Chronically Illing Out | E31 - Mother's Day Monday

Descripción

Chronic Illness In Review The Monday after Mother’s Day begins with a head cold, a missing co-host, and a discussion on grief. Beth is out sick — appropriately, on a show about chronic illness — so Nick Paro, Soso, and Stephanie Wilson, PhD, hold the morning between them. The heart of today’s show is all about the chronically ill body keeping track of loss whether the dishes are done or not, and it’s important to say that out loud. Mother’s Day gives us the conversation opener into some unexpected tangents where we talk surveillance capitalism, isolation within the disibility community, and a case for community-owned infrastructure — all of it tracked back, eventually, to who gets counted as fully human. Meditation * Reset Refresh [https://sickofthis.substack.com/p/time-for-meditation-reset-refresh] Disclaimer Disclaimer: Chronically Illing Out is a podcast and weekly roundtable discussion that provides a safe space for real chronic illness and mental health conversations—by people with lived experience. We are not trained professionals—and we do not claim to be—rather, we discuss our stories and current events to build community and solidarity. Know that you are not alone—and if you are in crisis, call/text 988. Thank you Ashleigh Alauren [https://substack.com/profile/337755654-ashleigh-alauren], Jai C. Porter🇨🇦 [https://substack.com/profile/27349799-jai-c-porter], Jami [https://substack.com/profile/150877522-jami], Ann Kramer [https://substack.com/profile/8363417-ann-kramer], Being Human [https://substack.com/profile/58074926-being-human], and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD [https://substack.com/profile/2800378-stephanie-g-wilson-phd], Beth Cruz [https://substack.com/profile/178744313-beth-cruz], and Soso's World [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-sosos-world]! Join me for my next live video in the app. Actions You Can Take * Check out the new: Sick of this Shop! [https://shop.sickofthisshitpublications.com/] * Check out the new network and affiliate calendar: BroadBanner [https://www.broadbanner.com/] Submit questions, feedback, and artwork for Notes of the Week with Nick and Walter: * Sick of this Shit Community Comment Form [https://forms.gle/4WSu8qGkSA7Wxbh98] Call your public servants on important issues: * 5calls.org [https://5calls.org/] Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States: * deflock.me [https://deflock.me/] Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders: * Orders Project [https://www.ordersproject.com/] * Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76 Learn empathy forward, human centered, experiment based Leadership & Growth Courses for Higher Ed & Non-Profit Professionals: * B. Cognition Labs [https://www.bcognitionlabs.com/] Nick’s Notes I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community! Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective [https://1acollective.com/] Support as a paid subscriber however you can — to help get you started, here are a few discounted options for you * Forever at 50% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/50forever] * Forever at 60% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/60saver] A special thank you to those who are a part of the Sickest of Them All ~ Soso [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-soso] | Millicent [https://substack.com/profile/5428714-millicent] | Courtney 🇨🇦 [https://substack.com/profile/136249074-courtney] | Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove] | Terry mitchell [https://substack.com/profile/32751953-terry-mitchell] | Carollynn [https://substack.com/profile/301213629-carollynn] | Julie Robuck [https://substack.com/profile/208030486-julie-robuck] | Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙 [https://substack.com/profile/356845797-masonsheher] | Kimmy Win [https://substack.com/profile/180488664-kimmy-win] ~ For support, contact us at: info@sickofthisshitpublications.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe [https://sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Chronically Illing Out | E29 - Writing With Autism

Chronic Illness In Review This week’s panel takes the long way around to a simple idea — that the labels we use to sort each other are, at best, a starting place, and that the most interesting parts of a person tend to live just past where the label stops. Nick, Beth, Soso, and Steph sit with guest Stefan Pasek — a Polish-born writer in Minnesota with PDD-NOS — and let the conversation move from “normal versus abnormal” to “common versus less common” to whether bucketing humans does any of us any favors. By the time Stefan starts explaining how he writes, the labeling debate has resolved into something more useful: a portrait of one specific person doing one specific kind of careful, rhythmic work. The first long stretch of the conversation is about being seen, not categorized. Stefan describes a college professor who simply treated him like a real person — “He treated me like a real person. And a lot of the other ones almost — they babied me.” Soso pushes back on the word “normal” when Stefan uses it, arguing for “common” and “less common” as terms with less judgment baked in, and Steph adds the parental layer: her 18-year-old son, also neurodivergent, takes pride in the word neurodivergent because it distinguishes him, and resists the move to flatten everyone into “we all think differently.” The panel doesn’t resolve this tension; they sit with it, which is more honest than choosing a side. Nick’s contribution is to name what happens when labels become the goal instead of the work. He calls it “gamified mental health” — a system in which “the reward is you get a cool new label at the end and you can have like 500 different buckets that you can fit into.” He frames this against his own two years of group and individual therapy, where the question wasn’t which categories he fit into but, in his words, “Who is Nick, and what makes Nick himself?” Beth backs the critique with a harder example: someone close to her who collected diagnoses but never did the work the diagnoses pointed at. The argument lands as a quiet warning — diagnostic curiosity without follow-through is just collecting. Stefan, who studied behavioral psychology and is the only autistic voice in the room, then does something the discussion has been building toward: he gets technical about confirmation bias. People come to him with a preconceived notion of what autism looks like, and “their brain’s gonna shut that out and interpret my behavior to fit their preconceived notion.” His proposed remedy is unfashionable but durable — more conversation, not less. “I’m a big believer in that the solution for bad speech is more speech.” He’s quick, importantly, to draw a line between formally defined cognitive biases and the looser sense of “bias” the others have been using; one of the small pleasures of this episode is watching the guest correct the hosts’ terminology with no rancor and a lot of precision. Then the show pivots, and the best section starts. Asked how his autism shapes his writing, Stefan walks the panel through a practical theory of prose rhythm: English’s stressed-unstressed pattern, why iambic meter feels like marching, why Edgar Allan Poe’s reversed stress makes “The Raven” feel creepy and Shakespeare’s iambs do not, how short-sentence sequences and well-placed commas can raise or lower a reader’s heart rate. Once a month he turns a Disney movie into a Poe horror story; sometimes his friend Mac sets the result to music. Nick, who originally studied music composition, recognizes the framework instantly. The takeaway is not “autism is a superpower” — Stefan never claims that — but something more specific: the same pattern recognition that made school socially brutal also made him a writer who hears prose the way other people hear music. Stefan Pasek writes short fiction (under 300 words) and poetry at stefan.substack.com [https://stefan.substack.com/], much of it built from prompts his readers send him. The episode closes with the usual Seascapes meditation from Beth and self-promotion from the panel — Steph’s Freedom Over Fascism, Soso’s CPTSD-and-fibromyalgia-positivity work, Beth’s faith-and-spirituality writing, and Nick’s continued dismantling of the manosphere here at Sick of This Shit Publications. But the lasting image is Stefan reading his own drafts out loud during revision, listening for whether the syllables fall right. It expands what Chronically Illing Out has been doing all season: showing chronic illness and neurodivergence as starting conditions for a person’s specific craft, not the whole story. ~ Nick Paro [https://sickofthis.substack.com/] Actions You Can Take * Check out the new: Sick of this Shop! [https://shop.sickofthisshitpublications.com/] * Check out the new network and affiliate calendar: BroadBanner [https://www.broadbanner.com/] Submit questions, feedback, and artwork for Notes of the Week with Nick and Walter: * Sick of this Shit Community Comment Form [https://forms.gle/4WSu8qGkSA7Wxbh98] Call your public servants on important issues: * 5calls.org [https://5calls.org/] Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States: * deflock.me [https://deflock.me/] Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders: * Orders Project [https://www.ordersproject.com/] * Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76 Learn empathy forward, human centered, experiment based Leadership & Growth Courses for Higher Ed & Non-Profit Professionals: * B. Cognition Labs [https://www.bcognitionlabs.com/] Thank you Nieta Greene [https://substack.com/profile/117743522-nieta-greene], Letters from a Feminist [https://substack.com/profile/436405643-letters-from-a-feminist], julie elder [https://substack.com/profile/8250912-julie-elder], Christina Gurchinoff [https://substack.com/profile/327888873-christina-gurchinoff], Sharon Rousseau [https://substack.com/profile/9291068-sharon-rousseau], and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD [https://substack.com/profile/2800378-stephanie-g-wilson-phd], Beth Cruz [https://substack.com/profile/178744313-beth-cruz], and Soso's World [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-sosos-world]! Join me for my next live video in the app. Nick’s Notes I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community! Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective [https://1acollective.com/] Support as a paid subscriber however you can — to help get you started, here are a few discounted options for you * Forever at 50% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/50forever] * Forever at 60% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/60saver] A special thank you to those who are a part of the Sickest of Them All ~ Soso [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-soso] | Millicent [https://substack.com/profile/5428714-millicent] | Courtney 🇨🇦 [https://substack.com/profile/136249074-courtney] | Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove] | Terry mitchell [https://substack.com/profile/32751953-terry-mitchell] | Carollynn [https://substack.com/profile/301213629-carollynn] | Julie Robuck [https://substack.com/profile/208030486-julie-robuck] | Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙 [https://substack.com/profile/356845797-masonsheher] | Kimmy Win [https://substack.com/profile/180488664-kimmy-win] ~ For support, contact us at: info@sickofthisshitpublications.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe [https://sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

30 de abr de 20261 h 14 min

Chronically Illing Out | E28 - Listening to Your Body

Trigger warning: this episode contains discussion on sexual assault and violence. Chronic Illness in Review Marilyn [https://substack.com/profile/357892741-marilyn] Bretherick arrives at this episode as someone who has spent the last year doing the hard, unglamorous work of starting over from the inside. She carries CPTSD, ADHD, and anxiety — and a background in sexual abuse and human trafficking that she describes with a precision that only comes from having finally named it. She was a director of operations in tech. She was a high performer who stayed up twelve-hour stretches alongside Nick. She was also, for most of her life, someone running fast enough that she never had to stop and look at what she was running from. Then she lost her job — after sticking her neck out for Nick and other colleagues being abused by someone with power over both of them — and her body made the decision her mind hadn’t. She ended up in the ER and the doctors told her she wasn’t delusional. She was just finally paying the bill. The conversation Nick Paro [https://substack.com/profile/189675044-nick-paro], Beth Cruz [https://substack.com/profile/178744313-beth-cruz], Soso's World [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-sosos-world], and Stephanie G Wilson, PhD [https://substack.com/profile/2800378-stephanie-g-wilson-phd] navigate with Marilyn is one of the more quietly devastating ones this show has produced. Not because Marilyn is broken — she isn’t — but because she describes the architecture of high-functioning avoidance with such clarity that it lands. The insight that her instinct to develop other people was itself a way to avoid her own inner chaos. The realization that her alexithymia — the difficulty processing and expressing emotions — meant she genuinely couldn’t cry until the moment she broke down in front of a supervisor who was trying to break her. The decision to approach her own healing the way she’d approach any systems problem: crowdsourcing, ruling things out methodically, submitting to neurological evaluations and sleep studies and biopsychosocials until the picture became undeniable. The doctors told her therapy might actually be more harmful than helpful at that point. What she needed was her social bonds back. So she got a library card. She walked her dog. She enrolled in a community college and took ethics and the Civil War period and modern social problems, and found that she couldn’t even remember her high school experience — which told her something important about what her nervous system had been doing for decades. Marilyn is a woman who is strong, has had a family who valued and cared for her. And still — sexual abuse. Still, a background in labor and sex trafficking she’d never fully dealt with. She’s working now with A21, Safe House Project, Refuge for Women, and a church that, after some initial fumbling, opened its doors and helped her furnish her new apartment. She calls it falling in love with community and social bonds again. No work identity in it. No ego in it. Just the baseline: feel physically safe. Let the rest come. Steph, listening from Boston with her own chronic migraines and her mother freshly out of surgery, understands this viscerally. Soso, in Quebec, understands this viscerally. What emerges from the response to Marilyn isn’t sympathy — it’s recognition. These are people who have each, in their own way, had to learn what it costs to not listen to the body, and what becomes possible when you finally do. The episode doesn’t stay inside the personal. Nick names the current moment — the week’s public discourse has been relentless — and makes the direct link: the same systems that exploit workers, silence women, and protect abusers in executive suites are the ones that produce elected officials who murder their spouses and die by suicide with their children in the house. It’s not a diversion. It’s the same conversation. What Marilyn did at work — speak up for someone being harmed at cost to herself — is the thing the panel is trying to do every Monday morning at scale. Beth Cruz says it directly: Nick’s work made her say enough. Made her recognize that what she was living was not normal and refuse to keep living it. Marilyn closes the loop: consent has to be explicit, period. Steph adds: and silence is not a yes. It’s a no. These are not abstract principles. They come from people who know what it cost to have them violated, and what it costs to not have known them earlier. Marilyn Bretherick came on the show as Nick’s former director. She left as someone this community will want to hear from again. She gave them the plain version of what recovery looks like when you’re done performing it: community college, a dog walk, a library card, and the long, slow work of building relationships where people can actually know you. Actions You Can Take * Check out the new: Sick of this Shop! [https://shop.sickofthisshitpublications.com/] * Check out the new network and affiliate calendar: BroadBanner [https://www.broadbanner.com/] Submit questions, feedback, and artwork for Notes of the Week with Nick and Walter: * Sick of this Shit Community Comment Form [https://forms.gle/4WSu8qGkSA7Wxbh98] Call your public servants on important issues: * 5calls.org [https://5calls.org/] Join the efforts to unmask law enforcement and de-flock the States: * deflock.me [https://deflock.me/] Service members can get un-biased information on legal vs illegal orders: * Orders Project [https://www.ordersproject.com/] * Reach out on Signal: @TheOrdersProject.76 Learn empathy forward, human centered, experiment based Leadership & Growth Courses for Higher Ed & Non-Profit Professionals: * B. Cognition Labs [https://www.bcognitionlabs.com/] Thank you NeuroDivergent Hodgepodge [https://substack.com/profile/290170277-neurodivergent-hodgepodge], Mack Devlin [https://substack.com/profile/369418191-mack-devlin], LeftieProf [https://substack.com/profile/116079548-leftieprof], Ashleigh Alauren [https://substack.com/profile/337755654-ashleigh-alauren], julie elder [https://substack.com/profile/8250912-julie-elder], and many others for tuning into my live video with Stephanie G Wilson, PhD [https://substack.com/profile/2800378-stephanie-g-wilson-phd], Beth Cruz [https://substack.com/profile/178744313-beth-cruz], Soso's World [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-sosos-world], and Marilyn [https://substack.com/profile/357892741-marilyn]! Join me for my next live video in the app. Nick’s Notes I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community! Join the uncensored media at the 1A Collective [https://1acollective.com/] Support as a paid subscriber however you can — to help get you started, here are a few discounted options for you * Forever at 50% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/50forever] * Forever at 60% off [https://sickofthis.substack.com/60saver] A special thank you to those who are a part of the Sickest of Them All ~ Soso [https://substack.com/profile/309303179-soso] | Millicent [https://substack.com/profile/5428714-millicent] | Courtney 🇨🇦 [https://substack.com/profile/136249074-courtney] | Eric Lullove [https://substack.com/profile/66521654-eric-lullove] | Terry mitchell [https://substack.com/profile/32751953-terry-mitchell] | Carollynn [https://substack.com/profile/301213629-carollynn] | Julie Robuck [https://substack.com/profile/208030486-julie-robuck] | Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙 [https://substack.com/profile/356845797-masonsheher] ~ For support, contact us at: info@sickofthisshitpublications.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe [https://sickofthis.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

20 de abr de 202659 min

Chronically Illing Out | E31 - Mother's Day Monday

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