Patrick Ness has written the perfect response to every teen paranormal trilogy out there. The elevator pitch of this book is that it is about the regular kids living in the town where all the paranormal YA prophecy chosen one shit goes down. It’s about not being special and being awesome anyway. I wish I’d had this book in high school. I’m really glad I have this book now.
I have a chronic condition. It’s shitty. When I first got sick it was really bad, like lost 20 pounds in six months could barely get out of bed, bad. I was in an out of the hospital and I got to know the staff at my big city doctors office real well. I learned a lot about people in those first few months. That people want details but only to a point. That people want you to have an easy explanation for what’s happening to you. But mostly what I learned is that a lot of people are really shitty at making others feel better even when that’s really all they’re trying to do. People wanted to cure me, which was understandable, I really wanted to cure me.
The problem is when you’re dealing with doctors telling you, this condition will never stop, it will never go away, being told about some miracle cure from the depth of the inter-webs doesn’t help you cope. But on the flip side I’ve also watched friends deal with chronic and sometimes life threatening illnesses and there really is no right thing to say because there are no magic words to make someone better. There are however words that help people feel not alone and Emily McDowell has put many of them into her empathy cards for serious illnesses
Really what you want to do when some one you love is sick is let them know that they are still loved. That their situation sucks and they have every right to fucking hate it but that even in the worst of times there is still some twisted humor to be found. These cards manage to do just that.
This is care of the Perkins Psych blog. if you’re going through a bad time remember it’s ok to feel shitty. It’s normal. It’s human. It’s how you deal with those feelings that matters. Avoid the green, shoot for the purple. Ask for help and if you don’t get it the first or the fifth time keep asking. There are people in the world that will help you, they can be hard to find sometimes but they are real. Keep going. Things will change. Trust yourself to survive your troubles.
You probably don’t know that you know Brenna Twohy. She got some attention earlier in the year with her amazing poem Fantastic Breast and Where to Find Them. Which if you haven’t seen go fix that now. After watching that for the hundredth time I went looking for more from Mrs. Twohy and found this epic gem of slam poetry.
Poetry gets a bad rap. It’s been painted by every bad poem that we’ve heard in our 9th grade english class but good poetry is magic and Twohy is a brilliant magician. I’ve known a lot of nerds and a lot of them have panic disorders and/or anxiety disorders, it’s so empowering to see someone use my language, the language of super heroes to say look this is hard and unfair but we’re fighting. The best thing about poetry is that in 3 minutes you can give someone something to hold on to. Something that might make the next three minutes just a little bit easier. I sincerely hope Brenna puts out a book soon because I want something to hand people when they are invisible. I want to give them something real that says look, someone sees you.
More Than Fables 