense of peace.

The Beauty of Struggle

Had I had a life without turmoil, backsliding, or trauma, I would not be managing stress the way I can today. Every hardship in my life has taught me resilience, how to move through difficulty with grace and flow. Challenges taught me the importance of patience and critical thinking, and that most things are not as unbearable as they seem. Each experience, whether it felt overwhelming or insurmountable at the time, has carved out a deeper understanding within me.

Suffering as Wisdom

I discovered that suffering is a teacher, imparting wisdom that becomes a part of my very being. I spoke about ways of coping in the piece “Navigating Suffering Through Buddhist Wisdom” a few weeks ago, sharing insights that arise from reflecting on my journey. Using this framework, I can patiently and deliberately move towards wholeness, embracing not only the light but also the shadows that shape my existence.

Returning To Wholeness

My journey through chronic pain and illness has not only reshaped my physical abilities but has also profoundly influenced my perspective on life. The trials I have faced have cultivated resilience, compassion, and an understanding that healing is a multifaceted process that encompasses both body and mind.

Moving Forward

By embracing the small victories and honoring my body’s signals, I have discovered a renewed sense of purpose and clarity. The Adirondacks, with their rugged beauty, serve as a reminder of the peace that can exist alongside struggle. As I continue to navigate my healing path, I carry forward the lessons learned through suffering, committed to nurturing both my physical health and my spirit, and embracing each step as part of a greater journey toward wholeness.

Below, I have lovingly cultivated a list of gentle practices to help you embark on your healing journey. Please remember to be patient with yourself; healing is rarely a straightforward path. We meander and flow, gathering momentum and wisdom as we navigate our healing journey with intentionality and compassion

Gentle Ways To Begin Healing

• Listen to Your Body: Pay attention to the signals your body sends. Acknowledge when you need rest and allow yourself the time to recuperate.
• Incorporate Gentle Movements: Start with simple stretches or light activities that your body can handle. Aim to gradually increase your activity levels as your strength improves.
• Practice Mindfulness and Meditation: Set aside moments each day for mindfulness or meditation. Use this time to center yourself, breathe deeply, and cultivate inner peace.
• Focus on Nutrition: Transition to an anti-inflammatory diet that includes whole foods. Incorporate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins into your meals.
• Engage in Reflective Practices: Take time for journaling or reflection. Consider your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and how they contribute to your healing process.
• Seek Support: Connect with friends, family, or support groups who understand your journey. Sharing your challenges can foster a sense of community and belonging.
• Embrace Nature: Spend time outdoors in natural settings. Activities like hiking, walking, or simply sitting in a park can provide rejuvenation for both mind and spirit.
• Be Patient with Yourself: Understand that healing is a journey that takes time. Be compassionate toward yourself, acknowledging that ups and downs are a natural part of the process.
• Create a Healthy Sleep Routine: Aim for consistent sleep patterns. Prioritize restful sleep by creating a calming bedtime environment.
• Limit Screen Time: Reduce exposure to screens, especially before bed. This can help improve sleep quality and reduce fatigue.
• Practice Gratitude: Keep a gratitude journal to document what you appreciate each day. This can shift your mindset and enhance overall well-being.

If you are beginning your healing journey, I suggest starting with listening to your body. This is where we truly learn the wisdom held within ourselves. Our bodies possess innate knowledge that guides us; they know when we need rest, self-care, or movement. By taking the time to listen deeply to the inherent wisdom, we allow the body and mind to communicate with each other, opening the pathways to wholeness. This connection fosters a deeper understanding of our needs, cultivating an environment where healing can flourish. As you engage in this practice, you may discover signals that indicate emotional or physical states, helping you to navigate life’s challenges with greater awareness and resilience. Remember, each step you take in tuning into your body’s messages brings you closer to a harmonious balance, nurturing both your inner self and overall well-being.

For deeper emotional healing, I offer you this free guide to Somatic Experiencing, which delves into the profound connection between our bodies and our feelings. This guide is designed to help you understand how our physical sensations can inform our emotional states and facilitate healing. By engaging with the principles of Somatic Experiencing, you will learn practical techniques to process trauma, release tension, and foster a sense of safety within your body. Embrace this opportunity to explore a holistic approach to healing, enabling you to cultivate resilience and emotional well-being.

The Healing Journey: Small Steps to Wellness

Last weekend, I hiked the easy Inman Pond trail in the Adirondacks. With an elevation gain of only about 475 ft., it was a manageable hike. A year ago, I would have found it painful and challenging; three years ago, the Inman Pond trail would have felt almost impossible.

Perspective Shift

The extent to which chronic migraine, lupus, and endometriosis have shifted my life and my perspective over the last six years is not as vast as I had once believed. Through the often relentless pain and suffering, I am still me; the inherent essence of who I am sits quietly behind the pain, behind the striving for healing.

The Still Point

This still point, a sanctuary amidst the chaos, is my anchor. It was from this point of calm and clarity that I began to make small but significant changes to aid in my healing journey. I have learned to listen to my body, understanding its rhythms and needs, allowing myself to rest when required and gradually incorporating gentle movements that foster both physical and emotional well-being.

Health Shifts

Of course, my doctors have prescribed medications to help control the symptoms of these ailments, which help but do not cure or obliterate the pain. These medications can provide temporary relief, yet the underlying struggles remain, weighing heavily on my daily life. I had lost so much strength, muscle, and ability, and no magic pill was going to bring that back.

Living Fully

Before lupus and the resurgence of my chronic migraine, I was heavily involved in community and physical activity. Helping with local school musical productions from set work to directing, while running 15 to 20 miles a week, attending multiple yoga classes, and engaging in vigorous strength training, I was on fire!

The Fire Goes Out

That fire didn’t burn out slowly; it was extinguished with a suddenness that took me by surprise. In a few months, I went from seemingly healthy—exercising regularly and enjoying life—to struggling to walk and speak, tasks that once felt second nature. Simple conversations became exhausting, and I found myself grappling with frustration as my body betrayed me. At its worst, I was sent to the ER because my doctor thought I was having a stroke, a harrowing experience that left me feeling both helpless and afraid for my future. Each day felt like a battle, leaving me to question how quickly everything could change.

Rediscovering The Still Point

The journey to reclaim my former self has been an uphill battle, filled with moments of frustration and doubt. I had to rely on my inner strength, digging deep to unearth reserves of resilience that I never knew I possessed. It was crucial for me to continuously find that still point amid the pain, a place of calm where I could gather my thoughts and recharge my spirit, reminding myself that each day was another opportunity for growth and healing despite the challenges I faced.

Incorporating Wellness Practices

Through these small steps, such as taking the stairs at work instead of the elevator, adding moments of reflection and meditation to my day, and shifting towards an anti-inflammatory diet, I have made tremendous progress over the last year.

Learning Patience

I was occasionally impatient with my progress; for example, I work on the eighth floor, so I decided that taking the stairs would be a good way to gradually increase my strength over time. I assumed steady progress would be the norm. However, on certain days when I could only make it to the fourth floor and had to take the elevator, I would feel betrayed by my body. It was frustrating to realize that despite my efforts, my physical limitations sometimes got the better of me, leaving me to wonder if I was truly making any progress at all. Each setback felt like a personal defeat, yet deep down, I knew every little attempt contributed to my journey toward better health.

Small Steps = Great Progress

These efforts, which seemed minor at first, have collectively contributed to a healthier lifestyle and improved well-being. I have found that the more I prioritize my physical health and mental clarity, the more energized and motivated I feel. As a result, I can finally get out and enjoy trekking through my favorite place in the world, the Adirondacks, where majestic mountains and serene lakes rejuvenate my spirit and provide a sense of peace.

The Beauty of Struggle

Had I had a life without turmoil, backsliding, or trauma, I would not be managing stress the way I can today. Every hardship in my life has taught me resilience, how to move through difficulty with grace and flow. Challenges taught me the importance of patience and critical thinking, and that most things are not as unbearable as they seem. Each experience, whether it felt overwhelming or insurmountable at the time, has carved out a deeper understanding within me.

Suffering as Wisdom

I discovered that suffering is a teacher, imparting wisdom that becomes a part of my very being. I spoke about ways of coping in the piece “Navigating Suffering Through Buddhist Wisdom” a few weeks ago, sharing insights that arise from reflecting on my journey. Using this framework, I can patiently and deliberately move towards wholeness, embracing not only the light but also the shadows that shape my existence.

Returning To Wholeness

My journey through chronic pain and illness has not only reshaped my physical abilities but has also profoundly influenced my perspective on life. The trials I have faced have cultivated resilience, compassion, and an understanding that healing is a multifaceted process that encompasses both body and mind.

Moving Forward

By embracing the small victories and honoring my body’s signals, I have discovered a renewed sense of purpose and clarity. The Adirondacks, with their rugged beauty, serve as a reminder of the peace that can exist alongside struggle. As I continue to navigate my healing path, I carry forward the lessons learned through suffering, committed to nurturing both my physical health and my spirit, and embracing each step as part of a greater journey toward wholeness.

Below, I have lovingly cultivated a list of gentle practices to help you embark on your healing journey. Please remember to be patient with yourself; healing is rarely a straightforward path. We meander and flow, gathering momentum and wisdom as we navigate our healing journey with intentionality and compassion

Gentle Ways To Begin Healing

• Listen to Your Body: Pay attention to the signals your body sends. Acknowledge when you need rest and allow yourself the time to recuperate.
• Incorporate Gentle Movements: Start with simple stretches or light activities that your body can handle. Aim to gradually increase your activity levels as your strength improves.
• Practice Mindfulness and Meditation: Set aside moments each day for mindfulness or meditation. Use this time to center yourself, breathe deeply, and cultivate inner peace.
• Focus on Nutrition: Transition to an anti-inflammatory diet that includes whole foods. Incorporate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins into your meals.
• Engage in Reflective Practices: Take time for journaling or reflection. Consider your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and how they contribute to your healing process.
• Seek Support: Connect with friends, family, or support groups who understand your journey. Sharing your challenges can foster a sense of community and belonging.
• Embrace Nature: Spend time outdoors in natural settings. Activities like hiking, walking, or simply sitting in a park can provide rejuvenation for both mind and spirit.
• Be Patient with Yourself: Understand that healing is a journey that takes time. Be compassionate toward yourself, acknowledging that ups and downs are a natural part of the process.
• Create a Healthy Sleep Routine: Aim for consistent sleep patterns. Prioritize restful sleep by creating a calming bedtime environment.
• Limit Screen Time: Reduce exposure to screens, especially before bed. This can help improve sleep quality and reduce fatigue.
• Practice Gratitude: Keep a gratitude journal to document what you appreciate each day. This can shift your mindset and enhance overall well-being.

If you are beginning your healing journey, I suggest starting with listening to your body. This is where we truly learn the wisdom held within ourselves. Our bodies possess innate knowledge that guides us; they know when we need rest, self-care, or movement. By taking the time to listen deeply to the inherent wisdom, we allow the body and mind to communicate with each other, opening the pathways to wholeness. This connection fosters a deeper understanding of our needs, cultivating an environment where healing can flourish. As you engage in this practice, you may discover signals that indicate emotional or physical states, helping you to navigate life’s challenges with greater awareness and resilience. Remember, each step you take in tuning into your body’s messages brings you closer to a harmonious balance, nurturing both your inner self and overall well-being.

For deeper emotional healing, I offer you this free guide to Somatic Experiencing, which delves into the profound connection between our bodies and our feelings. This guide is designed to help you understand how our physical sensations can inform our emotional states and facilitate healing. By engaging with the principles of Somatic Experiencing, you will learn practical techniques to process trauma, release tension, and foster a sense of safety within your body. Embrace this opportunity to explore a holistic approach to healing, enabling you to cultivate resilience and emotional well-being.

The Healing Journey: Small Steps to Wellness

Last weekend, I hiked the easy Inman Pond trail in the Adirondacks. With an elevation gain of only about 475 ft., it was a manageable hike. A year ago, I would have found it painful and challenging; three years ago, the Inman Pond trail would have felt almost impossible.

Perspective Shift

The extent to which chronic migraine, lupus, and endometriosis have shifted my life and my perspective over the last six years is not as vast as I had once believed. Through the often relentless pain and suffering, I am still me; the inherent essence of who I am sits quietly behind the pain, behind the striving for healing.

The Still Point

This still point, a sanctuary amidst the chaos, is my anchor. It was from this point of calm and clarity that I began to make small but significant changes to aid in my healing journey. I have learned to listen to my body, understanding its rhythms and needs, allowing myself to rest when required and gradually incorporating gentle movements that foster both physical and emotional well-being.

Health Shifts

Of course, my doctors have prescribed medications to help control the symptoms of these ailments, which help but do not cure or obliterate the pain. These medications can provide temporary relief, yet the underlying struggles remain, weighing heavily on my daily life. I had lost so much strength, muscle, and ability, and no magic pill was going to bring that back.

Living Fully

Before lupus and the resurgence of my chronic migraine, I was heavily involved in community and physical activity. Helping with local school musical productions from set work to directing, while running 15 to 20 miles a week, attending multiple yoga classes, and engaging in vigorous strength training, I was on fire!

The Fire Goes Out

That fire didn’t burn out slowly; it was extinguished with a suddenness that took me by surprise. In a few months, I went from seemingly healthy—exercising regularly and enjoying life—to struggling to walk and speak, tasks that once felt second nature. Simple conversations became exhausting, and I found myself grappling with frustration as my body betrayed me. At its worst, I was sent to the ER because my doctor thought I was having a stroke, a harrowing experience that left me feeling both helpless and afraid for my future. Each day felt like a battle, leaving me to question how quickly everything could change.

Rediscovering The Still Point

The journey to reclaim my former self has been an uphill battle, filled with moments of frustration and doubt. I had to rely on my inner strength, digging deep to unearth reserves of resilience that I never knew I possessed. It was crucial for me to continuously find that still point amid the pain, a place of calm where I could gather my thoughts and recharge my spirit, reminding myself that each day was another opportunity for growth and healing despite the challenges I faced.

Incorporating Wellness Practices

Through these small steps, such as taking the stairs at work instead of the elevator, adding moments of reflection and meditation to my day, and shifting towards an anti-inflammatory diet, I have made tremendous progress over the last year.

Learning Patience

I was occasionally impatient with my progress; for example, I work on the eighth floor, so I decided that taking the stairs would be a good way to gradually increase my strength over time. I assumed steady progress would be the norm. However, on certain days when I could only make it to the fourth floor and had to take the elevator, I would feel betrayed by my body. It was frustrating to realize that despite my efforts, my physical limitations sometimes got the better of me, leaving me to wonder if I was truly making any progress at all. Each setback felt like a personal defeat, yet deep down, I knew every little attempt contributed to my journey toward better health.

Small Steps = Great Progress

These efforts, which seemed minor at first, have collectively contributed to a healthier lifestyle and improved well-being. I have found that the more I prioritize my physical health and mental clarity, the more energized and motivated I feel. As a result, I can finally get out and enjoy trekking through my favorite place in the world, the Adirondacks, where majestic mountains and serene lakes rejuvenate my spirit and provide a sense of peace.

The Beauty of Struggle

Had I had a life without turmoil, backsliding, or trauma, I would not be managing stress the way I can today. Every hardship in my life has taught me resilience, how to move through difficulty with grace and flow. Challenges taught me the importance of patience and critical thinking, and that most things are not as unbearable as they seem. Each experience, whether it felt overwhelming or insurmountable at the time, has carved out a deeper understanding within me.

Suffering as Wisdom

I discovered that suffering is a teacher, imparting wisdom that becomes a part of my very being. I spoke about ways of coping in the piece “Navigating Suffering Through Buddhist Wisdom” a few weeks ago, sharing insights that arise from reflecting on my journey. Using this framework, I can patiently and deliberately move towards wholeness, embracing not only the light but also the shadows that shape my existence.

Returning To Wholeness

My journey through chronic pain and illness has not only reshaped my physical abilities but has also profoundly influenced my perspective on life. The trials I have faced have cultivated resilience, compassion, and an understanding that healing is a multifaceted process that encompasses both body and mind.

Moving Forward

By embracing the small victories and honoring my body’s signals, I have discovered a renewed sense of purpose and clarity. The Adirondacks, with their rugged beauty, serve as a reminder of the peace that can exist alongside struggle. As I continue to navigate my healing path, I carry forward the lessons learned through suffering, committed to nurturing both my physical health and my spirit, and embracing each step as part of a greater journey toward wholeness.

Below, I have lovingly cultivated a list of gentle practices to help you embark on your healing journey. Please remember to be patient with yourself; healing is rarely a straightforward path. We meander and flow, gathering momentum and wisdom as we navigate our healing journey with intentionality and compassion

Gentle Ways To Begin Healing

• Listen to Your Body: Pay attention to the signals your body sends. Acknowledge when you need rest and allow yourself the time to recuperate.
• Incorporate Gentle Movements: Start with simple stretches or light activities that your body can handle. Aim to gradually increase your activity levels as your strength improves.
• Practice Mindfulness and Meditation: Set aside moments each day for mindfulness or meditation. Use this time to center yourself, breathe deeply, and cultivate inner peace.
• Focus on Nutrition: Transition to an anti-inflammatory diet that includes whole foods. Incorporate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins into your meals.
• Engage in Reflective Practices: Take time for journaling or reflection. Consider your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and how they contribute to your healing process.
• Seek Support: Connect with friends, family, or support groups who understand your journey. Sharing your challenges can foster a sense of community and belonging.
• Embrace Nature: Spend time outdoors in natural settings. Activities like hiking, walking, or simply sitting in a park can provide rejuvenation for both mind and spirit.
• Be Patient with Yourself: Understand that healing is a journey that takes time. Be compassionate toward yourself, acknowledging that ups and downs are a natural part of the process.
• Create a Healthy Sleep Routine: Aim for consistent sleep patterns. Prioritize restful sleep by creating a calming bedtime environment.
• Limit Screen Time: Reduce exposure to screens, especially before bed. This can help improve sleep quality and reduce fatigue.
• Practice Gratitude: Keep a gratitude journal to document what you appreciate each day. This can shift your mindset and enhance overall well-being.

If you are beginning your healing journey, I suggest starting with listening to your body. This is where we truly learn the wisdom held within ourselves. Our bodies possess innate knowledge that guides us; they know when we need rest, self-care, or movement. By taking the time to listen deeply to the inherent wisdom, we allow the body and mind to communicate with each other, opening the pathways to wholeness. This connection fosters a deeper understanding of our needs, cultivating an environment where healing can flourish. As you engage in this practice, you may discover signals that indicate emotional or physical states, helping you to navigate life’s challenges with greater awareness and resilience. Remember, each step you take in tuning into your body’s messages brings you closer to a harmonious balance, nurturing both your inner self and overall well-being.

For deeper emotional healing, I offer you this free guide to Somatic Experiencing, which delves into the profound connection between our bodies and our feelings. This guide is designed to help you understand how our physical sensations can inform our emotional states and facilitate healing. By engaging with the principles of Somatic Experiencing, you will learn practical techniques to process trauma, release tension, and foster a sense of safety within your body. Embrace this opportunity to explore a holistic approach to healing, enabling you to cultivate resilience and emotional well-being.

Most of Your Limits Were Installed by Someone Else
https://wp.me/p84YjG-aQD
#limits #rules #constraints #life #work #career #Strategy #dontstop #realistic #parent #coach #teacher

https://zsoltzsemba.com/limiting-beliefs-installed-by-someone-else/

#Gemini hat #Limits. Die gab es schon immer. Jetzt sieht man sie endlich.

Wer Gemini intensiv nutzt: Recherchen, Bildgenerierung, Deep-Research-Berichte; hat die Wand schon gespürt. Irgendwann kam keine Antwort mehr, oder eine, die plötzlich deutlich schwächer war. Was genau dahintersteckte? Unklar. Bis jetzt.

#Google macht die Nutzungslimits offiziell sichtbar.

#Google #Gemini #GeminiAI #KI #ArtificialIntelligence

#Gemini hat #Limits. Die gab es schon immer. Jetzt sieht man sie endlich.

Wer Gemini intensiv nutzt: Recherchen, Bildgenerierung, Deep-Research-Berichte; hat die Wand schon gespürt. Irgendwann kam keine Antwort mehr, oder eine, die plötzlich deutlich schwächer war. Was genau dahintersteckte? Unklar. Bis jetzt.

#Google macht die Nutzungslimits offiziell sichtbar.

#Google #Gemini #GeminiAI #KI #ArtificialIntelligence

#Gemini hat #Limits. Die gab es schon immer. Jetzt sieht man sie endlich.

Wer Gemini intensiv nutzt: Recherchen, Bildgenerierung, Deep-Research-Berichte; hat die Wand schon gespürt. Irgendwann kam keine Antwort mehr, oder eine, die plötzlich deutlich schwächer war. Was genau dahintersteckte? Unklar. Bis jetzt.

#Google macht die Nutzungslimits offiziell sichtbar.

#Google #Gemini #GeminiAI #KI #ArtificialIntelligence

#Gemini hat #Limits. Die gab es schon immer. Jetzt sieht man sie endlich.

Wer Gemini intensiv nutzt: Recherchen, Bildgenerierung, Deep-Research-Berichte; hat die Wand schon gespürt. Irgendwann kam keine Antwort mehr, oder eine, die plötzlich deutlich schwächer war. Was genau dahintersteckte? Unklar. Bis jetzt.

#Google macht die Nutzungslimits offiziell sichtbar.

#Google #Gemini #GeminiAI #KI #ArtificialIntelligence

#Gemini hat #Limits. Die gab es schon immer. Jetzt sieht man sie endlich.

Wer Gemini intensiv nutzt: Recherchen, Bildgenerierung, Deep-Research-Berichte; hat die Wand schon gespürt. Irgendwann kam keine Antwort mehr, oder eine, die plötzlich deutlich schwächer war. Was genau dahintersteckte? Unklar. Bis jetzt.

#Google macht die Nutzungslimits offiziell sichtbar.

#Google #Gemini #GeminiAI #KI #ArtificialIntelligence

#Google macht seine #Gemini #Limits endlich sichtbar. Kein Raten mehr, kein Help #Center #Suchen; ein Zähler direkt im Interface zeigt, wie viel #Kontingent noch übrig ist. Free: 5 Prompts/Tag. Pro: 100. Ultra: 500. Was die neuen Limits bedeuten; und für wen sie wirklich relevant sind 👇 https://news-jz-app.blogspot.com/2026/05/gemini-nutzungslimits.html
Bildquelle: Amanz auf Unsplash

https://www.evshift.com/459215/e-bike-power-limits-unlock-your-bikes-true-potential-shorts/ E-Bike Power Limits: Unlock Your Bike’s TRUE Potential! #shorts #bikes #ebike #ElectricBikes #ElectricMotorcycles #ElectricVehicles #EV #limits #motorcycles #Potential #power #shorts #True #unlock

X führt strenge #Limits für kostenlose Nutzer ein. Wer nicht zahlt, darf nur noch 50 Beiträge und 200 Antworten pro Tag veröffentlichen. Zudem sind Direktnachrichten und neue Follower begrenzt. #SocialMedia https://winfuture.de/news,158780.html?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=ManualStatus&utm_campaign=SocialMedia

X führt strenge #Limits für kostenlose Nutzer ein. Wer nicht zahlt, darf nur noch 50 Beiträge und 200 Antworten pro Tag veröffentlichen. Zudem sind Direktnachrichten und neue Follower begrenzt. #SocialMedia https://winfuture.de/news,158780.html?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=ManualStatus&utm_campaign=SocialMedia

X führt strenge #Limits für kostenlose Nutzer ein. Wer nicht zahlt, darf nur noch 50 Beiträge und 200 Antworten pro Tag veröffentlichen. Zudem sind Direktnachrichten und neue Follower begrenzt. #SocialMedia https://winfuture.de/news,158780.html?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=ManualStatus&utm_campaign=SocialMedia

X führt strenge #Limits für kostenlose Nutzer ein. Wer nicht zahlt, darf nur noch 50 Beiträge und 200 Antworten pro Tag veröffentlichen. Zudem sind Direktnachrichten und neue Follower begrenzt. #SocialMedia https://winfuture.de/news,158780.html?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=ManualStatus&utm_campaign=SocialMedia

X führt strenge #Limits für kostenlose Nutzer ein. Wer nicht zahlt, darf nur noch 50 Beiträge und 200 Antworten pro Tag veröffentlichen. Zudem sind Direktnachrichten und neue Follower begrenzt. #SocialMedia https://winfuture.de/news,158780.html?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=ManualStatus&utm_campaign=SocialMedia

This will require amendments to effect better rational and #equitable #water #management, including regarding the #mitigation of #climateChange and efforts to #adapt to these changes, and to live within our #ecological #limits. Legislatively giving the #Executive broad and ill-defined #power and the almost unlimited discretion to avoid complying with the #laws and #policies that apply in “non-emergency” situations is a failure of #governance...."

20/24

This will require amendments to effect better rational and #equitable #water #management, including regarding the #mitigation of #climateChange and efforts to #adapt to these changes, and to live within our #ecological #limits. Legislatively giving the #Executive broad and ill-defined #power and the almost unlimited discretion to avoid complying with the #laws and #policies that apply in “non-emergency” situations is a failure of #governance...."

20/24

This will require amendments to effect better rational and #equitable #water #management, including regarding the #mitigation of #climateChange and efforts to #adapt to these changes, and to live within our #ecological #limits. Legislatively giving the #Executive broad and ill-defined #power and the almost unlimited discretion to avoid complying with the #laws and #policies that apply in “non-emergency” situations is a failure of #governance...."

20/24

This will require amendments to effect better rational and #equitable #water #management, including regarding the #mitigation of #climateChange and efforts to #adapt to these changes, and to live within our #ecological #limits. Legislatively giving the #Executive broad and ill-defined #power and the almost unlimited discretion to avoid complying with the #laws and #policies that apply in “non-emergency” situations is a failure of #governance...."

20/24

This will require amendments to effect better rational and #equitable #water #management, including regarding the #mitigation of #climateChange and efforts to #adapt to these changes, and to live within our #ecological #limits. Legislatively giving the #Executive broad and ill-defined #power and the almost unlimited discretion to avoid complying with the #laws and #policies that apply in “non-emergency” situations is a failure of #governance...."

20/24

Were Your Limits Installed by Someone?
https://wp.me/p84YjG-aQX
#limits #confidence #zsoltzsemba #work #life #commitment #spirit #suffering #pain #growth #challenges #living #fail #success

https://zsoltzsemba.com/break-free-from-inherited-limits/

Bill would remove commercial minimum snapper size under fisheries reforms https://www.byteseu.com/1881922/ #been #bill #commercial #Condemned #fish #FISHERIES #fishers #have #including #legalsize #LIMITS #minimum #move #NewZealand #outrageous #popular #proposed #quietly #range #Recreational #reforms #remove #rules #size #snapper #species #that #thats #trevally #under #would

EPA curbs cancer-causing chemical used to sterilize medical devices

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced tougher #limits on a #cancer-#causing #gas used to #sterilize #medical #equipment, a move aimed at helping disadvantaged communities across the country reduce their exposure to a toxic pollutant.

Some environmental and public health advocates criticized the final rule as too weak, saying it would not adequately protect low-income and minority communities that are disproportionately affected.

At the same time, the #medical #device #industry warned that the rule could disrupt the supply of safe medical equipment at hospitals and clinics nationwide.

The rule targets emissions of #ethylene #oxide, an odorless, colorless gas that has been linked to several types of cancer, particularly #lymphoma and #leukemia.

It illustrates the tensions between two of the Biden administration’s signature priorities:
promoting environmental justice and bolstering domestic supply chains.

Michael Regan, the first Black man to serve as EPA administrator, has put an emphasis on curbing deadly pollution in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods.

He announced the proposed rule last year in Louisiana, where an 85-mile-long area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is known as “#Cancer #Alley” because of numerous polluting facilities, including those that produce ethylene oxide.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/03/14/ethylene-oxide-epa-rule/

Herman #Daly passed away a month ago. He paved the way for the degrowth movement. His analyses of #economics are extremely valuable treasures for further theoretical work.
#límits #growth #degrowth #climate #earth
Or in his own words:

Former Alaska representative
❤️#Mary #Peltola announced on Monday she is running for Alaska’s US Senate seat,
handing Democrats a major recruitment victory as the party battles to reclaim the chamber’s majority in this year’s midterm elections.

Peltola, who served as Alaska’s sole House member from 2022 until her narrow defeat in 2024, is considered one of the few Democrats in the Republican-leaning state capable of mounting a 💥serious challenge to Senator Dan Sullivan, who is seeking re-election.

In her campaign announcement video, Peltola positioned herself as a political outsider focused on Alaska-specific concerns,
including the state’s fishing industry and soaring affordability problems.
She resurrected her “fish, family and freedom” slogan from previous campaigns,
pledged to introduce #term #limits for members of Congress
and said she would focus on
“fixing the rigged system in DC”.

“It’s not just that politicians in DC don’t care that we’re paying $17 a gallon for milk in rural Alaska
– they don’t even believe us,” Peltola said in the video.
“They’re more focused on their stock portfolios than our bank accounts."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/12/alaska-democrat-mary-peltola-us-senate-run?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

“We’re entering the age of finitude capitalism”

* "There are many states, or “company-states”, which are currently setting up new types of semi-formal colonisation, in various places." Interview with economist Arnaud Orain >>
https://www.philonomist.com/en/interview/were-entering-age-finitude-capitalism

* What kind of capitalism is possible in a world of limited resources? Arnaud Orain
"Adapted to a world of limited resources, this "capitalism of finitude" seeks to privatize and militarize the seas and territories, impose high prices, consolidate resource "silos," and reserve exclusive markets. Drastically reducing our energy consumption is one alternative to this authoritarian capitalism, but the means to protect it remain unclear.' >>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TD7wjURLJM

#FinitePlanet #LandGrabbing #FinitudeCapitalism #resources #energy #NaturalResources #oil #StraitOfHormuz #SeizeTerritories #militarisation #monopoly #predatory #colonisation #conquer #empire #TheLawOfSpoils #MaritimeRoutes #deindustrialisation #CompanyStates #ecology #EnvironmentalLimits #climate #limits #finitude #ConfiscatedWorld

Image: 'Ships of the East India Company at Sea', "A fleet of East Indiamen at sea", Nicholas Pocock, 1803 >>
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_fleet_of_East_Indiamen_at_sea.jpg

#LGBTQ+ #Chicagoans #outraged as #city imposes new #limits on this year’s #Pride #parade. #Chicago #officials going to reduce the #scale of this year’s #Pride #Parade even more after already announcing an approximately 37% #reduction in #floats and #performances.

The #mayor's #LGBTQ+ #advisorycouncil's says it has not been #included in #conversations about the #proposed #changes.

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Illinois #Chicago #Pride #Police #NoPoliceAtPride

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/05/lgbtq-chicagoans-outraged-as-city-imposes-new-limits-on-this-years-pride-parade/

Attention-Worthy Links for December 2nd, 2024

https://bit.ly/awl120224

#Waste Oil #Supercapacitors #cyberattacks #spacecraft #Trump #leverage #threat #negotiating #Biden #squatting #refusal #oil #limits #production #Clutter #Kármán line #Thoreau #Hunter Biden #submarine cable #ITU #ICPC #LSU #sulfur#concrete #Passenger miles #2.3 light-years #Denmark #Løsning Søndermark #Broadband #connecting #school #library #telecom reform #Earth Information #Air and Space Museum #Anacostia #Calvert Cliffs

#AbrahamLincoln: "#democracy is #government of the #people - by the #people - for the #people"

but #democracy is not perfect per default, it needs constant #reform to become better and better (not worse and worse how it was made by (#financial #taxavoiding #lobbyists and other #lobbyists = #corruption)

how to reform democracy? a #conversationwithai: #deepseek

<think>
Alright, I'm trying to figure out how to reform #democracy so that decisions are made faster and are more competent, while also reducing incompetence and corruption. This is a big question because democracy as it stands has a lot of #issues, but it's still considered one of the better systems out there <- read this?

First off, I know that one of the main problems with democracies is that #decisionmaking can be #slow, especially in #large #countries.

There are so many #checks and #balances that sometimes it feels like nothing gets done.

So maybe making decisions faster requires #streamlining some processes.

But how? Maybe reducing #bureaucracy or changing how legislation is passed?

Another issue is #incompetence. I've seen elected officials who don't seem to have the right skills or knowledge for their roles. <- this #AI has seen things!

How can we ensure that #leaders are actually #competent?

Perhaps through better #education #requirements, or maybe having #experts in certain fields advise them more #effectively.

#Corruption is another huge #Problem seems like #money plays a big role in #politics, which can lead to decisions that favor #donors over the people.

#Campaign #finance #reform might help here, but I'm not sure how feasible that is given current laws and court rulings, especially in places like the #US with #CitizensUnited.

#Voter #engagement is also a factor.

If more people participate, maybe there's more #accountability.

But getting people to vote when they feel their votes don't matter is tough.

Maybe changing voting systems, like ranked-choice voting, could make elections feel more representative and increase turnout.

I've heard about #sortition, where #random #citizens are #selected for #decisionmaking bodies.

That might bring in diverse perspectives and reduce corruption since the average person isn't as beholden to special interests.

But would people take it seriously? I'm not sure how effective that would be compared to elected officials.

#Technology could play a role too.

Maybe using #online #platforms for #participatory #budgeting or #policy #discussions.

It could make #government more #transparent and involve citizens more #directly.

However, there's the risk of #misinformation and #manipulation online.

#Term #limits are another idea.

They might prevent politicians from becoming too entrenched and corrupt, but they can also limit institutional knowledge and lead to a #revolvingdoor of #inexperienced #leaders.

#Anticorruption agencies seem necessary, but they need to be #independent and well #funded.

If they're controlled by the government, they won't be effective.

How do you ensure their independence?

#Media #literacy is important because if people are #better #informed, they can make #better #decisions at the #ballotbox.

But with so much #misinformation out there, improving media literacy is a big challenge.

I'm also thinking about proportional representation.

Maybe switching to a system where more parties have seats could lead to more diverse and representative governments, reducing gridlock.

But it might also make forming a government harder if no single party has a majority.

What about making voting mandatory?

It increases turnout but can also lead to people voting without being informed, which doesn't necessarily improve the quality of decisions.

Another thought is focusing on #local #governance.

If more decisions are made at the local level where people can be more involved and informed, it might lead to #better #outcomes #overall.

But not all issues can be handled locally; some require national or international coordination.

I'm also considering how #education plays into this.

Better #civic #education could make voters more informed and engaged.

It starts from a young age teaching about #government #structures, #roles, and the importance of #participation.

#Transparency is key too.

If governments are more open about their processes and decisions, trust might increase. Things like #FOIA requests in the U.S. help, but they can be slow and sometimes
incomplete.

#Incentivizing #good #governance through awards or recognition might motivate leaders to perform better, but it's not a sure fix for deeper systemic issues.

Encouraging #whistleblowers is important because they can expose #corruption before it becomes entrenched.

Protecting them legally would make others more willing to come forward.

Public-private partnerships could bring in expertise from the private sector, but there's a risk of corporate influence if not managed properly.

Inclusive decision-making ensures that all groups have a voice, which leads to more equitable policies.

It requires active efforts to involve marginalized communities.

Independent judiciaries are crucial because they can check the other branches and enforce laws against corruption.

But judicial appointments can be politicized, which undermines their independence.

Finally, cultural shifts towards valuing integrity over power might help reduce corruption. But changing a culture is slow and difficult, especially in large, diverse societies.

Putting all these thoughts together, it seems like reforming democracy requires a multi-faceted approach addressing both structural issues and cultural factors. It's not just about tweaking one part but making comprehensive changes that promote competence, transparency, and accountability while ensuring representation and reducing corruption.

</think>
Reforming democracy to enhance decision-making efficiency, competence, and reduce corruption involves a multifaceted approach that addresses both structural and cultural aspects of
governance. Here is an organized strategy based on the thought process:

### Structural Reforms
1. **Streamline Decision-Making Processes:**
- Reduce bureaucratic layers and adopt more agile legislative processes to accelerate decision-making without compromising thorough consideration.

2. **Campaign Finance Reform:**
- Implement strict regulations on campaign contributions and promote public financing of elections to diminish the influence of money in politics.

3. **Proportional Representation:**
- Introduce proportional representation systems to ensure diverse representation, which can lead to more inclusive and efficient governance.

4. **Term Limits:**
- Enact term limits for elected officials to prevent entrenchment, while ensuring mechanisms for knowledge retention and smooth transitions.

5. **Independent Anti-Corruption Agencies:**
- Establish independent bodies with strong investigative and prosecutorial powers to combat corruption effectively.

### Enhancing Competence
1. **Expert Advisory Bodies:**
- Integrate expert panels in decision-making processes to provide informed guidance on complex issues.

2. **Civic Education:**
- Improve education systems to foster informed voters through civic engagement and critical thinking skills.

3. **Sortition (Citizen Juries):**
- Experiment with sortition to involve diverse citizen perspectives, enhancing
representativeness and reducing corruption risks.

### Reducing Corruption
1. **Transparency Measures:**
- Increase government transparency through open data initiatives, accessible meetings, and robust freedom of information laws.

2. **Whistleblower Protection:**
- Strengthen legal protections for whistleblowers to encourage the exposure of corruption without fear of retribution.

3. **Judicial Independence:**
- Ensure the judiciary is independent and impartial, free from political influence, to uphold rule of law and check executive power.

### Voter Engagement and Participation
1. **Voting System Reforms:**
- Adopt ranked-choice voting and proportional representation to ensure votes count more meaningfully and increase voter satisfaction.

2. **Compulsory Voting:**
- Consider mandatory voting with incentives for informed voting, potentially reducing apathy and increasing political engagement.

3. **Participatory Budgeting:**
- Involve citizens in budget decisions through digital platforms to foster transparency and accountability.

### Technological Integration
1. **Digital Platforms:**
- Utilize technology for participatory governance, enabling real-time public input on policies and fostering informed discussions.

2. **Media Literacy Programs:**
- Launch initiatives to combat misinformation, promoting a better-informed electorate capable of discerning credible sources.

### Cultural Shifts
1. **Incentivizing Good Governance:**
- Recognize and reward ethical leadership through awards or public acknowledgment to promote integrity in governance.

2. **Cultural Values:**
- Foster societal norms that prioritize transparency, accountability, and integrity, encouraging leaders to adhere to high ethical standards.

### Conclusion
Reforming democracy requires a comprehensive approach that combines structural changes with cultural shifts. By streamlining processes, enhancing
competence through education and expertise, reducing corruption through transparency and independent oversight, and engaging citizens more
effectively, democracies can become more responsive, efficient, and just. This multifaceted strategy aims to rebuild trust in governance and ensure
decisions truly reflect the will of the people.

#AbrahamLincoln: "#democracy is #government of the #people - by the #people - for the #people"

but #democracy is not perfect per default, it needs constant #reform to become better and better (not worse and worse how it was made by (#financial #taxavoiding #lobbyists and other #lobbyists = #corruption)

how to reform democracy? a #conversationwithai: #deepseek

<think>
Alright, I'm trying to figure out how to reform #democracy so that decisions are made faster and are more competent, while also reducing incompetence and corruption. This is a big question because democracy as it stands has a lot of #issues, but it's still considered one of the better systems out there <- read this?

First off, I know that one of the main problems with democracies is that #decisionmaking can be #slow, especially in #large #countries.

There are so many #checks and #balances that sometimes it feels like nothing gets done.

So maybe making decisions faster requires #streamlining some processes.

But how? Maybe reducing #bureaucracy or changing how legislation is passed?

Another issue is #incompetence. I've seen elected officials who don't seem to have the right skills or knowledge for their roles. <- this #AI has seen things!

How can we ensure that #leaders are actually #competent?

Perhaps through better #education #requirements, or maybe having #experts in certain fields advise them more #effectively.

#Corruption is another huge #Problem seems like #money plays a big role in #politics, which can lead to decisions that favor #donors over the people.

#Campaign #finance #reform might help here, but I'm not sure how feasible that is given current laws and court rulings, especially in places like the #US with #CitizensUnited.

#Voter #engagement is also a factor.

If more people participate, maybe there's more #accountability.

But getting people to vote when they feel their votes don't matter is tough.

Maybe changing voting systems, like ranked-choice voting, could make elections feel more representative and increase turnout.

I've heard about #sortition, where #random #citizens are #selected for #decisionmaking bodies.

That might bring in diverse perspectives and reduce corruption since the average person isn't as beholden to special interests.

But would people take it seriously? I'm not sure how effective that would be compared to elected officials.

#Technology could play a role too.

Maybe using #online #platforms for #participatory #budgeting or #policy #discussions.

It could make #government more #transparent and involve citizens more #directly.

However, there's the risk of #misinformation and #manipulation online.

#Term #limits are another idea.

They might prevent politicians from becoming too entrenched and corrupt, but they can also limit institutional knowledge and lead to a #revolvingdoor of #inexperienced #leaders.

#Anticorruption agencies seem necessary, but they need to be #independent and well #funded.

If they're controlled by the government, they won't be effective.

How do you ensure their independence?

#Media #literacy is important because if people are #better #informed, they can make #better #decisions at the #ballotbox.

But with so much #misinformation out there, improving media literacy is a big challenge.

I'm also thinking about proportional representation.

Maybe switching to a system where more parties have seats could lead to more diverse and representative governments, reducing gridlock.

But it might also make forming a government harder if no single party has a majority.

What about making voting mandatory?

It increases turnout but can also lead to people voting without being informed, which doesn't necessarily improve the quality of decisions.

Another thought is focusing on #local #governance.

If more decisions are made at the local level where people can be more involved and informed, it might lead to #better #outcomes #overall.

But not all issues can be handled locally; some require national or international coordination.

I'm also considering how #education plays into this.

Better #civic #education could make voters more informed and engaged.

It starts from a young age teaching about #government #structures, #roles, and the importance of #participation.

#Transparency is key too.

If governments are more open about their processes and decisions, trust might increase. Things like #FOIA requests in the U.S. help, but they can be slow and sometimes
incomplete.

#Incentivizing #good #governance through awards or recognition might motivate leaders to perform better, but it's not a sure fix for deeper systemic issues.

Encouraging #whistleblowers is important because they can expose #corruption before it becomes entrenched.

Protecting them legally would make others more willing to come forward.

Public-private partnerships could bring in expertise from the private sector, but there's a risk of corporate influence if not managed properly.

Inclusive decision-making ensures that all groups have a voice, which leads to more equitable policies.

It requires active efforts to involve marginalized communities.

Independent judiciaries are crucial because they can check the other branches and enforce laws against corruption.

But judicial appointments can be politicized, which undermines their independence.

Finally, cultural shifts towards valuing integrity over power might help reduce corruption. But changing a culture is slow and difficult, especially in large, diverse societies.

Putting all these thoughts together, it seems like reforming democracy requires a multi-faceted approach addressing both structural issues and cultural factors. It's not just about tweaking one part but making comprehensive changes that promote competence, transparency, and accountability while ensuring representation and reducing corruption.

</think>
Reforming democracy to enhance decision-making efficiency, competence, and reduce corruption involves a multifaceted approach that addresses both structural and cultural aspects of
governance. Here is an organized strategy based on the thought process:

### Structural Reforms
1. **Streamline Decision-Making Processes:**
- Reduce bureaucratic layers and adopt more agile legislative processes to accelerate decision-making without compromising thorough consideration.

2. **Campaign Finance Reform:**
- Implement strict regulations on campaign contributions and promote public financing of elections to diminish the influence of money in politics.

3. **Proportional Representation:**
- Introduce proportional representation systems to ensure diverse representation, which can lead to more inclusive and efficient governance.

4. **Term Limits:**
- Enact term limits for elected officials to prevent entrenchment, while ensuring mechanisms for knowledge retention and smooth transitions.

5. **Independent Anti-Corruption Agencies:**
- Establish independent bodies with strong investigative and prosecutorial powers to combat corruption effectively.

### Enhancing Competence
1. **Expert Advisory Bodies:**
- Integrate expert panels in decision-making processes to provide informed guidance on complex issues.

2. **Civic Education:**
- Improve education systems to foster informed voters through civic engagement and critical thinking skills.

3. **Sortition (Citizen Juries):**
- Experiment with sortition to involve diverse citizen perspectives, enhancing
representativeness and reducing corruption risks.

### Reducing Corruption
1. **Transparency Measures:**
- Increase government transparency through open data initiatives, accessible meetings, and robust freedom of information laws.

2. **Whistleblower Protection:**
- Strengthen legal protections for whistleblowers to encourage the exposure of corruption without fear of retribution.

3. **Judicial Independence:**
- Ensure the judiciary is independent and impartial, free from political influence, to uphold rule of law and check executive power.

### Voter Engagement and Participation
1. **Voting System Reforms:**
- Adopt ranked-choice voting and proportional representation to ensure votes count more meaningfully and increase voter satisfaction.

2. **Compulsory Voting:**
- Consider mandatory voting with incentives for informed voting, potentially reducing apathy and increasing political engagement.

3. **Participatory Budgeting:**
- Involve citizens in budget decisions through digital platforms to foster transparency and accountability.

### Technological Integration
1. **Digital Platforms:**
- Utilize technology for participatory governance, enabling real-time public input on policies and fostering informed discussions.

2. **Media Literacy Programs:**
- Launch initiatives to combat misinformation, promoting a better-informed electorate capable of discerning credible sources.

### Cultural Shifts
1. **Incentivizing Good Governance:**
- Recognize and reward ethical leadership through awards or public acknowledgment to promote integrity in governance.

2. **Cultural Values:**
- Foster societal norms that prioritize transparency, accountability, and integrity, encouraging leaders to adhere to high ethical standards.

### Conclusion
Reforming democracy requires a comprehensive approach that combines structural changes with cultural shifts. By streamlining processes, enhancing
competence through education and expertise, reducing corruption through transparency and independent oversight, and engaging citizens more
effectively, democracies can become more responsive, efficient, and just. This multifaceted strategy aims to rebuild trust in governance and ensure
decisions truly reflect the will of the people.

#AbrahamLincoln: "#democracy is #government of the #people - by the #people - for the #people"

but #democracy is not perfect per default, it needs constant #reform to become better and better (not worse and worse how it was made by (#financial #taxavoiding #lobbyists and other #lobbyists = #corruption)

how to reform democracy? a #conversationwithai: #deepseek

<think>
Alright, I'm trying to figure out how to reform #democracy so that decisions are made faster and are more competent, while also reducing incompetence and corruption. This is a big question because democracy as it stands has a lot of #issues, but it's still considered one of the better systems out there <- read this?

First off, I know that one of the main problems with democracies is that #decisionmaking can be #slow, especially in #large #countries.

There are so many #checks and #balances that sometimes it feels like nothing gets done.

So maybe making decisions faster requires #streamlining some processes.

But how? Maybe reducing #bureaucracy or changing how legislation is passed?

Another issue is #incompetence. I've seen elected officials who don't seem to have the right skills or knowledge for their roles. <- this #AI has seen things!

How can we ensure that #leaders are actually #competent?

Perhaps through better #education #requirements, or maybe having #experts in certain fields advise them more #effectively.

#Corruption is another huge #Problem seems like #money plays a big role in #politics, which can lead to decisions that favor #donors over the people.

#Campaign #finance #reform might help here, but I'm not sure how feasible that is given current laws and court rulings, especially in places like the #US with #CitizensUnited.

#Voter #engagement is also a factor.

If more people participate, maybe there's more #accountability.

But getting people to vote when they feel their votes don't matter is tough.

Maybe changing voting systems, like ranked-choice voting, could make elections feel more representative and increase turnout.

I've heard about #sortition, where #random #citizens are #selected for #decisionmaking bodies.

That might bring in diverse perspectives and reduce corruption since the average person isn't as beholden to special interests.

But would people take it seriously? I'm not sure how effective that would be compared to elected officials.

#Technology could play a role too.

Maybe using #online #platforms for #participatory #budgeting or #policy #discussions.

It could make #government more #transparent and involve citizens more #directly.

However, there's the risk of #misinformation and #manipulation online.

#Term #limits are another idea.

They might prevent politicians from becoming too entrenched and corrupt, but they can also limit institutional knowledge and lead to a #revolvingdoor of #inexperienced #leaders.

#Anticorruption agencies seem necessary, but they need to be #independent and well #funded.

If they're controlled by the government, they won't be effective.

How do you ensure their independence?

#Media #literacy is important because if people are #better #informed, they can make #better #decisions at the #ballotbox.

But with so much #misinformation out there, improving media literacy is a big challenge.

I'm also thinking about proportional representation.

Maybe switching to a system where more parties have seats could lead to more diverse and representative governments, reducing gridlock.

But it might also make forming a government harder if no single party has a majority.

What about making voting mandatory?

It increases turnout but can also lead to people voting without being informed, which doesn't necessarily improve the quality of decisions.

Another thought is focusing on #local #governance.

If more decisions are made at the local level where people can be more involved and informed, it might lead to #better #outcomes #overall.

But not all issues can be handled locally; some require national or international coordination.

I'm also considering how #education plays into this.

Better #civic #education could make voters more informed and engaged.

It starts from a young age teaching about #government #structures, #roles, and the importance of #participation.

#Transparency is key too.

If governments are more open about their processes and decisions, trust might increase. Things like #FOIA requests in the U.S. help, but they can be slow and sometimes
incomplete.

#Incentivizing #good #governance through awards or recognition might motivate leaders to perform better, but it's not a sure fix for deeper systemic issues.

Encouraging #whistleblowers is important because they can expose #corruption before it becomes entrenched.

Protecting them legally would make others more willing to come forward.

Public-private partnerships could bring in expertise from the private sector, but there's a risk of corporate influence if not managed properly.

Inclusive decision-making ensures that all groups have a voice, which leads to more equitable policies.

It requires active efforts to involve marginalized communities.

Independent judiciaries are crucial because they can check the other branches and enforce laws against corruption.

But judicial appointments can be politicized, which undermines their independence.

Finally, cultural shifts towards valuing integrity over power might help reduce corruption. But changing a culture is slow and difficult, especially in large, diverse societies.

Putting all these thoughts together, it seems like reforming democracy requires a multi-faceted approach addressing both structural issues and cultural factors. It's not just about tweaking one part but making comprehensive changes that promote competence, transparency, and accountability while ensuring representation and reducing corruption.

</think>
Reforming democracy to enhance decision-making efficiency, competence, and reduce corruption involves a multifaceted approach that addresses both structural and cultural aspects of
governance. Here is an organized strategy based on the thought process:

### Structural Reforms
1. **Streamline Decision-Making Processes:**
- Reduce bureaucratic layers and adopt more agile legislative processes to accelerate decision-making without compromising thorough consideration.

2. **Campaign Finance Reform:**
- Implement strict regulations on campaign contributions and promote public financing of elections to diminish the influence of money in politics.

3. **Proportional Representation:**
- Introduce proportional representation systems to ensure diverse representation, which can lead to more inclusive and efficient governance.

4. **Term Limits:**
- Enact term limits for elected officials to prevent entrenchment, while ensuring mechanisms for knowledge retention and smooth transitions.

5. **Independent Anti-Corruption Agencies:**
- Establish independent bodies with strong investigative and prosecutorial powers to combat corruption effectively.

### Enhancing Competence
1. **Expert Advisory Bodies:**
- Integrate expert panels in decision-making processes to provide informed guidance on complex issues.

2. **Civic Education:**
- Improve education systems to foster informed voters through civic engagement and critical thinking skills.

3. **Sortition (Citizen Juries):**
- Experiment with sortition to involve diverse citizen perspectives, enhancing
representativeness and reducing corruption risks.

### Reducing Corruption
1. **Transparency Measures:**
- Increase government transparency through open data initiatives, accessible meetings, and robust freedom of information laws.

2. **Whistleblower Protection:**
- Strengthen legal protections for whistleblowers to encourage the exposure of corruption without fear of retribution.

3. **Judicial Independence:**
- Ensure the judiciary is independent and impartial, free from political influence, to uphold rule of law and check executive power.

### Voter Engagement and Participation
1. **Voting System Reforms:**
- Adopt ranked-choice voting and proportional representation to ensure votes count more meaningfully and increase voter satisfaction.

2. **Compulsory Voting:**
- Consider mandatory voting with incentives for informed voting, potentially reducing apathy and increasing political engagement.

3. **Participatory Budgeting:**
- Involve citizens in budget decisions through digital platforms to foster transparency and accountability.

### Technological Integration
1. **Digital Platforms:**
- Utilize technology for participatory governance, enabling real-time public input on policies and fostering informed discussions.

2. **Media Literacy Programs:**
- Launch initiatives to combat misinformation, promoting a better-informed electorate capable of discerning credible sources.

### Cultural Shifts
1. **Incentivizing Good Governance:**
- Recognize and reward ethical leadership through awards or public acknowledgment to promote integrity in governance.

2. **Cultural Values:**
- Foster societal norms that prioritize transparency, accountability, and integrity, encouraging leaders to adhere to high ethical standards.

### Conclusion
Reforming democracy requires a comprehensive approach that combines structural changes with cultural shifts. By streamlining processes, enhancing
competence through education and expertise, reducing corruption through transparency and independent oversight, and engaging citizens more
effectively, democracies can become more responsive, efficient, and just. This multifaceted strategy aims to rebuild trust in governance and ensure
decisions truly reflect the will of the people.

life in a box

#Sculptural #Circular #Wood #Box #Tree #Sunset #Decorative #Limits
#Img2img #AiArt #AiArtists #AiArtCommunity #StableDiffusion

in a different kind of box: https://aieris.art/featured/life-in-a-box-eris-and-ai.html

Alright, future engineers!
A **Limit** describes the value a function approaches as its input gets closer to a specific point.
Ex: `lim (x->0) sin(x)/x = 1`.
Pro-Tip: Limits are the bedrock of derivatives & continuity! Understand them well.
#Calculus #Limits #STEM #StudyNotes

Alright, future engineers!

A **Limit** is the value a function approaches as its input gets arbitrarily close to a specific point.
Ex: `lim(x->2) (x^2 - 4)/(x - 2) = 4`.
Pro-Tip: Always simplify first if you hit 0/0!

#Calculus #Limits #STEM #StudyNotes

Cry Later: The Culture That Taught You Not to Grieve

The commands arrive early. They arrive in childhood, in the voices of parents and teachers and coaches and older relatives, and they are delivered with the same authority as instructions about traffic and hot stoves. Cry later. Hold it in. Do not show your emotions. Do not embarrass us. Be strong. Be brave. Be a man. There will be time for that later. Not here. Not now. Not in front of people.

These are grief suppressors. They are issued so routinely and across so many contexts that they have acquired the appearance of common sense. They are not common sense. They are commands to override a biological response that the body is producing for a reason. When a child is told not to cry at a funeral, the child is being told to suppress a neurochemical cascade that is already in progress. The cortisol is elevated, the amygdala has fired, and the body is doing what millions of years of evolution designed it to do when it registers the absence of an attachment figure. The command does not eliminate the response. It drives it underground, where it persists in forms the child cannot name and the adults will not recognize as grief when it resurfaces months or years later as insomnia, stomach pain, an inability to concentrate, a persistent anxiety with no identifiable source.

I have written a book about this. It is called “Go to Every Funeral: How Grief Defines the Living,” and it is published by David Boles Books Writing and Publishing, and the title comes from something I overheard in a cafe in Newark, New Jersey, about twenty-five years ago. A mother told her college-age daughter to go to every funeral, even if she did not want to, even if she did not know the dead person, because funerals are for the living and absence is remembered. I carried those six words for a quarter of a century, through the deaths of my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother, my mentor, two friends, and a cat who sat on my desk for fifteen years, and the book is the result of trying to understand why those words were true and why nobody else had ever said them to me.

The book covers a lot of ground: the neuroscience of grief, the mourning practices of elephants and crows, the history of funerals from the domestic parlor to the corporate funeral home, the economics of death as a market, the global range of mourning from the Torajan highlands to the jazz funerals of New Orleans. But the section I want to talk about here is Part Five, which is about permission. Specifically, about who gets to grieve and who gets told to stop.

The suppression commands are not distributed equally. They fall with particular weight on men, on children, on employees, and on anyone whose grief is judged to be inconvenient by the people around them. Boys are told not to cry with a frequency and an intensity that girls are not, and the instruction begins early enough that by adolescence many boys have internalized it so completely that they experience the suppression as personality rather than training. They do not cry because they are “not the kind of person who cries.” The self-description obscures the years of conditioning that produced it.

The consequences are visible in the data. Men die by suicide at rates roughly four times higher than women in the United States. They are less likely to seek mental health treatment, more likely to self-medicate with alcohol, more likely to convert emotional distress into physical aggression. These are not biological inevitabilities. They are the downstream effects of a culture that tells half its population to suppress the emotional responses the other half is permitted to express. The man who cannot cry at his father’s funeral because he was told, at age six, that men do not cry is not displaying strength. He is displaying the result of a training program that disconnected him from his own grief response, and the disconnection does not eliminate the grief. It makes the grief dangerous, because grief that cannot be expressed as grief will be expressed as something else.

The workplace runs on the same logic. The standard bereavement leave in the United States is three days for the death of an immediate family member. Three days. The body has not even begun to metabolize the cortisol surge in three days. The cognitive map has not begun to update. The neurological process of revising the brain’s internal model of the world, recognizing at the cellular level that the dead person is absent from every context in which they were expected, has barely started. And the employer expects you back at your desk, functioning, participating in meetings about quarterly targets while the fact that your mother is dead has not yet reached the parts of your brain that govern concentration.

Some companies offer five days. Some offer none. Some distinguish between the death of a spouse and the death of a parent and the death of a sibling, granting fewer days as the relationship moves outward from the nuclear center, as though the grief for a brother can be mathematically demonstrated to require less processing time than the grief for a child. The taxonomy of bereavement leave is a document written by human resources departments, and it tells the employee, in the plainest possible terms, how long their grief is permitted to inconvenience the organization.

Then there is the clinical manual. In 2022, prolonged grief disorder was added to the DSM-5-TR, giving clinicians a formal diagnostic category for grief that persists at debilitating intensity beyond twelve months. The addition was controversial among grief researchers, and the controversy is worth understanding, because it reveals how the medical establishment processes the same impulse that drives the workplace policy and the childhood command: the impulse to draw a line, to say that grief is acceptable on this side and pathological on the other, and to give the line the authority of science.

The proponents of the diagnosis argued that a subset of bereaved people, estimated at roughly ten percent, experience grief that does not follow the typical trajectory. The pain does not diminish over time. Functioning does not return. The preoccupation with the dead person remains so intense that it dominates waking life months and years after the death. These people need clinical help, and the diagnosis gives clinicians a framework for providing it, including the possibility of insurance reimbursement for treatment.

The opponents argued that pathologizing grief at twelve months imposes an arbitrary timeline on a process that has no natural expiration date. The twelve-month threshold was chosen because the clinical data showed it as a statistically significant inflection point, the point at which the probability of spontaneous recovery drops sharply. But statistical inflection points are not the same as biological boundaries. The griever at month thirteen is not clinically different from the griever at month eleven. The line exists because the diagnostic system requires lines, and the existence of the line communicates something to the broader culture: that grief beyond a year is officially a mental illness. The employer who was already impatient at three days now has clinical validation for the suspicion that the employee who is still struggling at fourteen months has something wrong with them.

The book argues that this entire apparatus, the childhood commands, the workplace policies, the diagnostic thresholds, is part of a single cultural project: the management of grief for the convenience of everyone except the griever. The child is told to stop because the adults are uncomfortable. The employee is expected back at the desk because the organization needs the labor. The patient receives a diagnosis because the clinical system requires categories. None of these interventions exists primarily to serve the person who is grieving. They exist to contain the grief, to keep it within boundaries that allow the surrounding systems to continue operating without interruption.

Meanwhile, the culture has produced a substitute for communal grief that is worse than the absence of communal grief. Social media has made performative mourning the default public response to death. When a public figure dies, the speed with which users post their condolences has become a measure of social attentiveness. The posts follow a formula: a photograph of the deceased, a statement of shock, a brief personal connection however thin, and a closing declaration of love and loss. The formula is so consistent it has been parodied, and the parodies have not slowed it down, because the function of the post is to perform belonging, to demonstrate that you are the kind of person who feels things, who notices when important people die, who participates in the rituals of the digital public square.

Some of the grief is sincere. The rest is performance, and the performance crowds out the reality. When the feeds are flooded with grief posts after a celebrity death, the person who is actually devastated, the person who had a real connection to the deceased and is not performing but drowning, finds their grief indistinguishable from the display. Their signal disappears into the noise. The communal mourning that is supposed to support the bereaved instead competes with them, reducing a specific and irreplaceable loss to one post among thousands, all using the same photographs, the same phrases, the same hashtags.

This is the inversion of what the mother in the Newark cafe was describing. She said you go to the funeral. You show up. You put your name in the book. You sit in the pew. You bring food to the house afterward. The obligation is physical: you move your body to the place where the grief is, and your presence there is the message. Social media offers the simulation of this presence without the physical fact of it. You post. You perform the gesture. You do not move your body anywhere. You do not sit in an uncomfortable chair in a room that smells like flowers and floor polish. You do not look at the face of the bereaved and allow them to see that you came. You post, and the post is seen or not seen, liked or not liked, and it scrolls away, and the next post is about something else, and the grief has been acknowledged in the same medium and at the same depth as a restaurant recommendation.

Kenneth Doka coined the term “disenfranchised grief” to describe losses the culture refuses to recognize. The death of an ex-spouse. The death of a pet. The death of a patient if you are a nurse. The death of a public figure you never met but whose work was woven into the structure of your daily life. These are real losses producing real grief, and the culture’s refusal to recognize them does not dissolve the grief. It isolates the griever, who cannot bring their loss into the social spaces where grief is processed because the spaces will not admit it. The colleague who lost a dog cannot mention it at work. The fan grieving a musician cannot break down at dinner. A nurse whose patient died that morning cannot ask for a day off. The grief has no approved venue, no sanctioned expression, no communal witness. It persists alone.

What the book asks, across all six of its parts and all seventeen of its chapters, is what happens when you add all of this up. The suppression that begins in childhood and hardens along gendered lines. The workplace that contains it in three days. The diagnostic manual that pathologizes it at twelve months. The industry that monetizes it. The digital platform that simulates it. The disenfranchisement of entire categories of loss. What you get is a culture in which millions of people grieve alone, in private, without the communal infrastructure that every human society in history built to distribute the weight of death across many shoulders. The weight did not get lighter because the infrastructure was removed. The shoulders carrying it just got fewer.

The mother in the cafe knew this. She did not use these words. She did not cite the neuroscience or the sociology or the economics. She tapped the table and told her daughter to go to every funeral, and the instruction contained everything: that grief is communal, that the community is constituted by the people who show up, that presence is the oldest technology of mourning and still the most effective, and that the dead have no needs left, and the living have every need there is.

Go to every funeral. The book is available at BolesBooks.com as a free download, and on Amazon in Kindle ($9.99) and paperback ($15.99) editions.

Cry Later: The Culture That Taught You Not to Grieve

The commands arrive early. They arrive in childhood, in the voices of parents and teachers and coaches and older relatives, and they are delivered with the same authority as instructions about traffic and hot stoves. Cry later. Hold it in. Do not show your emotions. Do not embarrass us. Be strong. Be brave. Be a man. There will be time for that later. Not here. Not now. Not in front of people.

Content Note: This book contains accounts of suicide, suicidal crisis, and the deaths of family members, friends, and companion animals. Part Five includes detailed accounts of suicidal ideation and completed suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by phone or text at 988. The Crisis Text Line is available by texting HOME to 741741.

These are grief suppressors. They are issued so routinely and across so many contexts that they have acquired the appearance of common sense. They are not common sense. They are commands to override a biological response that the body is producing for a reason. When a child is told not to cry at a funeral, the child is being told to suppress a neurochemical cascade that is already in progress. The cortisol is elevated, the amygdala has fired, and the body is doing what millions of years of evolution designed it to do when it registers the absence of an attachment figure. The command does not eliminate the response. It drives it underground, where it persists in forms the child cannot name and the adults will not recognize as grief when it resurfaces months or years later as insomnia, stomach pain, an inability to concentrate, a persistent anxiety with no identifiable source.

I have written a book about this. It is called “Go to Every Funeral: How Grief Defines the Living,” and it is published by David Boles Books Writing and Publishing, and the title comes from something I overheard in a cafe in Newark, New Jersey, about twenty-five years ago. A mother told her college-age daughter to go to every funeral, even if she did not want to, even if she did not know the dead person, because funerals are for the living and absence is remembered. I carried those six words for a quarter of a century, through the deaths of my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother, my mentor, two friends, and a cat who sat on my desk for fifteen years, and the book is the result of trying to understand why those words were true and why nobody else had ever said them to me.

The book covers a lot of ground: the neuroscience of grief, the mourning practices of elephants and crows, the history of funerals from the domestic parlor to the corporate funeral home, the economics of death as a market, the global range of mourning from the Torajan highlands to the jazz funerals of New Orleans. But the section I want to talk about here is Part Five, which is about permission. Specifically, about who gets to grieve and who gets told to stop.

The suppression commands are not distributed equally. They fall with particular weight on men, on children, on employees, and on anyone whose grief is judged to be inconvenient by the people around them. Boys are told not to cry with a frequency and an intensity that girls are not, and the instruction begins early enough that by adolescence many boys have internalized it so completely that they experience the suppression as personality rather than training. They do not cry because they are “not the kind of person who cries.” The self-description obscures the years of conditioning that produced it.

The consequences are visible in the data. Men die by suicide at rates roughly four times higher than women in the United States. They are less likely to seek mental health treatment, more likely to self-medicate with alcohol, more likely to convert emotional distress into physical aggression. These are not biological inevitabilities. They are the downstream effects of a culture that tells half its population to suppress the emotional responses the other half is permitted to express. The man who cannot cry at his father’s funeral because he was told, at age six, that men do not cry is not displaying strength. He is displaying the result of a training program that disconnected him from his own grief response, and the disconnection does not eliminate the grief. It makes the grief dangerous, because grief that cannot be expressed as grief will be expressed as something else.

The workplace runs on the same logic. The standard bereavement leave in the United States is three days for the death of an immediate family member. Three days. The body has not even begun to metabolize the cortisol surge in three days. The cognitive map has not begun to update. The neurological process of revising the brain’s internal model of the world, recognizing at the cellular level that the dead person is absent from every context in which they were expected, has barely started. And the employer expects you back at your desk, functioning, participating in meetings about quarterly targets while the fact that your mother is dead has not yet reached the parts of your brain that govern concentration.

Some companies offer five days. Some offer none. Some distinguish between the death of a spouse and the death of a parent and the death of a sibling, granting fewer days as the relationship moves outward from the nuclear center, as though the grief for a brother can be mathematically demonstrated to require less processing time than the grief for a child. The taxonomy of bereavement leave is a document written by human resources departments, and it tells the employee, in the plainest possible terms, how long their grief is permitted to inconvenience the organization.

Then there is the clinical manual. In 2022, prolonged grief disorder was added to the DSM-5-TR, giving clinicians a formal diagnostic category for grief that persists at debilitating intensity beyond twelve months. The addition was controversial among grief researchers, and the controversy is worth understanding, because it reveals how the medical establishment processes the same impulse that drives the workplace policy and the childhood command: the impulse to draw a line, to say that grief is acceptable on this side and pathological on the other, and to give the line the authority of science.

The proponents of the diagnosis argued that a subset of bereaved people, estimated at roughly ten percent, experience grief that does not follow the typical trajectory. The pain does not diminish over time. Functioning does not return. The preoccupation with the dead person remains so intense that it dominates waking life months and years after the death. These people need clinical help, and the diagnosis gives clinicians a framework for providing it, including the possibility of insurance reimbursement for treatment.

The opponents argued that pathologizing grief at twelve months imposes an arbitrary timeline on a process that has no natural expiration date. The twelve-month threshold was chosen because the clinical data showed it as a statistically significant inflection point, the point at which the probability of spontaneous recovery drops sharply. But statistical inflection points are not the same as biological boundaries. The griever at month thirteen is not clinically different from the griever at month eleven. The line exists because the diagnostic system requires lines, and the existence of the line communicates something to the broader culture: that grief beyond a year is officially a mental illness. The employer who was already impatient at three days now has clinical validation for the suspicion that the employee who is still struggling at fourteen months has something wrong with them.

The book argues that this entire apparatus, the childhood commands, the workplace policies, the diagnostic thresholds, is part of a single cultural project: the management of grief for the convenience of everyone except the griever. The child is told to stop because the adults are uncomfortable. The employee is expected back at the desk because the organization needs the labor. The patient receives a diagnosis because the clinical system requires categories. None of these interventions exists primarily to serve the person who is grieving. They exist to contain the grief, to keep it within boundaries that allow the surrounding systems to continue operating without interruption.

Meanwhile, the culture has produced a substitute for communal grief that is worse than the absence of communal grief. Social media has made performative mourning the default public response to death. When a public figure dies, the speed with which users post their condolences has become a measure of social attentiveness. The posts follow a formula: a photograph of the deceased, a statement of shock, a brief personal connection however thin, and a closing declaration of love and loss. The formula is so consistent it has been parodied, and the parodies have not slowed it down, because the function of the post is to perform belonging, to demonstrate that you are the kind of person who feels things, who notices when important people die, who participates in the rituals of the digital public square.

Some of the grief is sincere. The rest is performance, and the performance crowds out the reality. When the feeds are flooded with grief posts after a celebrity death, the person who is actually devastated, the person who had a real connection to the deceased and is not performing but drowning, finds their grief indistinguishable from the display. Their signal disappears into the noise. The communal mourning that is supposed to support the bereaved instead competes with them, reducing a specific and irreplaceable loss to one post among thousands, all using the same photographs, the same phrases, the same hashtags.

This is the inversion of what the mother in the Newark cafe was describing. She said you go to the funeral. You show up. You put your name in the book. You sit in the pew. You bring food to the house afterward. The obligation is physical: you move your body to the place where the grief is, and your presence there is the message. Social media offers the simulation of this presence without the physical fact of it. You post. You perform the gesture. You do not move your body anywhere. You do not sit in an uncomfortable chair in a room that smells like flowers and floor polish. You do not look at the face of the bereaved and allow them to see that you came. You post, and the post is seen or not seen, liked or not liked, and it scrolls away, and the next post is about something else, and the grief has been acknowledged in the same medium and at the same depth as a restaurant recommendation.

Kenneth Doka coined the term “disenfranchised grief” to describe losses the culture refuses to recognize. The death of an ex-spouse. The death of a pet. The death of a patient if you are a nurse. The death of a public figure you never met but whose work was woven into the structure of your daily life. These are real losses producing real grief, and the culture’s refusal to recognize them does not dissolve the grief. It isolates the griever, who cannot bring their loss into the social spaces where grief is processed because the spaces will not admit it. The colleague who lost a dog cannot mention it at work. The fan grieving a musician cannot break down at dinner. A nurse whose patient died that morning cannot ask for a day off. The grief has no approved venue, no sanctioned expression, no communal witness. It persists alone.

What the book asks, across all six of its parts and all seventeen of its chapters, is what happens when you add all of this up. The suppression that begins in childhood and hardens along gendered lines. The workplace that contains it in three days. The diagnostic manual that pathologizes it at twelve months. The industry that monetizes it. The digital platform that simulates it. The disenfranchisement of entire categories of loss. What you get is a culture in which millions of people grieve alone, in private, without the communal infrastructure that every human society in history built to distribute the weight of death across many shoulders. The weight did not get lighter because the infrastructure was removed. The shoulders carrying it just got fewer.

The mother in the cafe knew this. She did not use these words. She did not cite the neuroscience or the sociology or the economics. She tapped the table and told her daughter to go to every funeral, and the instruction contained everything: that grief is communal, that the community is constituted by the people who show up, that presence is the oldest technology of mourning and still the most effective, and that the dead have no needs left, and the living have every need there is.

Go to every funeral. The book is available at BolesBooks.com as a free download, and on Amazon in Kindle ($9.99) and paperback ($15.99) editions.

Cry Later: The Culture That Taught You Not to Grieve

The commands arrive early. They arrive in childhood, in the voices of parents and teachers and coaches and older relatives, and they are delivered with the same authority as instructions about traffic and hot stoves. Cry later. Hold it in. Do not show your emotions. Do not embarrass us. Be strong. Be brave. Be a man. There will be time for that later. Not here. Not now. Not in front of people.

These are grief suppressors. They are issued so routinely and across so many contexts that they have acquired the appearance of common sense. They are not common sense. They are commands to override a biological response that the body is producing for a reason. When a child is told not to cry at a funeral, the child is being told to suppress a neurochemical cascade that is already in progress. The cortisol is elevated, the amygdala has fired, and the body is doing what millions of years of evolution designed it to do when it registers the absence of an attachment figure. The command does not eliminate the response. It drives it underground, where it persists in forms the child cannot name and the adults will not recognize as grief when it resurfaces months or years later as insomnia, stomach pain, an inability to concentrate, a persistent anxiety with no identifiable source.

I have written a book about this. It is called “Go to Every Funeral: How Grief Defines the Living,” and it is published by David Boles Books Writing and Publishing, and the title comes from something I overheard in a cafe in Newark, New Jersey, about twenty-five years ago. A mother told her college-age daughter to go to every funeral, even if she did not want to, even if she did not know the dead person, because funerals are for the living and absence is remembered. I carried those six words for a quarter of a century, through the deaths of my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother, my mentor, two friends, and a cat who sat on my desk for fifteen years, and the book is the result of trying to understand why those words were true and why nobody else had ever said them to me.

The book covers a lot of ground: the neuroscience of grief, the mourning practices of elephants and crows, the history of funerals from the domestic parlor to the corporate funeral home, the economics of death as a market, the global range of mourning from the Torajan highlands to the jazz funerals of New Orleans. But the section I want to talk about here is Part Five, which is about permission. Specifically, about who gets to grieve and who gets told to stop.

The suppression commands are not distributed equally. They fall with particular weight on men, on children, on employees, and on anyone whose grief is judged to be inconvenient by the people around them. Boys are told not to cry with a frequency and an intensity that girls are not, and the instruction begins early enough that by adolescence many boys have internalized it so completely that they experience the suppression as personality rather than training. They do not cry because they are “not the kind of person who cries.” The self-description obscures the years of conditioning that produced it.

The consequences are visible in the data. Men die by suicide at rates roughly four times higher than women in the United States. They are less likely to seek mental health treatment, more likely to self-medicate with alcohol, more likely to convert emotional distress into physical aggression. These are not biological inevitabilities. They are the downstream effects of a culture that tells half its population to suppress the emotional responses the other half is permitted to express. The man who cannot cry at his father’s funeral because he was told, at age six, that men do not cry is not displaying strength. He is displaying the result of a training program that disconnected him from his own grief response, and the disconnection does not eliminate the grief. It makes the grief dangerous, because grief that cannot be expressed as grief will be expressed as something else.

The workplace runs on the same logic. The standard bereavement leave in the United States is three days for the death of an immediate family member. Three days. The body has not even begun to metabolize the cortisol surge in three days. The cognitive map has not begun to update. The neurological process of revising the brain’s internal model of the world, recognizing at the cellular level that the dead person is absent from every context in which they were expected, has barely started. And the employer expects you back at your desk, functioning, participating in meetings about quarterly targets while the fact that your mother is dead has not yet reached the parts of your brain that govern concentration.

Some companies offer five days. Some offer none. Some distinguish between the death of a spouse and the death of a parent and the death of a sibling, granting fewer days as the relationship moves outward from the nuclear center, as though the grief for a brother can be mathematically demonstrated to require less processing time than the grief for a child. The taxonomy of bereavement leave is a document written by human resources departments, and it tells the employee, in the plainest possible terms, how long their grief is permitted to inconvenience the organization.

Then there is the clinical manual. In 2022, prolonged grief disorder was added to the DSM-5-TR, giving clinicians a formal diagnostic category for grief that persists at debilitating intensity beyond twelve months. The addition was controversial among grief researchers, and the controversy is worth understanding, because it reveals how the medical establishment processes the same impulse that drives the workplace policy and the childhood command: the impulse to draw a line, to say that grief is acceptable on this side and pathological on the other, and to give the line the authority of science.

The proponents of the diagnosis argued that a subset of bereaved people, estimated at roughly ten percent, experience grief that does not follow the typical trajectory. The pain does not diminish over time. Functioning does not return. The preoccupation with the dead person remains so intense that it dominates waking life months and years after the death. These people need clinical help, and the diagnosis gives clinicians a framework for providing it, including the possibility of insurance reimbursement for treatment.

The opponents argued that pathologizing grief at twelve months imposes an arbitrary timeline on a process that has no natural expiration date. The twelve-month threshold was chosen because the clinical data showed it as a statistically significant inflection point, the point at which the probability of spontaneous recovery drops sharply. But statistical inflection points are not the same as biological boundaries. The griever at month thirteen is not clinically different from the griever at month eleven. The line exists because the diagnostic system requires lines, and the existence of the line communicates something to the broader culture: that grief beyond a year is officially a mental illness. The employer who was already impatient at three days now has clinical validation for the suspicion that the employee who is still struggling at fourteen months has something wrong with them.

The book argues that this entire apparatus, the childhood commands, the workplace policies, the diagnostic thresholds, is part of a single cultural project: the management of grief for the convenience of everyone except the griever. The child is told to stop because the adults are uncomfortable. The employee is expected back at the desk because the organization needs the labor. The patient receives a diagnosis because the clinical system requires categories. None of these interventions exists primarily to serve the person who is grieving. They exist to contain the grief, to keep it within boundaries that allow the surrounding systems to continue operating without interruption.

Meanwhile, the culture has produced a substitute for communal grief that is worse than the absence of communal grief. Social media has made performative mourning the default public response to death. When a public figure dies, the speed with which users post their condolences has become a measure of social attentiveness. The posts follow a formula: a photograph of the deceased, a statement of shock, a brief personal connection however thin, and a closing declaration of love and loss. The formula is so consistent it has been parodied, and the parodies have not slowed it down, because the function of the post is to perform belonging, to demonstrate that you are the kind of person who feels things, who notices when important people die, who participates in the rituals of the digital public square.

Some of the grief is sincere. The rest is performance, and the performance crowds out the reality. When the feeds are flooded with grief posts after a celebrity death, the person who is actually devastated, the person who had a real connection to the deceased and is not performing but drowning, finds their grief indistinguishable from the display. Their signal disappears into the noise. The communal mourning that is supposed to support the bereaved instead competes with them, reducing a specific and irreplaceable loss to one post among thousands, all using the same photographs, the same phrases, the same hashtags.

This is the inversion of what the mother in the Newark cafe was describing. She said you go to the funeral. You show up. You put your name in the book. You sit in the pew. You bring food to the house afterward. The obligation is physical: you move your body to the place where the grief is, and your presence there is the message. Social media offers the simulation of this presence without the physical fact of it. You post. You perform the gesture. You do not move your body anywhere. You do not sit in an uncomfortable chair in a room that smells like flowers and floor polish. You do not look at the face of the bereaved and allow them to see that you came. You post, and the post is seen or not seen, liked or not liked, and it scrolls away, and the next post is about something else, and the grief has been acknowledged in the same medium and at the same depth as a restaurant recommendation.

Kenneth Doka coined the term “disenfranchised grief” to describe losses the culture refuses to recognize. The death of an ex-spouse. The death of a pet. The death of a patient if you are a nurse. The death of a public figure you never met but whose work was woven into the structure of your daily life. These are real losses producing real grief, and the culture’s refusal to recognize them does not dissolve the grief. It isolates the griever, who cannot bring their loss into the social spaces where grief is processed because the spaces will not admit it. The colleague who lost a dog cannot mention it at work. The fan grieving a musician cannot break down at dinner. A nurse whose patient died that morning cannot ask for a day off. The grief has no approved venue, no sanctioned expression, no communal witness. It persists alone.

What the book asks, across all six of its parts and all seventeen of its chapters, is what happens when you add all of this up. The suppression that begins in childhood and hardens along gendered lines. The workplace that contains it in three days. The diagnostic manual that pathologizes it at twelve months. The industry that monetizes it. The digital platform that simulates it. The disenfranchisement of entire categories of loss. What you get is a culture in which millions of people grieve alone, in private, without the communal infrastructure that every human society in history built to distribute the weight of death across many shoulders. The weight did not get lighter because the infrastructure was removed. The shoulders carrying it just got fewer.

The mother in the cafe knew this. She did not use these words. She did not cite the neuroscience or the sociology or the economics. She tapped the table and told her daughter to go to every funeral, and the instruction contained everything: that grief is communal, that the community is constituted by the people who show up, that presence is the oldest technology of mourning and still the most effective, and that the dead have no needs left, and the living have every need there is.

Go to every funeral. The book is available at BolesBooks.com as a free download, and on Amazon in Kindle ($9.99) and paperback ($15.99) editions.

Cry Later: The Culture That Taught You Not to Grieve

The commands arrive early. They arrive in childhood, in the voices of parents and teachers and coaches and older relatives, and they are delivered with the same authority as instructions about traffic and hot stoves. Cry later. Hold it in. Do not show your emotions. Do not embarrass us. Be strong. Be brave. Be a man. There will be time for that later. Not here. Not now. Not in front of people.

These are grief suppressors. They are issued so routinely and across so many contexts that they have acquired the appearance of common sense. They are not common sense. They are commands to override a biological response that the body is producing for a reason. When a child is told not to cry at a funeral, the child is being told to suppress a neurochemical cascade that is already in progress. The cortisol is elevated, the amygdala has fired, and the body is doing what millions of years of evolution designed it to do when it registers the absence of an attachment figure. The command does not eliminate the response. It drives it underground, where it persists in forms the child cannot name and the adults will not recognize as grief when it resurfaces months or years later as insomnia, stomach pain, an inability to concentrate, a persistent anxiety with no identifiable source.

I have written a book about this. It is called “Go to Every Funeral: How Grief Defines the Living,” and it is published by David Boles Books Writing and Publishing, and the title comes from something I overheard in a cafe in Newark, New Jersey, about twenty-five years ago. A mother told her college-age daughter to go to every funeral, even if she did not want to, even if she did not know the dead person, because funerals are for the living and absence is remembered. I carried those six words for a quarter of a century, through the deaths of my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother, my mentor, two friends, and a cat who sat on my desk for fifteen years, and the book is the result of trying to understand why those words were true and why nobody else had ever said them to me.

The book covers a lot of ground: the neuroscience of grief, the mourning practices of elephants and crows, the history of funerals from the domestic parlor to the corporate funeral home, the economics of death as a market, the global range of mourning from the Torajan highlands to the jazz funerals of New Orleans. But the section I want to talk about here is Part Five, which is about permission. Specifically, about who gets to grieve and who gets told to stop.

The suppression commands are not distributed equally. They fall with particular weight on men, on children, on employees, and on anyone whose grief is judged to be inconvenient by the people around them. Boys are told not to cry with a frequency and an intensity that girls are not, and the instruction begins early enough that by adolescence many boys have internalized it so completely that they experience the suppression as personality rather than training. They do not cry because they are “not the kind of person who cries.” The self-description obscures the years of conditioning that produced it.

The consequences are visible in the data. Men die by suicide at rates roughly four times higher than women in the United States. They are less likely to seek mental health treatment, more likely to self-medicate with alcohol, more likely to convert emotional distress into physical aggression. These are not biological inevitabilities. They are the downstream effects of a culture that tells half its population to suppress the emotional responses the other half is permitted to express. The man who cannot cry at his father’s funeral because he was told, at age six, that men do not cry is not displaying strength. He is displaying the result of a training program that disconnected him from his own grief response, and the disconnection does not eliminate the grief. It makes the grief dangerous, because grief that cannot be expressed as grief will be expressed as something else.

The workplace runs on the same logic. The standard bereavement leave in the United States is three days for the death of an immediate family member. Three days. The body has not even begun to metabolize the cortisol surge in three days. The cognitive map has not begun to update. The neurological process of revising the brain’s internal model of the world, recognizing at the cellular level that the dead person is absent from every context in which they were expected, has barely started. And the employer expects you back at your desk, functioning, participating in meetings about quarterly targets while the fact that your mother is dead has not yet reached the parts of your brain that govern concentration.

Some companies offer five days. Some offer none. Some distinguish between the death of a spouse and the death of a parent and the death of a sibling, granting fewer days as the relationship moves outward from the nuclear center, as though the grief for a brother can be mathematically demonstrated to require less processing time than the grief for a child. The taxonomy of bereavement leave is a document written by human resources departments, and it tells the employee, in the plainest possible terms, how long their grief is permitted to inconvenience the organization.

Then there is the clinical manual. In 2022, prolonged grief disorder was added to the DSM-5-TR, giving clinicians a formal diagnostic category for grief that persists at debilitating intensity beyond twelve months. The addition was controversial among grief researchers, and the controversy is worth understanding, because it reveals how the medical establishment processes the same impulse that drives the workplace policy and the childhood command: the impulse to draw a line, to say that grief is acceptable on this side and pathological on the other, and to give the line the authority of science.

The proponents of the diagnosis argued that a subset of bereaved people, estimated at roughly ten percent, experience grief that does not follow the typical trajectory. The pain does not diminish over time. Functioning does not return. The preoccupation with the dead person remains so intense that it dominates waking life months and years after the death. These people need clinical help, and the diagnosis gives clinicians a framework for providing it, including the possibility of insurance reimbursement for treatment.

The opponents argued that pathologizing grief at twelve months imposes an arbitrary timeline on a process that has no natural expiration date. The twelve-month threshold was chosen because the clinical data showed it as a statistically significant inflection point, the point at which the probability of spontaneous recovery drops sharply. But statistical inflection points are not the same as biological boundaries. The griever at month thirteen is not clinically different from the griever at month eleven. The line exists because the diagnostic system requires lines, and the existence of the line communicates something to the broader culture: that grief beyond a year is officially a mental illness. The employer who was already impatient at three days now has clinical validation for the suspicion that the employee who is still struggling at fourteen months has something wrong with them.

The book argues that this entire apparatus, the childhood commands, the workplace policies, the diagnostic thresholds, is part of a single cultural project: the management of grief for the convenience of everyone except the griever. The child is told to stop because the adults are uncomfortable. The employee is expected back at the desk because the organization needs the labor. The patient receives a diagnosis because the clinical system requires categories. None of these interventions exists primarily to serve the person who is grieving. They exist to contain the grief, to keep it within boundaries that allow the surrounding systems to continue operating without interruption.

Meanwhile, the culture has produced a substitute for communal grief that is worse than the absence of communal grief. Social media has made performative mourning the default public response to death. When a public figure dies, the speed with which users post their condolences has become a measure of social attentiveness. The posts follow a formula: a photograph of the deceased, a statement of shock, a brief personal connection however thin, and a closing declaration of love and loss. The formula is so consistent it has been parodied, and the parodies have not slowed it down, because the function of the post is to perform belonging, to demonstrate that you are the kind of person who feels things, who notices when important people die, who participates in the rituals of the digital public square.

Some of the grief is sincere. The rest is performance, and the performance crowds out the reality. When the feeds are flooded with grief posts after a celebrity death, the person who is actually devastated, the person who had a real connection to the deceased and is not performing but drowning, finds their grief indistinguishable from the display. Their signal disappears into the noise. The communal mourning that is supposed to support the bereaved instead competes with them, reducing a specific and irreplaceable loss to one post among thousands, all using the same photographs, the same phrases, the same hashtags.

This is the inversion of what the mother in the Newark cafe was describing. She said you go to the funeral. You show up. You put your name in the book. You sit in the pew. You bring food to the house afterward. The obligation is physical: you move your body to the place where the grief is, and your presence there is the message. Social media offers the simulation of this presence without the physical fact of it. You post. You perform the gesture. You do not move your body anywhere. You do not sit in an uncomfortable chair in a room that smells like flowers and floor polish. You do not look at the face of the bereaved and allow them to see that you came. You post, and the post is seen or not seen, liked or not liked, and it scrolls away, and the next post is about something else, and the grief has been acknowledged in the same medium and at the same depth as a restaurant recommendation.

Kenneth Doka coined the term “disenfranchised grief” to describe losses the culture refuses to recognize. The death of an ex-spouse. The death of a pet. The death of a patient if you are a nurse. The death of a public figure you never met but whose work was woven into the structure of your daily life. These are real losses producing real grief, and the culture’s refusal to recognize them does not dissolve the grief. It isolates the griever, who cannot bring their loss into the social spaces where grief is processed because the spaces will not admit it. The colleague who lost a dog cannot mention it at work. The fan grieving a musician cannot break down at dinner. A nurse whose patient died that morning cannot ask for a day off. The grief has no approved venue, no sanctioned expression, no communal witness. It persists alone.

What the book asks, across all six of its parts and all seventeen of its chapters, is what happens when you add all of this up. The suppression that begins in childhood and hardens along gendered lines. The workplace that contains it in three days. The diagnostic manual that pathologizes it at twelve months. The industry that monetizes it. The digital platform that simulates it. The disenfranchisement of entire categories of loss. What you get is a culture in which millions of people grieve alone, in private, without the communal infrastructure that every human society in history built to distribute the weight of death across many shoulders. The weight did not get lighter because the infrastructure was removed. The shoulders carrying it just got fewer.

The mother in the cafe knew this. She did not use these words. She did not cite the neuroscience or the sociology or the economics. She tapped the table and told her daughter to go to every funeral, and the instruction contained everything: that grief is communal, that the community is constituted by the people who show up, that presence is the oldest technology of mourning and still the most effective, and that the dead have no needs left, and the living have every need there is.

Go to every funeral. The book is available at BolesBooks.com as a free download, and on Amazon in Kindle ($9.99) and paperback ($15.99) editions.

Cry Later: The Culture That Taught You Not to Grieve

The commands arrive early. They arrive in childhood, in the voices of parents and teachers and coaches and older relatives, and they are delivered with the same authority as instructions about traffic and hot stoves. Cry later. Hold it in. Do not show your emotions. Do not embarrass us. Be strong. Be brave. Be a man. There will be time for that later. Not here. Not now. Not in front of people.

These are grief suppressors. They are issued so routinely and across so many contexts that they have acquired the appearance of common sense. They are not common sense. They are commands to override a biological response that the body is producing for a reason. When a child is told not to cry at a funeral, the child is being told to suppress a neurochemical cascade that is already in progress. The cortisol is elevated, the amygdala has fired, and the body is doing what millions of years of evolution designed it to do when it registers the absence of an attachment figure. The command does not eliminate the response. It drives it underground, where it persists in forms the child cannot name and the adults will not recognize as grief when it resurfaces months or years later as insomnia, stomach pain, an inability to concentrate, a persistent anxiety with no identifiable source.

I have written a book about this. It is called “Go to Every Funeral: How Grief Defines the Living,” and it is published by David Boles Books Writing and Publishing, and the title comes from something I overheard in a cafe in Newark, New Jersey, about twenty-five years ago. A mother told her college-age daughter to go to every funeral, even if she did not want to, even if she did not know the dead person, because funerals are for the living and absence is remembered. I carried those six words for a quarter of a century, through the deaths of my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother, my mentor, two friends, and a cat who sat on my desk for fifteen years, and the book is the result of trying to understand why those words were true and why nobody else had ever said them to me.

The book covers a lot of ground: the neuroscience of grief, the mourning practices of elephants and crows, the history of funerals from the domestic parlor to the corporate funeral home, the economics of death as a market, the global range of mourning from the Torajan highlands to the jazz funerals of New Orleans. But the section I want to talk about here is Part Five, which is about permission. Specifically, about who gets to grieve and who gets told to stop.

The suppression commands are not distributed equally. They fall with particular weight on men, on children, on employees, and on anyone whose grief is judged to be inconvenient by the people around them. Boys are told not to cry with a frequency and an intensity that girls are not, and the instruction begins early enough that by adolescence many boys have internalized it so completely that they experience the suppression as personality rather than training. They do not cry because they are “not the kind of person who cries.” The self-description obscures the years of conditioning that produced it.

The consequences are visible in the data. Men die by suicide at rates roughly four times higher than women in the United States. They are less likely to seek mental health treatment, more likely to self-medicate with alcohol, more likely to convert emotional distress into physical aggression. These are not biological inevitabilities. They are the downstream effects of a culture that tells half its population to suppress the emotional responses the other half is permitted to express. The man who cannot cry at his father’s funeral because he was told, at age six, that men do not cry is not displaying strength. He is displaying the result of a training program that disconnected him from his own grief response, and the disconnection does not eliminate the grief. It makes the grief dangerous, because grief that cannot be expressed as grief will be expressed as something else.

The workplace runs on the same logic. The standard bereavement leave in the United States is three days for the death of an immediate family member. Three days. The body has not even begun to metabolize the cortisol surge in three days. The cognitive map has not begun to update. The neurological process of revising the brain’s internal model of the world, recognizing at the cellular level that the dead person is absent from every context in which they were expected, has barely started. And the employer expects you back at your desk, functioning, participating in meetings about quarterly targets while the fact that your mother is dead has not yet reached the parts of your brain that govern concentration.

Some companies offer five days. Some offer none. Some distinguish between the death of a spouse and the death of a parent and the death of a sibling, granting fewer days as the relationship moves outward from the nuclear center, as though the grief for a brother can be mathematically demonstrated to require less processing time than the grief for a child. The taxonomy of bereavement leave is a document written by human resources departments, and it tells the employee, in the plainest possible terms, how long their grief is permitted to inconvenience the organization.

Then there is the clinical manual. In 2022, prolonged grief disorder was added to the DSM-5-TR, giving clinicians a formal diagnostic category for grief that persists at debilitating intensity beyond twelve months. The addition was controversial among grief researchers, and the controversy is worth understanding, because it reveals how the medical establishment processes the same impulse that drives the workplace policy and the childhood command: the impulse to draw a line, to say that grief is acceptable on this side and pathological on the other, and to give the line the authority of science.

The proponents of the diagnosis argued that a subset of bereaved people, estimated at roughly ten percent, experience grief that does not follow the typical trajectory. The pain does not diminish over time. Functioning does not return. The preoccupation with the dead person remains so intense that it dominates waking life months and years after the death. These people need clinical help, and the diagnosis gives clinicians a framework for providing it, including the possibility of insurance reimbursement for treatment.

The opponents argued that pathologizing grief at twelve months imposes an arbitrary timeline on a process that has no natural expiration date. The twelve-month threshold was chosen because the clinical data showed it as a statistically significant inflection point, the point at which the probability of spontaneous recovery drops sharply. But statistical inflection points are not the same as biological boundaries. The griever at month thirteen is not clinically different from the griever at month eleven. The line exists because the diagnostic system requires lines, and the existence of the line communicates something to the broader culture: that grief beyond a year is officially a mental illness. The employer who was already impatient at three days now has clinical validation for the suspicion that the employee who is still struggling at fourteen months has something wrong with them.

The book argues that this entire apparatus, the childhood commands, the workplace policies, the diagnostic thresholds, is part of a single cultural project: the management of grief for the convenience of everyone except the griever. The child is told to stop because the adults are uncomfortable. The employee is expected back at the desk because the organization needs the labor. The patient receives a diagnosis because the clinical system requires categories. None of these interventions exists primarily to serve the person who is grieving. They exist to contain the grief, to keep it within boundaries that allow the surrounding systems to continue operating without interruption.

Meanwhile, the culture has produced a substitute for communal grief that is worse than the absence of communal grief. Social media has made performative mourning the default public response to death. When a public figure dies, the speed with which users post their condolences has become a measure of social attentiveness. The posts follow a formula: a photograph of the deceased, a statement of shock, a brief personal connection however thin, and a closing declaration of love and loss. The formula is so consistent it has been parodied, and the parodies have not slowed it down, because the function of the post is to perform belonging, to demonstrate that you are the kind of person who feels things, who notices when important people die, who participates in the rituals of the digital public square.

Some of the grief is sincere. The rest is performance, and the performance crowds out the reality. When the feeds are flooded with grief posts after a celebrity death, the person who is actually devastated, the person who had a real connection to the deceased and is not performing but drowning, finds their grief indistinguishable from the display. Their signal disappears into the noise. The communal mourning that is supposed to support the bereaved instead competes with them, reducing a specific and irreplaceable loss to one post among thousands, all using the same photographs, the same phrases, the same hashtags.

This is the inversion of what the mother in the Newark cafe was describing. She said you go to the funeral. You show up. You put your name in the book. You sit in the pew. You bring food to the house afterward. The obligation is physical: you move your body to the place where the grief is, and your presence there is the message. Social media offers the simulation of this presence without the physical fact of it. You post. You perform the gesture. You do not move your body anywhere. You do not sit in an uncomfortable chair in a room that smells like flowers and floor polish. You do not look at the face of the bereaved and allow them to see that you came. You post, and the post is seen or not seen, liked or not liked, and it scrolls away, and the next post is about something else, and the grief has been acknowledged in the same medium and at the same depth as a restaurant recommendation.

Kenneth Doka coined the term “disenfranchised grief” to describe losses the culture refuses to recognize. The death of an ex-spouse. The death of a pet. The death of a patient if you are a nurse. The death of a public figure you never met but whose work was woven into the structure of your daily life. These are real losses producing real grief, and the culture’s refusal to recognize them does not dissolve the grief. It isolates the griever, who cannot bring their loss into the social spaces where grief is processed because the spaces will not admit it. The colleague who lost a dog cannot mention it at work. The fan grieving a musician cannot break down at dinner. A nurse whose patient died that morning cannot ask for a day off. The grief has no approved venue, no sanctioned expression, no communal witness. It persists alone.

What the book asks, across all six of its parts and all seventeen of its chapters, is what happens when you add all of this up. The suppression that begins in childhood and hardens along gendered lines. The workplace that contains it in three days. The diagnostic manual that pathologizes it at twelve months. The industry that monetizes it. The digital platform that simulates it. The disenfranchisement of entire categories of loss. What you get is a culture in which millions of people grieve alone, in private, without the communal infrastructure that every human society in history built to distribute the weight of death across many shoulders. The weight did not get lighter because the infrastructure was removed. The shoulders carrying it just got fewer.

The mother in the cafe knew this. She did not use these words. She did not cite the neuroscience or the sociology or the economics. She tapped the table and told her daughter to go to every funeral, and the instruction contained everything: that grief is communal, that the community is constituted by the people who show up, that presence is the oldest technology of mourning and still the most effective, and that the dead have no needs left, and the living have every need there is.

Go to every funeral. The book is available at BolesBooks.com as a free download, and on Amazon in Kindle ($9.99) and paperback ($15.99) editions.

https://www.evshift.com/314321/redefining-limits-stay-tuned-bmwm-melectrified-bmwmprototype-ultimatedrivingmachine/ Redefining limits. Stay tuned. #BMWM #MElectrified #BMWMPrototype #UltimateDrivingMachine #bmw #BMWM #bmwm #BMWMPrototype #ElectricCars #ElectricVehicles #EV #limits #MElectrified #Redefining #Stay #tuned #UltimateDrivingMachine

Water Extraction

"The Great Artesian Basin covers a fifth of Australia and contains water that has been there for millions of years. Now, decades of extraction are taking their toll and traditional owners are fighting a mining giant for compensation. But there are limits to what he can do, with BHP’s extraction out of his control."
>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/water-is-under-pressure-in-the-great-artesian-basin/106002448
#water #OverExtraction #mining #irrigation #TakeCulture #limits #Ramsar #GroundwaterDependent #ecosystems #NSW #GAB #extractivism #IndigenousPeoples

This just in from the #IReallyJustWantToWatchItBurn :birdsite: Department…

#Twitter #limits number of #DirectMessages in push for more #Blue #subscribers - UPI.com

#BirdSite #MuskedItUp #ItsAllMuskedUp

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2023/07/22/twitter-limits-dms-subscribers-twitter-blue/8401690057388/

"Labor’s nature laws have ‘gigantic loopholes you could drive a heavy hauler through’."

"The laws to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act are scheduled for debate on Tuesday, with the government planning to rush them through the lower house this week."

"The laws to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act are scheduled for debate on Tuesday, with the government planning to rush them through the lower house this week."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/nov/03/australia-politics-live-nationals-net-zero-liberals-labor-bulk-billing-optus-sussan-ley-anthony-albanese-question-time
#biosphere #pollution #FossilFuels #climate #ExtremeHeat #Biodiversity #deforestation #harm #EPBCAct #exemptions #PayToDestroy #law #limits

"Labor’s nature laws have ‘gigantic loopholes you could drive a heavy hauler through’."

"The laws to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act are scheduled for debate on Tuesday, with the government planning to rush them through the lower house this week."

"The laws to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act are scheduled for debate on Tuesday, with the government planning to rush them through the lower house this week."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/nov/03/australia-politics-live-nationals-net-zero-liberals-labor-bulk-billing-optus-sussan-ley-anthony-albanese-question-time
#biosphere #pollution #FossilFuels #climate #ExtremeHeat #Biodiversity #deforestation #harm #EPBCAct #exemptions #PayToDestroy #law #limits

"Labor’s nature laws have ‘gigantic loopholes you could drive a heavy hauler through’."

"The laws to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act are scheduled for debate on Tuesday, with the government planning to rush them through the lower house this week."

"The laws to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act are scheduled for debate on Tuesday, with the government planning to rush them through the lower house this week."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/nov/03/australia-politics-live-nationals-net-zero-liberals-labor-bulk-billing-optus-sussan-ley-anthony-albanese-question-time
#biosphere #pollution #FossilFuels #climate #ExtremeHeat #Biodiversity #deforestation #harm #EPBCAct #exemptions #PayToDestroy #law #limits

"Labor’s nature laws have ‘gigantic loopholes you could drive a heavy hauler through’."

"The laws to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act are scheduled for debate on Tuesday, with the government planning to rush them through the lower house this week."

"The laws to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act are scheduled for debate on Tuesday, with the government planning to rush them through the lower house this week."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/nov/03/australia-politics-live-nationals-net-zero-liberals-labor-bulk-billing-optus-sussan-ley-anthony-albanese-question-time
#biosphere #pollution #FossilFuels #climate #ExtremeHeat #Biodiversity #deforestation #harm #EPBCAct #exemptions #PayToDestroy #law #limits

"Labor’s nature laws have ‘gigantic loopholes you could drive a heavy hauler through’."

"The laws to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act are scheduled for debate on Tuesday, with the government planning to rush them through the lower house this week."

"The laws to overhaul the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act are scheduled for debate on Tuesday, with the government planning to rush them through the lower house this week."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/nov/03/australia-politics-live-nationals-net-zero-liberals-labor-bulk-billing-optus-sussan-ley-anthony-albanese-question-time
#biosphere #pollution #FossilFuels #climate #ExtremeHeat #Biodiversity #deforestation #harm #EPBCAct #exemptions #PayToDestroy #law #limits