Image Description: A box of Garden Lites Chocolate Muffins that are dairy-free and gluten-free
Hi Everyone!
I have a sort of unusual essay/article out today at Rooted in Rights, a disability advocacy group. It is called As a Chronically Ill Mom, Even Tater Tots Are a Way to Show My Kids Love . It’s about being a mom, food being love, preservatives, the Standard American Diet and convenience foods, and it’s part of the conversation around Mother’s Day about what it means to be a disabled mama. I hit a lot of topics in 1000 words!
Hope you are all having a great Mother’s Day weekend!
My nails have been breaking. I don’t know if they got weaker while I was going through the most intense parts of my treatment for Lyme disease. Both index fingernails broke. My thumbnail has started to show signs of distress, jagged lines where it looks like the layers of nail haven’t been able to hold together. My instinct is to try to hide them.
I’ll be hiding my toenails for a while. The right big one pulled the trick where it grows over itself every six months-a little like a paper jam in a printer, I end up with two layers where there should be one. I bruised the left one when curcumin was thinning my blood too much and so will lose that one soon. Another I have left the nail polish on from last November to chart for myself how slowly it is growing compared to the one next to it. Closed toe shoes will be the norm. They are so far gone that a pedicure can’t save them this spring. But for all of their flaws, my nails have always been strong and tough. I have never had to worry about them being brittle.
Until now. I worry about nail polish and its removal causing more issues. I felt a twinge of vanity that usually escapes me (I rarely have any idea the state of my cuticles and my nails are never an even length). I’ve been watching my nails with curiosity. Does their breaking mean I am doing worse even though I feel better? Am I skimping on vitamins or macronutrients I need? Did I do something to them as they grew from my body or did they get damaged by something I did afterwards? Are they something to hide? Are they something I need to protect from my impulse to cover up?
Image Description: My thumbnail with jagged lines almost parallel to its curves (which have gotten worse since this picture was taken) resting against a red and yellow piece of fabric
On my birthday one of the books I happened to pick up was a National Geographic compilation of some of their best Instagram pictures. I opened to a random page and was immediately struck by a brilliant toucan. The astonishing thing for me that makes photography so spectacular is that there are details that escape our notice when we see stylized versions of the same. A cartoon or painting of a toucan is still gorgeous-but I don’t know that any of them have captured the jagged lines that this toucan’s beak has. I stared and stared because they were the same as my own. I googled what beaks are made of.
Image Description: A large two page spread of a toucan’s beak and head. The red and yellow beak has jagged lines running parallel to its curve.
Keratin.
The same substance our nails are made of.
When I looked at this bird I didn’t see a creature I was worried about, I saw a creature who has lived. And is beautiful. It may be trite, but I am grateful for little synchronicities that remind me that my experiences and imperfections are not unique, and are not embarrassments, and are not alarming problems to always be “fixed”. And that being seen as who I really am connects me to other creatures in ways I had never thought about before.
Kristin DeMarco Wagner 