If we weren’t so close to deadline, I wouldn’t be writing this letter today. I just tested positive for Covid and I’m achy, tired, run-down and feeling a bit sorry for myself, as my shingles from last month only recently cleared up. As soon as I got the results back, I thought, Is the Universe teaching me a lesson (that I’m clearly not getting)?

And then I read about the “sandwich-board theory of life” in this month’s Wise Words article, Frank Bruni on Living with Afflictions, which you can find online at www.AwakeningCharlotte.com. As Bruni explains, “If each of us walked around wearing a list of the pain we carry or the struggles we have survived, struggles that are usually invisible, then few of us would ask, ‘Why me?’ We’d ask, ‘Why not me?’ And that’s the truer, healthier question.”

My initial takeaway was I can’t even indulge my own self-pity thanks to Frank Bruni and Natural Awakenings. But relatively quickly I realized that this isn’t that bad at all, that many other people are enduring much more serious illness and other stresses. They’re struggling with job and housing insecurity. They’re victims of gun, racial or gender-motivated violence. They’re living in war zones—real or metaphorical—and still carrying the scars and trauma from so many previous battles. 

Here’s the good news: Much of this issue of Natural Awakenings is about healing from past events. 

Wishing you healing this month of Father’s Day,

Shannon