Life + Culture

Caregiving is Hard

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Back at the end of November, when I decided to blog twice a week, I didn’t know what life had in store. During the holiday season, both my mom and brother started having increased health issues. Things have gotten progressively worse since then. While they don’t live with me, I’m the primary caregiver for both of them. Caregiving is hard.

I try to do all I can to help them, but it also takes an emotional toll. It hurts to see them hurting. And there is nothing that I can do about that.

My ability to cope with it all has diminished significantly. I don’t know that my twice a week blogging schedule is sustainable. Not that anyone is forcing me. It was a promise to myself first. But I have to focus on what I can do. I’m reaching out to to others and seeking resources to help with everything.

For now, I’ll shoot for posting once a week on Sundays. I don’t want to blog just to blog and not feel genuine in terms of my writing. I strive to create content that is not only interesting and helpful for me, but for others as well. When I don’t have the energy to write what I want, I don’t want to to just post filler. Which some posts feel like, even if they are kind of fun.

Maybe this is part of my answer in terms of deciding whether to continue blogging. I’m letting time be my guide as I continue this caregiving journey.

Quote of the Week: Tommaso Landolfi

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“I learned about the only two remedies for pain, sadness, paturnias and similar sores of the human heart: they are chocolate and time … I mean that when you feel sad and grief, you just need to eat a little of chocolate or wait a while.”    

                                                                                                   ~ Tommaso Landolfi

 

Blogging in 2024

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blogging in 2006

Blogging in 2024 versus blogging in 2006. It’s a whole different world.

This picture above is how my old blog, Anali’s First Amendment, looked back then. This was the first capture of it on the Wayback Machine on August 11, 2006. My first post was on April 29th of that year, so it took a little while for it to register on the internet.

I was still using an alias and my picture didn’t show my whole face. This blog has been through so many iterations that I forgot what it used to look like!

We often revisit the past when thinking about what we want in the future. Doing NaBloPoMo last year was part of that process for me. When I finished, I decided that I would write twice a week, Wednesday and Sunday.

So far I have, but I’m starting to wonder why. And I’m starting to wonder why I’m continuing to blog. Before when these thoughts crept up, something would happen that made me feel like I wanted to continue. But I’ve been feeling this way for a bit and nothing has changed this time.

April 29th will be 18 years blogging. When people turn 18, in most places, that means they have reached the age of majority and can be considered an adult. The adulthood of this blog might look different.

I’ll still always write, but writing doesn’t have to be here. Time will tell.

Photo Exhibit: As We Rise

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve posted about my day trip to Salem. Strolling around the city during the holiday season and enjoying a local cafe.

The reason for the trip was to see the photography exhibit, As We Rise, before it left the Peabody Essex Museum. It was wonderful and I’m so glad that I got to see it before it ended on December 31st. The description of the exhibit on the website truly intrigued me.

“Explore Black identity through a compelling compilation of photographs from African diasporic culture. Drawn from Dr. Kenneth Montague’s Wedge Collection in Toronto, a Black-owned collection dedicated to artists of African descent, As We Rise looks at the myriad experiences of Black life through the lenses of community, identity and power.

Organized by Aperture, New York, the exhibition features more than 100 works by Black artists from Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, the United States and South America, as well as throughout the African continent. Black subjects depicted by Black photographers are presented as they wish to be seen , recognizing the complex strength, beauty and vulnerability of Black life.”

The exhibit shows ordinary Black people living their lives and reminded me of my own family photos. The exhibit acknowledges the importance of these pictures. Yes, we as a people have been through a lot. There has been struggle. And the struggle continues.

But we are just like any other people. We live our daily lives and have families and friends. We take pride in our work.
We enjoy the simple things and glamour. We are bold and beautiful.


It feels wonderful to see these people just being themselves and living their lives, just like me. It means something to see oneself, depicted in this way. It means something to see oneself portrayed at all. To show that we existed and continue to exist. And that we will exist.

I remember as a kid watching TV shows like Star Trek and being happy that there were Black people in the future. To a certain extent, it’s silly. It wasn’t real. Even so, it mattered.

The text in the picture above, “Identity as Seeing Ourselves” resonates with me in a similar way.

“These photographs are not only about seeing ourselves and our place in the world, but also picturing where we are going.”

This picture above, which represents refusal, is quite interesting. Not something I would display at home. But I like the idea of us as a people being able to have control over whether we are seen or not and how we choose to be seen.

And last, but not least, As We Rise shows Black people at rest and leisure. I loved this portion so much! What’s the point of life if not to enjoy ourselves and relax at least some of the time? Have we not toiled enough?!

An Instagram post by The Nap Ministry for the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. says it best.

“The teachings of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have been a North Star in my life since I was in elementary school and obsessively wrote every paper for any class on him until college. I’ve read everything he has written and his work grounds my ethos as a Black Liberation Theologian. As the country honors his legacy and celebrates his birthday, I am deep in meditation about leisure for Black People.

Leisure and the right to simply exist without the constant weight of having to be a tool for production is something Black people have been denied for centuries. It is our divine right to simply be and embody leisure as a human right. These photos of MLK, Jr. on vacation in Jamaica in 1965 are a balm and deep breathing. Radical inspiration for our rest practices. We Will Rest!!”

Pluto in Aquarius

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What were you doing between March 23, 2023  and June 11, 2023? During that time period, we got a preview of Pluto in Aquarius. The last time that Pluto changed signs was in 2008.

For me personally, some extremely significant things happened during both of these times. There has been a lot of chatter in the astrology community about Pluto and its impact.

When I first started hearing about it at the beginning of 2023, the first thing that I thought about was that I had somewhat major surgery in 2008. But it was planned surgery. I didn’t have any surgery planned during 2023, so I hoped that Pluto wouldn’t impact me the same way.

Unfortunately, it did. It just wasn’t planned. In the beginning of June 2023, I ended up in the hospital and had emergency surgery. As someone who is usually healthy, this was so out of the blue and bizarre. I was truly shocked.

Both transits weren’t all bad though. Especially between March and June last year. I was starting to make my way into the world and back to focusing on me again after COVID and moving my mom closer to me.

At the end of March, I saw Jill Scott in Boston and the next day traveled to Maryland and DC. I also went on a short retreat at Kripalu in the Berkshires in May. I had so much fun spending time with family and friends and focusing on wellness. Oh, and I got Wordle in one try!

I haven’t mentioned all the changes that happened to me personally, and there are also many things that happened to us as a collective during these times. The 2008 financial crisis, then in March 2023 there was the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Also, I will never forget where I was when I learned that the former president was indicted by the state of New York. I was on the train to DC and had just arrived in New York!

A lot happens when Pluto changes signs. It’s really quite remarkable and something to take note of. Pluto’s orbit around the sun takes 248 years. So it spends a lot of time in each sign. Astrologer Chani Nicholas gives a nice summary of the last time that Pluto was in Aquarius.

“The last time Pluto journeyed through Aquarius, between 1777 and 1798, the world’s balance of power massively shifted. These two decades saw the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The monarchy was toppled in France, showing that even the world’s most powerful institutions can crumble in the face of Pluto’s wrecking ball.

The Age of Enlightenment also reached a crescendo at this time. Aquarian ideals of reason, rationality, and humanity’s power to steer its own destiny fueled this epoch and laid the groundwork for democratic institutions and human rights.”

So why is all this relevant now? Pluto moves into Aquarius again this Saturday, January 20, 2024. An article on Stylecaster explains more about the dates and upcoming changes.

“Pluto has been transiting down-to-business Capricorn since 2008, so its initial move into airy Aquarius on March 23, 2023 marked the first sign shift for this planet in nearly 15 years. This was Pluto’s first dip into the revolutionary sign of the water bearer since the late 18th century—but in true Pluto fashion, it’ll take time to fully complete this zodiacal transition.

Thanks to Pluto’s slow orbit and annual retrograde periods, it reverted back to Capricorn on June 11, 2023, but as of Saturday, January 20, 2024, it will move forward into Aquarius once again. However, this is another temporary dip into Aquarius, as Pluto retrogrades back into Capricorn on September 1. Luckily, it will return to Aquarius for good as of November 19, 2024. From there, Pluto will remain in Aquarius until 2043 and 2044—giving the planet a solid two decades to work its transformative magic in the Aquarius-ruled parts of our chart.”

There is so much happening in the world right now, that I probably cannot even come close to imagining how this will all play out. But I expect there will be some revolutionary changes. Let’s hope for the best.