Michaela

• How did we meet? –> Healing Trauma in Historically Oppressed Communities event — Michaela asked a question, like, “What do you do when the trauma is happening every single day”
• When we were in the water together, she held my hand and when a wave came she would turn and put her body in front of mine
• “Water is healing. Water is life. That’s what we say.”
• “I can tell you haven’t eaten. You’re turning blue. You’re losing the hair on the right side of your body. Your chi is low.”
• “I need you to heal yourself. We need you.”
• Took on my struggle when she knew I wouldn’t ask for myself:
  • “I am hungry, can we stop here?”
  • “My foot hurts, can we slow down?”
• Felt so connected; like we knew each other our whole lives
• Connecting and conversing with everyone — beautiful; but at times I had to confront my own ableist thoughts and annoyances like ‘hurry up’
  • Make me question my own conceptions of what illness symptoms are, and what is just constructed bullshit
• Felt so much pain for ‘small’ things – dog
• “Do you think I’m bipolar?”
• Prophets
• The Next Paradigm Shift
• Native Americans – the Black Snake
• Dartmouth student — became face of activism
  • “Is it worth what we’ve given to these universities?”
  • “It’s about the individual people we help”
• Grandma is a Holocaust survivor
  • Auschwitz
• “Always have a towel”
  • Had everything she needed in one backpack
• Not afraid to ask people for what she needed
• “You can love me, but you have to let me go”
  • We kissed
• Panelist on Rhonda Magee’s Social Justice panel
  • Brave, incredible soul

Can we just invalidate someone’s entire lived experience because we deem them to be ill?

“Who do you think wins if you don’t eat? Not you.”