God
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I live with a dual diagnosis: depression and substance use disorder. that’s the name for it. but what it feels like is living on a hinge: leaning toward one world, pulled by the other. one world is made of steady hands and gentle hearts. the soft echo of my mother’s voice from another room. abuela’s…
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in group one patient replaces another. it’s really hard to see someone you love backslide. and sometimes it’s really difficult to remember that there are so many more sides to someone than their illness. witnessing the cycle of people coming and going in a treatment, the weight of loving someone who struggles — if God…
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this is a new song called laundromatic. the tactile nature of going there, the act of washing and cleansing, the feeling of warm clothes and the smell of fresh laundry, I find comforting and soothing. and transforming, particularly on the days that I am low: the city on hard days. riding my bike past so-called…
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in group we tell each other you can’t recover if you don’t know what you’re recovering from. I don’t know exactly what I am recovering from. hurt, maybe? hurt is almost always telling me a truth. all this week I was thinking about the times I stood on the toilet seat holding the stall door…
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when I was little, this straight-laced little kid, I sang in church all the time. the choir loft at St. Veronica’s seemed very near the sky. singing enveloped me. there was no sense of performance or judgment. no pressure. I just sang. I was aware of religion. I can’t say I understood much about practicing…
cookie nieves 