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From the Editor’s Desk: YES. and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. — James Joyce, Ulysses
yes is an opening up to life, to fully experiencing what can be.
The sublime yes.
There is, as always, an exception. As Tara Brach says, “If we have been traumatized in the past, old feelings of terror may be triggered…our attempts at Yes might actually end up flooding us with fear. For the time being, saying No to what feels like too much, and Yes to what simply works to keep us balanced, is the most compassionate response we can offer ourselves.”
The most important single coping technique in my toolbox for EDS, for life, is the word “yes.” Will I get out of bed this morning? Yes. Will I answer someone’s question today? Yes. Our lives, particularly as people with all the challenges of EDS, can be filled with “no” so easily. At times, for some of us, it becomes an automatic response, the simplest answer. Instead of wondering whether or not we'll be able to manage an adventure, why not just say no to the possibility of disappointment? The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure. — Joseph Campbell No builds walls. Yes opens paths. Sometimes no seems inevitable. But saying no can instead be viewed as saying yes to something else, to something more important. No, I can’t work in the yard today — because I’m saying yes to going to the opera tonight. No, I won’t take a proton pump inhibitor to manage reflux — I’m going to say yes to other solutions that allow me better digestive access to nutrients.
The tension between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, between ‘I can’ and ‘I cannot’, makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one’s self. — Anatole Broyard I was a few months shy of the age of six when I failed my first test. I came home from my first day of school with a note from the school nurse saying I hadn’t passed a physical examination for flat feet, along with a sheet of exercises to develop my arches. I was ashamed, somehow thinking the failure was personal. But my mother just laughed, threw it all away, and said, “Exercises won’t help your feet, believe me. You’ve got the family joints.”
‘No’ is always an easier stand than ‘Yes.’ — Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Across my life, I’ve learned how deep in my family those joints ran, and how despite some extreme difficulties, we had nonetheless triumphed generation after generation in unexpected ways. My mother’s problems were different than those faced by her mother and aunt, yet each of them managed to overcome significant challenges despite their bodies to live extraordinary lives. They each found paths that were examples to me of how to continue to say yes through life, and more, how to help others find their own voices to say yes.
Yes isn’t necessarily easy, though. Yes isn’t positive thinking, something superficial to make us feel all better by getting rid of those nasty feelings. Saying
Edvard Ehlers’ case study was published in 1901, the year my grandmother was born. EDS was named in 1936 when my mother was three. Both were gone
Can I do the housework today, can I get to the store — maybe not, but can I lift my soul with music, can I watch the birds in the trees and the sun on the grass? Yes.
AUTUMN
2015
before I knew there was a name for the family joints. I have recently gone back to nearly the origins of their side of my family and discovered, in a 15th-century ancestor, evidence of our connective tissue disorder. He is another life example, not one I use to shame me into doing better, but to remind myself how one can find a path to a life despite the bodies we are given. If a dwarf in the mid-1400s, with a hunched back and lame from birth, can find his way from Lithuania to being college-educated; join the Augustinian monks at St. Mark the Evangelist church in Cracow; and become the Blessed Michał Giedroj´c (a patron saint of the sick) — then I think it must be possible for me to manage to find a way to live in the 21st century. If he could continue to say yes to those asking for his help, then I can say yes to what’s been given me. At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes. — E. M. Forster Saying no is resisting. Saying yes is accepting. Try meditating on yes. Say it over and over, in your mind or out loud. As you breathe in, as you breathe out. Yes. Say yes to whatever thought floats to the surface. Say yes to the fact the room is too cold or too hot. Say yes when you think of someone, or a problem, or a feeling. Yes. Acknowledge them, and let them be. Say yes. Love them and let them go.
‘Yes’ is the mother of all positive words, next to ‘love.’ Maybe ‘love’ is the father of all positive words. — Jason Mraz
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Saying yes to negative thoughts doesn’t mean dwelling on those thoughts or giving them power to harm us. Even when we find ourselves in a situation in which we have to say no to protect ourselves, we can still aknowledge our fear and hurt, so that they can fade away into the light of ourselves. Yes to the pain in my leg. Yes to that thought that blames myself for all the trouble. Yes to the heat. Yes to the traffic noise. Yes to that annoying twitch. At first it may seem silly, or insincere, but with time and practice, everything else may seem a little silly. Breathe it all in and soar into a wide open blue sky of yes. Within that sky, there is plenty of room for dark clouds of no, but they form and dissolve without changing the character of that expanse of blue and light. Be compassionate to yourself. Find something to say yes to. Find love. I imagine that yes is the only living thing. — e. e. cummings
Mark C. Martino
AUTUMN
2015