01/16/2026
Take 5 tablets by mouth for 2 days, then 4 tablets daily for 2 days, then 3 tablets daily...
I have had “the cough” off and on for 25 years. I have had X-rays and CAT scans and asthma tests. I have tried steroidal and non-steroidal inhalers. I have been on meds for allergies and GERD. I have tried tesslon perls. I have tried TCM with granules that taste horrible and the beautiful octopus like evidence of cupping treatments.
None of it works. Well, sometimes, every once in a while a course of steroids works. When I am coughing so hard I can’t do anything and I’m doubled over, dry heaving, and peeing myself, maybe it’s time for trying the fu***ng steroids.
I got the snot cold that turned into the cough in September and it went away. I got it again in December. How dare I go out food shopping. I caught it food shopping, so I spent the holidays on my couch coughing. I spent the two year anniversary of my dad’s death and his New Year’s Eve birthday on my cough coughing.
Today, about 20 minutes ago, I took five tablets by mouth. Soon I will have the energy of everyone on my city block in Providence combined. I may still be coughing. I may get aggro. I may clean my house. I might find the energy to start the writing that I’ve thought about doing for months. Holy crap, here it is!
Writing. It’s what feels right at the moment.
In my own little world, I have been unemployed for over two years. I got laid off and then my dad died. I had been expecting it, but it wasn’t a dying in hospice sort of wait. It was just something that I knew was going to happen and the when was looming for a long time. In retrospect, I can acknowledge how psychologically taxing that is. When it did happen, I said f**k the job search. I felt almost dead inside. I needed to grieve my father’s death and I needed to heal something deeper.
Life wasn’t quite done with adding to the challenges though. My ride or die cat, Frank, started showing signs of weight loss in April and had almost withered away to nothing from cancer by July. He was gone too.
It’s true, though. By December 28, 2023, I felt like an inch of my true self was still on display and the rest shoved down like a garbage can you step on five times to make sure it is really REALLY full. That’s the stuff in the smelly bag that no one wants to see. At least, I had convinced myself that it all needed to be in a garbage bag. My bag of shadows. My bag of self. All of the oddities that has somehow been shamed behind a smelly, opaque, plastic garbage curtain. Years of being either outright told I was too much or quietly moved to the back of the restaurant, next to the toilets. “This is where you belong because you are too loud, too shy, too smart, too weird, to stupid, too curious, too ambitious, too fat, too thin, too young, too old, too pretty, TOO TOO TOO... and I hated it all at that point. I really felt no love for myself any more.
I know many women who have danced this dance. Hell, it’s every single one of us. We have ingrained steps for our own version of the dance. Dance it perfectly, ladies. If a single finger is out of place, you have failed. And, by the way, as soon as you turn age X, you failed no matter what.
Five Prednisone tablets by mouth daily for two days...
Recently, with all the new concepts I’ve been allowing into my life, I’ve started wondering if the cough isn’t something physiological. After dad died, I felt the sudden need to tamp down my incessant logic to let some other ideas in. Within days of his death, it was like a curious little door cracked open for my packed full garbage bag of self to fall through. There was space behind that door. Welcome space.
My logic battles me while I let in ideas that are metaphysical. Some theories state that grief is held in the lungs. “The Body Keeps the Score” talks about how the body holds onto psychological trauma. Some have called the book pseudoscience. That’s fine. But, if grief really is held in the lungs and this cough is a physical manifestation of my garbage bag of shadows, then there is a lot of grief that I have released, am releasing, and have yet to release.
I can feel my heart again. It’s a little lantern in myself for myself. Some of the past two years have specifically been focused on self-love. Self-love meditation, journaling, mantras, gestures.
Why does this matter? Well, it’s what matters the most. The black hole of power grabs that we are witnessing are people who are desperately trying to find a foothold within themselves. We have been fed that that foot hold is money and power, but if that is the case, why do most of the billionaires want more and don’t give back? Because they are a sucking chest wound of black hole. They are what is left after an outhouse is set on fire - charred excrement in the dark. They are horrifyingly broken. For their absolute greed, I feel angry. For the degree of broken, I feel sad. I see your death throes. We all see them.
And for the rest of us? It’s time to find that little heart lantern of yours. Imagine if that little heart, literally, showed light. Can you imagine those beacons speckled across your landscape? Little bits of humanity that share in just that: humanity. We can feel rage for the situation that is unfolding in the United States, because of the United States, and well beyond the United States. But, rage can be anchored by heart. Rage can have vision and parameters or it can be a blind flailing.
Women’s rage - a commonly visited term in my circle - is a power building off of what we pull out of what was once in our garbage bag. It’s turning shadows to power. It’s taking ourselves back and redirecting. The peace and heart under this version of rage is intriguing. The peace and heart in everything that was once thrown away is the real power.
I will be picking through my garbage for the rest of my life. It is my duty. It is the duty of every single one of us, quite honestly. But it is the hardest work any of us will will ever experience. And the bravest. And I see you.
*Yes, I semi-stole this from the book “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk because it is relevant to what I am writing.
https://aetherandembers.com/f/the-body-and-the-score
