All posts by BeingCharis

Trans autistic disabled cat accomplice farmer.

Pain is my fishbowl

Many of us are aware of the U.S. Marine Corps tagline, “Pain is just weakness leaving the body.” There’s also a similar, often-referenced quote by Lance Armstrong:

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.

By these definitions, my body is a tomb of never-ending weakness and I’m in a perpetual state of temporary pain (and in my case it doesn’t matter if I keep fighting or quit, the pain is still right here with me). Don’t believe everything you think, it was created by someone else’s perspective first.

When people freak out about bruises or scrapes on my body I have never understood the reason. What’s the big deal? Only in these aesthetic instances can I spout the “pain is temporary” mantra and people will understand that I’m just good at sucking it up, so to speak, and they leave it at that.  Most people do not understand that there is deeper, unseen pain that can last forever in our temporary bodies.

©2015, Glenn Jones/Ikona Photography H/MUA Ashley Caudron
©2015, Glenn Jones/Ikona Photography
H/MUA Ashley Caudron

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Standing in Solidarity: Black Lives Matter

I didn’t plan on writing this piece about #BlackLivesMatter.  I wanted to watch how it all played out without getting too involved. Truthfully I was afraid that I would say something wrong that would make me look unintelligent and uninformed. Then I realized that by being silent about it, somehow I was allowing more damage to happen.  I write this from a place of vulnerability, love, and hope.  I’m willing to be brave for those whose voices are drowning in fear. I hope to amplify the voices of my black brothers and sisters as they scream, even when it seems no one is listening. I hope to be corrected, as needed, by those whose lives are in danger and whose shoes I can never occupy. I will keep listening.

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An open letter to healthy people from a former healthy person


Dear healthy people,

Let me tell you about becoming a “sickbody.” I have Ankylosing Spondylitis. Right, just don’t even try to pronounce that. We’ll stick with calling it A.S., yeah? Really all you need to know about it for this blog post is that it’s a chronic immune-mediated inflammatory joint disease. I’ll share a link at the end for you to read more about it. (Here’s a distracting picture of me to help you along)

Continue reading An open letter to healthy people from a former healthy person