A family physician reflects on her own experiences in handling her patients’ abortion stories and notices the parallels in her own practice with that of an abortion doula.
Read moreCounterweight: On Veteran’s Day 2020, a reflection about carrying the weight of the past by Michael Lund
A response to Karen Lea Germain’s essay titled “Weight” in the Spring 2020 Intima. I begin with the weight of my parents’ cremains (analogues to those of Germain’s aunt and uncle), physical realities blending with the heaviness of regret. I will end, hopefully, with the lightness of relief (in which the pun of light includes illumination). At the center of my response to her fine essay is the weight of a military veteran’s sorrow.
Read moreThe Body Politic: Fashioning our own earthly justice in a challenging time by Adam Lalley
In the short story “Good As New” by Andrew Taylor-Troutman in the Spring 2020 Intima, the site of a teenager’s accidental death becomes a healing destination. At the little white cross beneath an oak tree, cancer is cured and the wounded throw off their wheelchairs. But when a line of pilgrims stretches into the next county, the miracle dries up.
Some, but not all, are restored. The inequity mirrors the disparities of our very own bodies— our health, even the lengths of our lives, are doled out unequally. There’s no earthly justice in our bodies.
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