Author: Carolyn Thomas

The most-read posts of 2017 from Heart Sisters

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

This past year has felt in turn like the most agonizingly slow year ever, and at other times like a runaway train threatening to throw me off at the next turn. Just this week during our family’s Christmas Eve dinner, for example, my daughter Larissa commented wistfully about her 2 1/2-year-old daughter Everly Rose, whose only goal in life lately is to be a big girl: “Last Christmas, we had a baby in the house, but this year I have a kid!” Why is she growing so fast? Where did that whole year go? But slow or fast, my Sunday morning blog posts continued throughout 2017. Thank you, dear readers – here are some of the Heart Sisters highlights for the past year:
 Continue reading “The most-read posts of 2017 from Heart Sisters” →

The Christmas truce – 1914

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

Christmas Truce 1914

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥    @HeartSisters

As World War I raged on in the trenches of Europe in 1914, Christmas Eve arrived cold and bleak. But German soldiers put up Christmas trees decorated with candles, on the parapets of their trenches. Although their enemies, the British soldiers, could see the lights, it took them a few minutes to figure out where they were from. Could this be a trick?

British soldiers were ordered not to fire, but to watch closely. Instead of trickery, however, the British soldiers heard the Germans singing carols and celebrating. Here’s what one young soldier wrote home about this remarkable event:     Continue reading “The Christmas truce – 1914” →

Oscillating narrative: the learned art of re-creating ourselves

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

“We all re-create ourselves; it’s just that some of us use more imagination than others.”  ~ Madonna

Whether we want to or not, we often end up re-creating ourselves after a significant medical diagnosis. Researcher Dr. Kathy Charmaz calls this phenomenon “the loss of self“ after such a diagnosis, a loss experienced while we’re learning to adapt and adjust to this strange new life as a patient. When we try to talk about this painful loss to others who haven’t ever experienced it, most have trouble taking us seriously, or they may want to jolly us out of our current reality.

Yet how we talk about this matters to how we get through it. Continue reading “Oscillating narrative: the learned art of re-creating ourselves” →

How heart patients can untwist that twisted thinking

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 19 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

The freshly-diagnosed heart patient has plenty of opportunity to start thinking thoughts that are new, bizarre and sometimes even frightening. Any life-altering diagnosis can throw us off-balance emotionally, but with heart disease, even the tiniest twinge of new chest pain can paralyze us. Is this something? Is it nothing? Should I call 911 again? As Australian cardiac psychologist (and more importantly, a heart patient) Len Gould likes to say: “Before a heart attack, every twinge is just indigestion. After a heart attack, every twinge is another heart attack!”

And our worried thoughts can stick around far longer than they should, as we play them over and over and over like our first Beatles album. Mental health professionals call this kind of twisted thinking cognitive distortion. Continue reading “How heart patients can untwist that twisted thinking” →