Month: February 2024

Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, and Gold Stars

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

I am pleased to share that my personal essay, “Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, and Gold Stars,” has been published in a new anthology, Chronic Poetics. “The book contains artwork, essays and poetry written entirely by people who have experience of chronic pain and chronic illness.” Each piece of writing has been “arranged and visually interpreted,” making it possible to create an anthology that tells a “visual story as well as a literary one.”

I’d like to share two excerpts from a section near the end of my essay:

“I wish someone had handed me a manual of some sort. My car came with one. The new little handheld vacuum I recently bought came with one. (I don’t remember the last time my trunk looked so clean.) But no one told me how to navigate living with a chronic illness. No one pointed out that a chronic illness is one thing. A chronic illness causing chronic pain is something else.”

“There are moments I want to cry. Moments I want to scream. Moments I want to throw things and break things. Because this is hard. And it’s tiring. And it often doesn’t feel like it gets any easier or any better.” 

You can find more information about the anthology here.

The visual interpretation of my personal essay.

Something to Endure

Posted on by Wendy Kennar
My memoir is divided into three parts.
The final essay in this part, and the book, is
"Something to Endure."

Super exciting news:  my manuscript is complete, and I will now be entering a new stage of the writing process — the querying-agents phase. 

But before I got here, when I was revising and rewriting my manuscript, I had to make a decision regarding my final essay. I had three essays that my book coach and I agreed were all possible candidates for that all-important last essay in the book.

It is my hope that my memoir will be read by those living with chronic illnesses, as well as those who know people who are living with chronic illness. I’m hoping that my story can serve as an example. Though the medical specifics may vary, the emotions may be quite similar. So someone who lives with diabetes, for example, could give my book to a loved one, point to one of my essays, and say, “Here. Read this. This is what I feel like sometimes.” 

For far too long, terms such as “disability” and “disabled” have been too narrowly defined. I really want my memoir to broaden those definitions, and I would like my story to serve as just one example of what a disabled life looks like.

When I started working with my book coach, I told her I was writing the book I needed to read when I became ill. I hope after reading my memoir that my chronically ill readers feel less alone and more understood. Along those lines, I want my final essay to give readers a sense of comfort, a dose of good-feels. 

Before making my final decision, I stopped to reflect and think about how I want my readers to feel when they’re done reading my memoir-in-essays. 

These were the adjectives that I came up with:

Hopeful.

Enlightened.

Inspired.

Comforted. 

With that in mind, I made my decision (and my book coach agrees). My final essay is titled “Something to Endure.” Because basically that is the bottom line when it comes to chronic illness. You have to endure the illness. You need to stick it out and figure out ways to handle it, to be with it day-in and day-out for the long haul.

But you don’t have to do it alone. Books, including my own, connect us.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

I don’t remember how I celebrated Valentine’s Day when I was an elementary school student. 

But I do remember how I celebrated as an elementary school teacher.

A few weeks before Valentine’s Day, I sent a note home which included a class list. If children wanted to pass out Valentine cards, they were asked to bring one for each classmate. (This was not just a Mrs. Kennar-rule. Other teachers did the same thing.)

When I taught fourth grade, I added an in-class activity. Each student was given two stapled papers. The papers had lines on them and some decorative hearts in the corners. Each student was instructed to write their name at the top of the page. 

The whole class stood up and left their papers on their desks. Everyone moved one seat down and wrote something complimentary on their seat mate’s paper. There were a few rules: no compliments or praise based on looks, including things you wear or levels of attractiveness. 

Before we began, we did brainstorm some possible compliments and words of praise we could use for each other. Such as:

You always share your eraser with me.

You have neat handwriting.

When you read aloud, I can always hear you even though I don’t sit near you.

You always remember to say thank you when I pass out papers.

We spent quite a bit of class time, making sure we wrote on each student’s paper. And, my students would encourage me to have a paper as well. When the activity was done, we returned to our seats and took time to quietly read the words of praise our classmates had written. 

It was one of my favorite activities, because I think too often we don’t know how we have impacted someone else. We don’t always take the time to share a kind word. But with this activity, my students would have these written words to take with them, and they  could look back at them any time they needed a boost.

So along those lines, I am going to take this opportunity to show a bit of self-love. I am always quick to praise and compliment and offer kind words to others. It’s much harder to do the same for myself. 

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, a day of friendship and love, here are two compliments I give myself:

– I am considerate. I offer cold bottles of water to any service technicians or repair people who come to our home. Any time I see our mailman, John, I thank him for the day’s mail and give him a cold bottle of water as well.

– I am thoughtful. I make notes of friends’ doctors appointments and important life events so that I can reach out with a text, an email, or a phone call and let my friends know I’m thinking of them.

Happy Valentine’s Day, my dear readers! Feel free to share a compliment or words of praise about yourself.

Get a Life, Chloe Brown

Posted on by Wendy Kennar

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert is what some readers would refer to as a rom-com. Some readers may use other terms such as “chick lit” or “women’s fiction,” but I’m not a fan of those terms. You should know that this particular rom-com has quite a high level of “spice,” meaning explicit “steamy” scenes.

But here’s the main thing you should know about Ms. Hibbert’s novel:  Chloe Brown, the main character, is a Black woman who lives with fibromyalgia, a chronic illness causing chronic pain. Plus, the book features an interracial relationship. I love this sentence taken from the author’s website:  “She writes spicy, diverse romance because she believes that people of marginalised identities need honest and positive representation.”

This week, I share with you just a few of the passages that really stood out to me: 

“Most people had trouble accepting the fact that Chloe was ill. Fibromyalgia and chronic pain were invisible afflictions, so they were easy to dismiss. Eve was healthy, so she would never feel Chloe’s bone-deep exhaustion, her agonizing headaches or the shooting pains in her joints, the fevers and confusion, the countless side effects that came from countless medications. But Eve didn’t need to feel all of that to have empathy. She didn’t need to see Chloe’s tears or pain to believe her sister struggled sometimes. Neither, for that matter, did Dani. They understood.”

“It had been a frustrating few days. She’d fallen into an infuriating cycle when she’d climbed that tree. Physical overload led to pain and a complete dearth of spoons, also known as mind-numbing exhaustion; which led to extra meds and insomnia; which led to sleeping pills and too much brain fog; which led to, in a word, misery.”

“…my body was different. The weight on my chest, and the cold — they faded, as I got better. But my bones still felt fragile. It never went away. Over the months, I noticed more and more problems. I was exhausted all the time. I got these awful headaches for no reason. And there was the pain — always, so much pain. I’d go for a walk and feel like I’d worked every muscle to the point of tearing. If I spent too long on my laptop, my hands would hurt so badly I cried. I started feeling afraid of my own body, like it was a torture chamber I’d been trapped inside.”

Please note: I am including a link to buy the book that I’m highlighting this week. If you use my link, I do make a small commission on your purchase at no additional cost to you. I am working with Bookshop.org which also sends a portion of the profit to support local, independent bookstores.