December Shell Exchange
Surprise! (Don't Worry: It's a Short One)
Welcome to the December Shell Exchange!
Midway through each month, I drop a list of recommended reads. I try to feature winning hermit crab essays (🦀) when possible. But those charming crabbies aren’t always easy to find. So I also make it a point to share pieces on invisible illness.
If you come across an essay or article I haven’t mentioned that you feel warrants attention, drop the link in the comments, and I’ll add it to the rotation next month.
(What? I did say these were typed ahead of time. So this isn’t really cheating on my promise of taking a hiatus)
1. “Invisible Landscapes” by Jennifer Brandel from Orion
“The interstitium’s existence — this golden metaphor rooted in our own biology — has finally given me words for the role I play, and what I’ve been noticing others doing everywhere, but couldn’t articulate. And if anthropomorphizing a body part is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”
2. “There are Giants in the Sky” by Natalie Chiu-lu Hung from Minerva Rising Press
“Five years later, my mother finally found the courage to tell me about my dad’s suicide at the dining table one night. I felt everything and nothing. Switching into autopilot, I floated to the freezer, hid my face behind the open door, and cooled my burning cheeks. Once I could move my body again, I walked upstairs to my room where I could be safely alone with my anguish. The truth was incomprehensible yet made sense of so much, and left me with even more questions.”
3. “You Will Bear This Pain Long After You’re Gone” by Courtney Zoffness from Electric Literature
“It’s not just that when you decided to call a doctor, you had to research what kind of doctor treated hip pain and who had a clinic near your apartment and who accepted your insurance and that merely scheduling it, committing to seeing a specialist, an anatomical authority, created immeasurable relief.”
4. “The Train Wrecked in Slow Motion” by Grace Glassman from Slate
“She was flying up the ladder in her career, and was, like me, the mother of small children. After delivering her baby, she started bleeding, and despite efforts to stop it, she continued to hemorrhage. Her team couldn’t save her. We were stunned. No one expects a healthy woman in the hands of the most advanced health care system in the world to die in childbirth.”