thrive! Journal ARCHIVES ( 1 - 40 of 74 items)
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The Prayer Thief
by Julia Tuchman | I have stolen other people’s prayers. I know, it sounds really bad. I mean, who steals prayers? Why would someone even want to steal another’s prayers?...
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25 reasons why having chronic lyme disease makes you a badass
by Candice Mitchell | While some people have a comic book collection or collect rare stamps, you collect infections, and happen to have more than a loaded petri dish....
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Global action: send Oprah your MCS story today!
by Monique van den Broek | I am going to ask you just ONE thing. ONE hour of your time. If we all send our stories to Oprah Winfrey on the 3rd or 4th of July, we can make an impact....
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Gulf spill workers matter too
Workers cleaning up the Gulf oil spill are getting sick but a call to open emergency clinics to treat these injured workers got no mention by the President in his brief this week on progress in the Gulf....
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My root canal extraction adventure
When my front cap unexpectedly came out one day a couple of months ago, I was more than ready to have my 20-year-old root canal extracted....
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Lyme’s lessons
Mimi shares how lyme disease has helped her to see all the blessings in her life....
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Let your trouble be your teacher
Thoughts on finding meaning in your journey with lyme disease, or any other chronic illness....
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MCS and the Search for a Safe Community
Mary Rives and Keith Carlson recap their past seven months on the road across America in search of a chemical-free ecovillage to call home....
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Lose the Lyme: Save the Rhyme
A poem for lyme disease awareness month by Sonya Rose Atkinson....
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A Story of Environmental Illness and a Mom Who Saved the Day
Jaime Owen gives thanks to her mom this Mother's Day for supporting her through a harrowing journey with environmental illness....
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A poem to kick off lyme disease awareness month
Heidy Ramos shares her experience of trying to get properly diagnosed and treated for lyme disease. Her poem kicks off Lyme Disease Awareness Month in May 2010....
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Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: The shocking disease
Jodi Bassett writes about the many ways getting myalgic encephalomyelitis is a 'shock to the system' of sufferers....
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Planet Thrive is Taking a Break
The founder of Planet Thrive explains why the site will be not adding new content for the next month or so....
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Embracing a Terminal Illness
Fred Lanphear shares how his recent diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s Disease brought a beautiful opportunity of growth to the Songaia Cohousing Community, which he cofounded....
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Sleeping on Wool Felts
Eliana Jantz, bed designer and founder of Shepherd's Dream, is now forming a felting collective in Montague, California to focus on wool felts as the perfect sleep system....
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Environmentally sensitive need young champion for their cause
Hannah Taylor is only 11 years old and has already raised over a million dollars to fight homelessness in Canada through her charity The Ladybug Foundation....
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The True Need for Community
Can community meet the needs that one man hasn't been able to meet on his own? Joshua Canter searches for the answer to this and other deep questions about life, meaning, and connection....
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Christmas, EI-style
Just because you are challenged with environmental illness, there's no need to skimp when it comes to seasonal celebration. Find out how others express their holiday cheer....
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Celebrating Chanukah When You’re Chemically Sensitive
These less toxic substitutes for fun Chanukah rituals can help you continue to honor your holiday tradition each year without compromising your health. ...
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Coping with Chronic Illness During the Holidays
by Cynthia Perkins, M.Ed. | Unable to attend family holiday celebrations due to chronic illness? Here are some tips for making the holiday season a time to look forward to no matter what your circumstance....
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Destined for Desert
In 1998, while backpacking through the Middle East, I fell head-over-heels for a dashing Bedouin living in the desert in southern Jordan. I stayed for 5 weeks, learning how to bake bread under the fire coals in the sand, play the Arabic hand drum (dumbek), and say "I love you" in Arabic....
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Environmental Toxins and Addiction
by Cynthia Perkins, M.Ed. | A sobriety coach and recovered alcohol and drug addict discusses how environmental toxins affect the neurotransmitters in the reward pathway of the brain....
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The Seven Essentials of Recovery
"The Queen of Green" Debra Lynn Dadd shares her top suggestions for turning your health around onto a path of recovery from chemical sensitivities and food intolerances....
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Surviving the Dreaded H1N1 Swine Flu
Dr. Randy Baker of the Pacific Center for Integral Health in Soquel, California shares his approach for preventing and treating both the seaonal flu and the dreaded Swine Flu (H1N1) this winter....
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To the Girls Down the Hall: Ave et Avete
by Susan M. Silver | A grown woman grapples with the rejection from young neighbors after developing environmental illness....
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Typical Symptoms of Tick-borne Infections
Steven J. Harris, M.D., an LLMD practicing in California, summarizes the typical symptoms of different tick-borne infections commonly seen with Lyme disease....
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Toxic Terror
When you walk into my house, chemicals waft from your clothes. I know right away that the laundry detergent you use is toxic (most are) and that if I am around you for long I will get a headache. Should I tell you?...
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The next HIV? ME/CFS and AIDS activists unite
by Peggy Munson | Hi Friends & fellow revolutionaries, As some of you may know, the biggest news to hit the ME/CFS community -- ever -- just dropped a couple of days ago on October 9, 2009....
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From Chronic Fatigue to Lyme: Medically Unexplained No More
by Pamela Weintraub | Over the past year, forces at the highest reaches of medicine have made ever stronger efforts to burden the sick, diseased, and infected with psychiatric labels, consigning them to often mind-numbing psych meds and untreated infection...
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What’s helping you rise?
I just discovered a wonderful website for a wonderful reading/study group: healthpursuitsgroup.com. They are a unique health book club for people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia (FMS), multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), and related conditions....
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There Comes A Time
I have never been very good at surrendering. I have been the fighter—the hold on to the side of the cliff, fight for your life, never give up and never go down with the ship kind of soul. It was exhausting work....
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Recommit. Again and again and again.
I practice recommitment on a monthly, weekly, daily—even moment-to-moment—basis. I also practice forgiveness. I forgive myself for not following through on previous commitments, goals, and self-promises. I let go of recriminations, self-flagellations, self-denigrations and I move on....
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How Lyme Disease Saved My Life
When Lyme disease saved me, I had no clue that anything was really wrong with me, except there were some weird things that kept happening. For one thing, as I told an allergist, my sinuses, in waves, felt funny, and for the last several seasons, I'd gotten morning headaches...
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Tick menagerie: Lyme isn’t the only disease you can get from a tick
From the time National Institutes of Health medical entomologist Willy Burgdorfer first sliced open deer ticks from Shelter Island (off of Long Island) and studied them under the microscope in his Montana lab, he observed a glut of microbes....
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She Speaks in Metaphors (I Understand)
My doctor (one of them) says my entire left side is jammed. It's like shrink-wrapped plastic wrap, tight and brittle but it should be like one large, flowing, unified teardrop. It should have coherence and flexibility and it should breathe....
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Living a holistic life
A holistic lifestyle is more than just eating organic foods and practicing yoga from time to time. It means paying attention to all aspects of your life: relationships, career, health and spirituality to be sure that you are living a life in balance. This might mean making some adjustments. ...
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Personal | Political
Some of you may be wondering: what's with the thrive! journal header imagery? It has a very hippie-esque back-to-the land aesthetic to it. Why did you choose to use this visual to represent your website? The brutal truth is this: it was not so much a choice, ...
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Glass half full
Living with a chronic illness is not easy. Especially when your symptoms include severe depression and hopelessness. It can take work to turn the picture upside down and see the glass as half full. But I can tell you that the effort is well worth it. On my bad days, all I can see is that I am in my sixth year living in...
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Let it Flow
Blocked energy results in stagnation. Stagnation can contribute to disease. As part of my personal healing initiative, I promised myself this year to focus on "flow" and to open up all those blocked passages in body and mind. One result of this is the "primal scream" practice I began a few months ago after moving to a ...
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The “Question” of Health Reform
Patricia Ann Rattray writes about how the government and corporate elite work together to silence those with environmental illness and others who threaten the status quo balance of power and profit....