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What Are You Most Grateful For Right Now?

As the title may suggest this post is about gratitude and its importance for not just mental well-being, but also overall personal well-being in day to day life. I’m going to give you a list of the top five things I am grateful for right now as an example and hopefully as inspiration for you to come up with gratitude lists for yourself.

In no particular order or way:

1. To be alive

2. My ever recovering health and mobility

3. My education and career

4. My friends and chosen family

5. My patients/clients

Feel free to share your own gratitude lists in the comments if you wish.

Love, Light and wellness, Dr Sabatini-Blake

To New Adventures

Recently I was given the opportunity to shift my life into more trival medicine and education and I have to say this has been a fantastic change, but that also meant leaving some of the social work and mental health side if my last career in the dust. If you know me I prefer harm reduction models in everything and that meant letting go of my last two clients on the mental health side even if the last one ended our contract before I had the opportunity to end services from my side of things.

Im still working on my next book and the album, but writing syllabus and working on more sobriety and wellness programs is my primary focus right now. Being a non western doctor is not just an honor, yet also a privilege because we operate similarly but im not tied to a 90 hour medicine week. I would be just as dressed as a western doctor if I was dealing with that much in medicine a week as well, but that is why I will do my best to never take that route with my career.

Due to my physical and mental well-being I completed and 11 day stint in my local hospital unhbc that was so traumatic that I hope to never end up in a western hospital ever again and it made my mental health worse while I was in there as the doctors and most Healthcare staff were incredibly racist and transphobic until the back half of my stay where they started to treat both myself and other patients as humans.

I started testosterone yesterday and I will admit my body is feeling happier after being depressed for years on estradiol despite still being two spirit-feminine and she or ze for pronouns primarily. I’m excited to become muscular and heal and reveal old wounds to tgebsift tissue injuries my physical body still holds onto and being testosterone dominant will help that in my case.

Another Step Forward, A Couple Steps Back

No matter the goals you have or the life you live at some point and likely more than once you will experience hurdles or setbacks that may even tempt you to quit working towards your own better future. You can either learn and grow from these setbacks or you can let them defeat you time and time again.

I’ll have you know between my physical limitations on bad days and living with life long chronic pain I have my fair share of setbacks every breathing day on this Earth, but here I am doing everything I can to defeat these goals in a prompt yet timely matter. All it takes is commitment, accountability, and internal motivation to successfully crush all of your goals.

Yes you are in fact allowed and in this space encouraged to feel any wear downs or defeated feelings about your setbacks. Last year I flared so bad I could barely function for six months. I took every win I could during that time but it was worse than I’d felt since 2018 for that extended period of illness I went through. Many of you may remember it.

Life is the ebbs and flows in and out of each thing we experience it and how well we handle the loss between the peaks. To do this you have to make peace with the darkness and learn hoe to cha-cha with your demon(s). As I’ve spoken about openly for years I gave chronic PTSD and OCD that is well managed, but even that has slip ups. I guarantee I make a mistake every darn day just to make sure I don’t feel too good about anything.

7 months off grid was a fiscal setback last year, but it was an emotional power play where I had the opportunity to use my training and truly reset my mind to a better calmer state and for that the experience will always be priceless to me.

Have you experienced anything lately that felt like a win and a loss at the same time and had to navigate the choices and circumstances surrounding any decision?

Today was supposed to be my soft launch, but instead I’m rebuilding my life after leaving again. I left again because after a total of over 16 years of dv 4 years 3 months in the clutch of his grasp. I have started over again, this time I’m mostly fiscally stable I have my rescue cat to keep me safe and I’m looking to get possession on my home asap once I get the offer in.

Love light, and powa babes. If you can buy some of my merch and help me and other non white femmes stay safe this time of year. http://aq_blake_lit_merch/myshopify.com

Changing Times, Tides, and Adventures

As you likely noticed I/ we have changed our website domain name. This is to better reflect the current focus on writing and other literary focuses including zir new business: Addison Blake Literary Co. After taking some time to write music that is presently in the process of being refined, Addison felt a calling in Zir soul and spirit to return to the extended literary process and start the draft to the sequel of Paralysis: Beating the Odds.

If you have read Paralysis: Beating the Odds I promise you are only twenty to twenty-five percent ready for the radically inclusive disabled indigi-queer Tell all that Addison has in the works for you. From trials and tribulations to fierce empowerment Addison has finally experienced a 180° in life and is ready to recount all that got the Cree, Metis, two spirit, disabled powerhouse to where ze is today in the form of an adult satirical/comical non fictitious work.

Thank you for your continued support and business,

Addison

Playing the sounds of my Soul

Music has always been a large part of my life even when I was just a kid. I started to learn the acoustic guitar at six years of age, around ten I began to learn the organ, in high school band it was the alto saxophone. So it was to nobody’s surprise that I took the opportunity to relearn guitar as music therapy to rewire my hand after I experienced left side hemiplegia.

Now making music is my biggest cause of sukha. This is why I do my best to sit down every day, find the key that fits my mood and sing out whatever is stuck on my mind. It is my most common source of peace and emotional release. I used to bottle everything up until I was in tears, so for me music has been a way where I connect to my inner self and work through whatever is going on in my mind. When people think self care, they often just think its pampering yourself, but in reality it’s about taking care of yourself so that you feel better. Whether I laugh or cry my guitars and daily play are a part of my self care routine that keep me the most level.

When it comes to genuine songwriting I try to take a more deep and meaningful approach to lyrics and piece together the TAB after I’ve got the lyrics roughly drafted. For the music I’ve been writing for the last year and a half each song was either about a love or a trauma. For me it has been telling the not so kind truths that were all cut from my novel in a way where despite some of them not being the most positive topics, they still remain heartfelt songs.

We all have that one thing that brings us peace and I’m truly grateful mine is not fishing.

What brings you peace?

Physical healing and emotional Regeneration

Disclaimer; this is entirely my own theory to which I do not have the resources to prove incorrect or correct. I do not think there’s science to back it, but I’ve always had a theory in reference to my paralysis that it was a physical manifestation of all of the emotional turmoil that was compartmentalized into different areas of my body as physical ailment. I say this because as I have dealt with a lot of “my shit” and in times where I have noticed an improvement in my mental health I have also noticed coinciding and parallel improvement in my recovery rate or rate of improvement in a muscle movement or strength.

I know for fact that I hold a lot of tension. While some have “no chill”, I have ” no relaxation”. I have been previously described as one of the most tense people some know. Everyone is always trying to get me to relax. This is why I have a pick that I fidget with whenever I leave my home these days. I find it significantly more discreet to flip a pick between just three fingers as if I were fiddling with a pen. There are however a few people in ny life that just being around them can bring me to a calm, zen place mentally where I feel most hippie-esque. It’s not just the zen in those scenarios it’s knowing that with those people I can let my guard down and be honest to a fault without social consequence. The ones who check on me when I’m quiet because they suspect that I’m not sleeping or my pain levels are higher than I’m openly admitting to.

Being chronically ill I fully acknowledge that I count my energy in spoons, sometimes I have five for the day and others it’s five for the week. I have no desire to be around those that suck the life out of me like a positive vibe leech. I prefer to only spend my free time with people that recharge my batteries with laughter, connection, and good conversation.a few acquaintances recently claimed that they never laugh as hard as they do with me with other people. I guess I’m just willing to try and find that heart chord in conversation that will make someone laugh until they cry because I am familiar with what used to be an internal abyss of darkness.

More recently, last year I got back into counseling after my bottom surgery because I needed to process some old trauma aloud and I was finally ready to say my piece to find my peace. After each session I noticed my body starting to hold less pain and less tension as I was healing this seventeen year old soul wound. It continued to improve and eventually I started to feel a lot better on my good days and even the days where I cannot get out of bed due to physical pain are not as bad now that i survived my own mental prison. Even if it was the movement of a single digit of a finger or toe I notice a functional difference each time my emotional space improves.

That delicate balance between using and saving spoons

It requires years of self analysis and knowing my own physical limits to even begin to gauge the amount of energy (spoons) “re spoon theory” to try and gauge how much I can do in a day. Some days I have the spoons to complete an entire weeks to do list in half the day and others it takes me all day to complete a single thing because my pain levels are just too high. My transition and getting my hormone levels corrected was an act of creating more physical energy in my body and during good months even having more good days than bad.

Prime example: I recently had a 6 day migraine that left me with zero daily spoons so I mostly just ate when I had to, bathed, and rested. I can tolerate the pain, but the light sensitivity and nausea really knock me down a lot. I’m still trying to bounce back from it, but I’m regaining energy daily thanks to proper exercise and nutrition. The week prior to this pdin spike I had had more energy than I had in quite some time and was getting lots done so I anticipated being knocked on my ass, although I did not anticipate it being so bad.

With a little bit of caffeine I can push through most levels of pain expect my max pain tolerance, which in turn makes it that much harder to notice thet I’m pouring from an empty cup that lacks physical energy. At least I’ve gotten better at taking a week off when I need to. I may be stubborn and willing to do what I have to to get things done, but I understand that in being an empowered, disabled, two spirit woman I need time to rest and recharge, and I will enjoy every second of it.

What do you do when you need to rest?

It’s Been almost 6 years

complete reference guide to the first 36 months in recovery

It’s been a hot minute since I was left hemiplegic and my life changed forever. I sit here staring out the window on a overcast winter day with tears rolling down my face. My body trembles with the acknowledgement of all that has changed and what has maintained its original form. I wish I could say that I am still that person, but like a healing plant I’ve experienced some photosynthesis and began to blossom into an entirely new existence.

From wheelchair to Walker,

from cane to cane,

From leg brace to ankle brace,

I never left a trace,

The spirit of him still exists inside me,

But he rarely shows his face,

From from paralysis recovery to gender transition,

I never thought I’d be in this position,

I continue to heal to no appeal,

I wish someway we could just get real,

The pain lives on with me still in that feel,

Somehow I sit here it’s beyond surreal,

Behind this smile is the tears of my past,

The rivers from my eyes grew so vast,

Finding my culture hungry like a vulture,

From parallel bars to winning interpersonal wars,

I’ve always been up for the battle I’m getting back in the Saddle.

Love and light,

Addison Blake

What are you doing to make social distancing easier for you?