Headless Youth Podcast Headless Youth Podcast

A reading of Virginia Woolf's essay "On Being Ill" by Eva.



#disability #VirginiaWoolf #chronicillness

Art by Remedios Varo.

In 2018, after 16 years of suffering with the illness ME/CFS, Anne Örtegren died by physician assisted suicide. Anne was a fierce advocate for ME/CFS patients; she wrote for HealthRising.com about her experience with the disease and why the world needs to pay attention and fund research. She explained her choice to end her life in a final post titled "Farewell – A Last Post from Anne Örtegren."

This bonus material episode is a reading of that letter. You can read along here: http://lobel.nu/anne.html. You can find Anne's other posts here: https://www.healthrising.org/authors/anne-ortegen/.

Please listen and pay heed to Anne's final words, they are important. Here's an excerpt we'd like to highlight:

"It would be easier to handle if there were breaks, breathing spaces. But with severe ME/CFS there is no minute during the day when one is comfortable. My body is a war zone with constant firing attacks. There is no rest, no respite. Every move of every day is a mountain-climb. Every night is a challenge, since there is no easy sleep to rescue me from the torture. I always just have to try to get through the night. And then get through the next day.

It would also be easier if there were distractions. Like many patients with severe ME/CFS I am unable to listen to music, radio, podcasts or audio books, or to watch TV. I can only read for short bouts of time, and use the computer for even shorter moments. I am too ill to manage more than rare visits or phone calls from my family and friends, and sadly unable to live with someone. This solitary confinement aspect of ME/CFS is devastating and it is understandable that ME/CFS has been described as the 'living death disease'...

...If we knew there were relief on the horizon, it would be possible to endure severe ME/CFS and all the additional medical problems, even for a long time, I think. The point is that there has to be a limit, the suffering must not feel endless."

The final installment of the series "Many Seasons in Hell" with @death_denial

subjects:
-Knowing death, near death experiences
-Possibility of cure, medical progress
-Chronic illness experience across age and class
-“If God is good, all things will be rectified”
-Ways to endure and find strength within yourself
-EPILOGUE

edited by Rene Joly




#mecfs #longcovid #pasc #mysticism

Many Seasons in Hell part V


* War reading with chronic illness
* Nazi defeat at Stalingrad
* Hermann Goring and Elf *****
* Elves, faeries, various depictions
* Matcha
* Religion, spirit/soul, vs the material. Mind and matter
* Nietsche’s illness, contextualizing his fixation on vitality
* Religions and suffering; Christianity and Buddhism
* Making sense of suffering, or the attempt to
* Assisted suicide and religion
* Buddhism and realms
* Different conceptions of afterlife
* Seeking spiritual guidance


Edited by Rene Joly

Bonus material that we were going to use in the podcast: a long essay discussing how environmental toxins lead to environmental health disparities, which are then exacerbated by widespread poverty among millennials and gen z.

Read by friend of the pod @brianenometh, with music from Tim Hecker.

#mecfs #moldavoidance

Topics in this series include parenting with chronic illness, assisted suicide and the afterlife, toxic mold avoidance, the demonology of industrial capitalism, the endangered elf population of highland forests in the United States, and reconciling extreme suffering with belief in the divine.

edited by Jesse French

#mecfs #longcovid #toxicmold #moldavoidance #chronicillness