Someone I know and admire recently stepped into an arena that he is not an expert in and decided to participate despite his lack of training. Did he perform well despite this lack of training? No. But he stuck with it and he participated until the end of the event.

Humans are relational and communicate through shared language. But what if you don’t have the words to describe what you’ve been through?

This summer I’ve been taking a course called “Teaching Composition in Community College and College” at Johns Hopkins University. Throughout the term, we’ve been researching First Year Composition classes and devising a syllabus based on our own pedagogical leanings. Because I believe good writing and good reading are inextricably intertwined, I’ve been looking for anchor texts to use throughout my course.

This morning I read The Kidnapping I Can’t Escape by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, published by The New York Times. At first I didn’t know whether I wanted to commit to reading a 30-minute article. But when I read Brodesser-Akner’s proclamation, “…trauma is trauma,” I was hooked.

Earlier today, I listened to “Facing Our Grief” (season 2, episode 1) from Anderson Cooper’s podcast, All There Is. In this episode, Anderson talks with Francis Weller, author of “The Wild Edge of Sorrow.”

I recently attended The Integrative Medicine Summit hosted by the University of Arizona Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. Andrew Weil, an advocate of alternative medicine, was one of the presenters.

Alan Cumming’s book “Not My Father’s Son” opens with a description of the time his father, in one of his many irrational bouts of anger, came at him with shears and forcibly held him down and cut his hair.

I’ve heard authors say before that their books forced them to look more deeply into an issue. Last week I encountered this phenomenon in a new and surprising way.

In December, I had the privilege of meeting a lovely woman at a holiday party.

I don’t normally bring up the fact that 2023 is The Year of the Book for me, especially with people I’ve just met.

I’ve been listening to Anderson Cooper’s podcast, “All There Is,” a compilation of ten episodes that explore grief and loss. In the episode titled “Sadness Isn’t an Enemy,” Cooper talks with Dr. BJ Miller, a hospice and palliative care physician.

Here is the new and improved website, thanks to Vivian Steckline of WiseInk!

Hanna Kjeldbjerg of WiseInk, who is part of my marketing team, recommended I put a photo of myself on the home page rather than bury it in a hard-to-find spot.

I am in the process of working with the Wise Ink team to move my blog to a website. This most likely will be a month-long process. This post will be the last one that officially shows up on my beyond-terminal.com site before I transition to www.MeganLindahlGoodrich.com…

I suppose it makes sense that, come blog entry 50, it’s time that some things get retooled.

As some of you know, I started blogging a year ago because I realized that, if I were going to one day get my medical memoir published, I needed to have a platform.

Below you will learn how Scarlet walks me through the different steps for setting up an EMDR session. The setup was time intensive, with the questions centering around the traumatic event I was interested in processing more. Note that all of this was done prior to my following Scarlet’s finger back and forth across my field of vision.

For a change of pace, I thought I would share an excerpt from the chapter I’m editing right now. If you read some of my earlier posts, you might recall the entry titled “The Gift of Movement” (October 11, 2011). In this, I describe a scene with my occupational therapist Julie in which she is having me flatten putty and roll it up into a ball.

In this passage, you’ll learn that my therapist Scarlet recommends a type of therapy called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). This is a kind of psychotherapy that was developed by Francine Shapiro in the 1980s, and involves recalling traumatic events while activating both hemispheres of the brain through bilateral stimulation, such as tapping or back-and-forth eye movement.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to chat with Kellie Hultgren, who will be my coach during the first few steps of bringing this manuscript closer to publication.

Prior to our meeting, Kellie had a chance to review my manuscript…

I didn’t have a chance to post last week since I was sick with COVID.

Since receiving the COVID vaccine and booster, I have felt less trepidation about COVID. But, even with this safeguard in place, I knew that my compromised immune system still might have an uphill battle if and when I encountered the virus.

I’ve been reading the book, “What My Bones Know” by Stephanie Foo. Her book details how she was verbally and physically abused and neglected as a child.

The first few chapters were challenging to read because it was hard for me to stay with the feeling of discomfort and injustice Foo’s story stirred up inside of me. And yet that is exactly what makes Foo such an amazing storyteller. I felt outraged on her behalf.

I have expectations for my kids (as I should). They are expected to do their summer reading before they get screen time. They’re expected to at least try what I’ve made for dinner, even if it’s not their favorite. Also, Dan and I have the expectation that, once we’ve signed our kids up for an activity/sport that they have expressed interest in, they follow through and complete the class/season, even if they find that they don’t like it. (However, we don’t have the expectation that they sign up for it again.)