The Seated View

To cope with chronic illness, you need a variety of tools. One of these tools is meditation. In my new article for HealthCentral, I look at how meditation can help you live better with chronic illness : "Living with chronic illness is stressful . These types of conditions are often unpredictable and require a lot of changes to how you live your life, work, and interact with your loved ones. But it’s more than that. The simple act of being can be challenging as pain, fatigue, nausea, and other symptoms accompany your every breath. Meditation can help. What is meditation? In everyday speech, the word meditation can mean a number of different things. People might use it to describe daydreaming on a park bench or thinking deeply about a particular issue. However, the actual act of meditation is something very different. It is a practice of concentrating in a quiet way, focusing on the present moment. The goal of meditating is to red...

  Even the ducks think the high water levels are a bit much...  

Did you know that sexuality and chronic illness is now against Facebook’s community standards? It is alarmingly easy to get blacklisted on social media channels. And once you’re put on the watch list, it is alarmingly difficult to get off it. I have been on social media for a very long time. It started with my personal account on Facebook years ago and by now I’m also on Twitter , Pinterest , Instagram , Google+, and StumbleUpon . I also manage several pages on Facebook, including my own author page . And that’s where the problem started. About a month ago, I decided to pay the same attention to my own blog as I did to other websites. After all, I have 12 years’ worth of material here on The Seated View and it seems a pity to just let it sit there. In addition to sharing my new posts, I started scheduling older posts every few days. And that’s when things started getting wonky. 1. My blog is blocked for the first time ever All of a sudden, Facebook wouldn...

Eating a nutritious balanced diet helps you to be healthier, especially when your chronic illness is flaring. But when your chronic illness is flaring, you don't want to cook. It's a vicious circle. In my new post for Mango Health, I share tips for how to eat well when you don't feel like cooking : "Giving your body the best fuel possible is important, especially when living with chronic illness. The kind of good fuel that’s contained in a healthy balanced diet full of nutritious and tasty foods.  Well, that’s the ideal, anyway. The reality is that with the energy limitations that chronic conditions often impose, sometimes you have to make tough choices about where your efforts go. Occasionally that means shortcuts when it comes to food. Enter meals that are fast, processed, and ready-made, usually not known for being healthy or balanced. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Good nutritious food doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are some of the wa...

(sorry. Couldn't help myself!)

In my first Facebook Live, this happened: I lied. I talked about fatigue and chronic illness - causes and how to cope. People watching had great ideas on dealing with low energy. Lucy popped by. To make sure you don't miss future events, subscribe to my newsletter and Like my Facebook page !  

One of my favourite things about summer is Canada Day and the Redpath Waterfront Festival . And really, is there anything better than long weekends in the summer? Well, Christmas arguably, but it requires wearing more clothes. And no, I’m not tromping about naked, but there are no socks and no sweaters. Back to the Canada Day long weekend. This year, Canada officially turned 150 years old, so there was a lot going on in this beautiful country as we all celebrated. Toronto celebrated with a duck. Well, there was also multiple fireworks, parties, cake, and much more, but the thing everyone talked about was the duck. The six-story 300,000 pound rubber ducky in the harbour. But I get ahead of myself. The Canada Day weekend is also the weekend of the Redpath Waterfront Festival. It’s relatively new, but has already made its mark — at least with me. They started being with flyboarding , moved on to tall ships (including Vikings), and this year there wer...