Incurably Human

Fleecy, gray clouds blanket the sky. They must be moving—clouds always move, don’t they?—but they appear stagnant, as if they are here to stay. Beneath this torpid gray, the river is ice. A frozen mirror, reflecting a frozen sky. Between the two, gulls swoop and dive. They are, I presume, searching for life. For nourishment. For a break in the ice. A warm pool in which to plunge. Aren’t we all?

I hope your holiday season has been warm and bright, a headfirst dive into all the things that bring you joy—but perhaps it hasn’t been. Life is more nuanced than a strand of twinkle lights. We don’t just glide from one sparkly thing to the next. Maybe you spent hours stuck in an airport or never made it to your intended destination. Maybe you aren’t well enough to travel or eat cookies or gather with people you love. Maybe you find the people you love so maddening that you wish you had spent the month of December alone in a cave somewhere. Maybe there is someone you are missing deeply—someone without whom the holidays have lost their luster.

If you find yourself squeezed between a thick sheet of ice and a gray blanket of clouds, I see you. You aren’t alone in your loneliness or your stress or your [insert literally any human emotion that you may be experiencing]. We’re all connected, all bound together in this humanness.

Up to this point, Corona Cafe has primarily been a gathering space for Covid-19 long-haulers and others living with chronic illness or pain. These newsletters have been my attempt to acknowledge the ice, acknowledge the clouds, and to celebrate each thaw as it comes. To bask in the flow of warming water, to smile to the gaps in the clouds, and to trust that above them, there is always blue. Though this is a community built around the shared experience of illness, most of the themes I write about aren’t unique to that particular experience. As it turns out, the most important lessons that long Covid has taught me aren’t lessons about being sick. They are lessons about being human.

I have mostly recovered from long Covid. But I am incurably human. We all are. Does that sound bleak? I don’t mean it that way. What I mean is this: we are all flawed, all needy, all vulnerable, all stumbling and fumbling and figuring this out (or not) a step at a time. And we are enough. We are radiant and beautiful—a glorious mess. Like splatter paintings or impossibly tangled balls of twinkle lights.  

Going forward, I’d like to expand this community to include anyone and everyone who wants to connect through the shared experience of being human. In honor of that shift, I’m changing the name of this newsletter from Corona Cafe to Incurably Human. I’ll write about a lot of the same themes (like mindfulness, self-compassion, and connection with nature), as well as some new ones (like friendship, parenting, and creativity). You can expect an email from me once a week. If you would like to support my work, you can do so through the Buy me a Coffee link at the end of each email. Likes, shares, and comments are also deeply appreciated! Down the road, I may create an option for paid subscriptions with more features, but don’t worry, I’ll keep you in the loop if I do.

As I type this, the sun is rising. I can’t see it, of course, tucked as it is behind a ceiling of gray. But for a fleeting moment, a soft glow rimmed the horizon. A reminder of the vast blueness that endures beyond the clouds. A reminder that water flows beneath the ice. So much of our experience depends upon the angle from which we view the world. Thank you for positioning yourself here in this community. I hope it has been and will continue to be a space in which we can weather the gray and glimpse the blue—together.