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Larry Brickner-Wood's avatar

“Pinned to my bed in a room that never stopped spinning even after the world spun on.” Lisa, these poems are remarkable. Tender and real, honest and heartfelt, crafted so beautifully by a wisdom keeper. You make the deeply personal universal and collective. For all those who struggle with long COVID, and where we live, many chronic Lyme disease friends. Your poems also capture the strangeness of those times, and your long covid is a metaphor for the world, as somehow we have never fully recovered or will ever be the same. I love your poetry, and thank you sharing these.

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Lisa Jensen's avatar

Thank you so much, friend! ❤️

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Jim Sanders's avatar

I agree.

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Rebecca C.'s avatar

Well, I'M counting! Such a privilege and an honor to have gotten to know you and walk along with you through some of this. I see and admire your strength and growth and awakening and am deeply grateful for the role you continue to play in my own recovery.

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Lisa Jensen's avatar

Thank you so much, dear! I feel so lucky to have spent bits and pieces of these hard years with you!

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A. Wilder Westgate's avatar

That repeated "I thought I would lose my children" is so impactful. Thank you for sharing, Lisa.

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Lisa Jensen's avatar

Thank you so much, A! 💕

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cadis333@aol.com's avatar

Beautiful poems. I am five years also. Some days are tougher then others, but they are all much more difficult since getting LC. I enjoyed your poetry very much.

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Elizabeth Shores's avatar

I like the image of the cedar leaning toward you, as if to comfort you, and the whole sense I had that Nature waited for you to rejoin it.

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Lisa Jensen's avatar

Thank you so much, Elizabeth! One of the gifts among all the losses is that my sense of connection with the natural world has deepened.

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Hanna Sizemore's avatar

I passed my 5 year anniversary without noticing two days ago . . . partly because I am SO MUCH better, so much more engaged with the world, so busy . . . . and partially because I am still sick and I lost track of the calendar in a string of hard days. The hard days now would have felt like wonderful days in 2020, 2021, 2022, and even 2023. But they are still hard.

Your poems capture the essence of what this strange disease has been like beautifully. Thank you.

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Lisa Jensen's avatar

“The hard days now would have felt like wonderful days in 2020, 2021, 2022, and even 2023. But they are still hard.” Yes, this is exactly true for me, too! You put it so well. ❤️ Thank you for your kind words, Hanna!

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Lisa Jensen's avatar

Happy anniversary to you - or at least, I wish you a stretch of good days and also the support, perspective, humor, flexibility, hugs, and anything else you may need to carry you through the hardest ones!

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Catherine's avatar

Wow thank you for these, they are beautiful, they speak to me of the trying to live w LC when the world so often feels just within my grasp and yet still out of reach...

🙏 And the journey goes on....

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