The Wolf Finally Frees Itself
— Brianna Albers

You know that poem by Anne Boyer I love about holes? You fall into one, only to dig yourself out over weeks or months or years, only to fall into yet another hole, this one both different and familiar. Life, then, becomes a series of holes, some small…

As a lifelong proponent of therapy, I go through phases. Sometimes I don’t need the support. Sometimes I do, so I go through the whole rigamarole of finding a practitioner I vibe with. It’s not a fun process. I know so much about therapy that I am, in a word,…

Words always come to me when I need them. Lines by Ada Limón, Anne Boyer, and Marie Howe act as life preservers, guiding me back to my center. When life gets tough, I always find myself at the feet of Julian of Norwich. “All shall be well,” she says,…

I prefer to write columns after everything is said and done. It’s why I didn’t tell you all about my dad’s cancer until I knew he was going to be OK. I write stories for a living, so I guess it makes sense that I’m drawn to narratives with…

I turned 30 on June 29, which I suppose is why this year’s Cure SMA conference was so difficult for me. You can’t pass from one decade to another without reflecting on everything you have — or haven’t — accomplished. That type of reflection is particularly difficult when surrounded…

Certain things happen when you turn 21. You come of age. You can legally drink in every state in the U.S. And, if you have a cervix, you start getting regular screenings for cervical cancer. I didn’t know that when I turned 21. I wasn’t sexually active at the…

Note: This column was updated July 9, 2025, to correct the year the author’s mother retired from May 2024 to May 2023. I’ve been putting off this column for months, I guess in the hopes that it’d become easier to write. I didn’t want to go public until I…

Author’s note: I wrote most of this column on my phone while getting an atypical mole removed. If you wondered why I disappeared from social media, it’s because I’ve been busy crossing things off my medical bucket list, like getting shot up with lidocaine and watching a surgeon suture my…

Even with SMA, my checkups have, for the most part, become pretty routine. Every six months, I drive 30 minutes to my nearest specialty clinic. While there, I see various doctors, each with their own unique vibe. My neurologist catches me up on all the books he’s read recently.

It was another appointment in an appointment-packed January. My hopes weren’t particularly high, but no one will ever accuse me of being a less-than-perfect patient, so I braved the cold bite of the new year. I was seeing an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist based out of…

Let me explain something called “pee math.” I was familiar with the concept, but didn’t realize it was a common experience in the SMA community until a colleague brought it up. It goes like this: When boarding a flight, you calculate how much liquid you can drink before…

Four must be my unlucky number, because the worst years of my life have all ended in four: 2014, the year of major depression, and 2024, the year of suck. (I’m sure 2004 was bad, too, given that I’d just undergone a spinal fusion the year before. Thankfully, I don’t…