A Traumatic Brain Injury changed my life in 2011. I have been a Contemplative Artist/Theologian ever since. — I was an award-winning entrepreneur and nationally recognized business strategist in home health and hospice before the “mild” traumatic brain injury that changed my life. I was married at the time, at the pinnacle of my career, with a 2-year-old daughter. I had just been asked to facilitate the Strategic…

Originally published in Yahoo Entertainment & The Mighty — January 2018 The word of the day today is flawless. It’s written on my t-shirt, and frankly, it’s a good reminder for me to live in the body I have right now at this present moment. But holy cow can that be complicated when living with chronic illness! The…

How falling in love with my “new” brain made all the difference after a life-changing and ultimately life-affirming concussion. — Originally Published in The Mighty and Yahoo Even though I spent most of my career throughout my 20s and 30s working in home health and hospice, I wasn’t able to grasp the reality of living with chronic illness until it happened to me. While this is true for many things…

A Reflection Written Just Before COVID-19 — Occasionally, I reflect on journal entries from earlier moments in my life as a means of gaining perspective and learning from prior periods of growth. I wrote the following piece just a few months before the pandemic began — in December of 2019. …

Color expresses the ineffable when conventional written language is insufficient. #ColorISLanguage — I am in pain tonight. It is a flare in my right collar bone, through my sternum into my shoulder, down my arm, up my neck, and into the base of my skull. I am reducing hydrocortisone from a summer of repeated adrenal crises due to a massive dental infection…

Reposting the informative article written by Dr Mehmet Yildiz during Dysautonomia Awareness Month — Before Depends on the Day was officially launched, Dr. Mehmet Yildiz of Illumination wrote a couple of great articles about Dysautonomia (links below). We initiated a discussion and discovered that we were like-minded in some very important areas. As a result of that interaction, we decided it was time to…

A Partnership between Dr Mehmet Yildiz of ILLUMINATION and Heather Thompson of Blue Phoenix — Dysautonomia Defined Dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system causes disturbances in the balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic functions. Easy, Right? Depends on the Day is primarily on Dysautonomia, yet inclusive of invisible illness and rare disease. Living with a condition that is chronic and incurable means that the healing…

CREATIVITY IS INNATELY HUMAN. Messy. Original. Insatiable. Human. Creativity is in the marrow in my bones; it’s the ancient stardust of the Creator; it’s in the subatomic particles that pulse in harmony with all of life while making me uniquely me. My crowning glory - my hair - is now blue. It’s not a little blue or toned blue — No….IT’S BLUE! In fact, the color is called SHOCKING BLUE! Like other creative endeavors in my life, I had to do this. It was an impulse that…