Forget about silver linings; midnight blue is where it's at. This week, Amy confronts her old habit of grasping for silver linings and considers a different, more nuanced approach (and color) along with lessons learned from life in a chronically ill body. Together, Lance and Amy discuss how they think about silver linings and how they find meaning when things seem to happen for no reason at all.

THE BUCKET FORMERLY KNOWN AS SILVER LININGS

“This sort of thing is old hat for me and I'm a huge silver linings person. I'm really just looking for help coping with my current condition and celebrating what I'm learning from it.”

And so began the latest in my decades-long series of relationships where I bare all of my most humiliating truths, the ugliest bits that make it hard for even me to face myself after revealing them. I have sometimes revealed these truths within mere minutes of first meeting said compadre and they STILL look me in the eye after I’ve divulged the unsightliness within me. They look with compassion even.

I'm talking about THERAPY. Said compadre is my THERAPIST. There, I said it.

Continues at ⁠https://amyblackstonephd.substack.com/p/the-bucket-formerly-known-as-silver⁠

CITED IN THIS EPISODE

1. Marishelle Lieberwerth and Alistair Niemeijer. “Lost and changed meaning in life of people with Long Covid: a qualitative study.” 2024. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES ON HEALTH AND WELL-BEING VOL. 19, 2289668 ⁠https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2023.2289668⁠
2. Anna M. Carapellotti, Hannie (J.E.M.) Meijerink, Christine Gravemaker-Scott, Lucia Thielman, Renée Kool, Natalie Lewin, and Tineke A. Abma. 2023. “Escape, expand, embrace: the transformational lived experience of rediscovering the self and the other while dancing with Parkinson’s or Multiple Sclerosis.” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES ON HEALTH AND WELL-BEING VOL. 18, 2143611 ⁠https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2022.2143611⁠