April 2025 Shell Exchange

Welcome to the April 2025 Shell Exchange!

Is this post seriously overdue?

Yup. Between my much-needed vacation at the beginning of the year and swapping this newsletter over to Beehiiv, I’ve been drowning. (It isn’t just here - I’m swamped in every aspect of my creative life)

So, yeah, this one’s heavier than usual.

And late.

But I’m doing my best to try to get back on track. (Your patience is appreciated)

Midway through each month, I drop a list of recommended reads. I try to feature winning hermit crab essays (🦀) when possible. But those charming crabbies aren’t always easy to find. So I also make it a point to share pieces on invisible illness.

If you come across an essay or article I haven’t mentioned that you feel warrants attention, drop the link in the comments, and I’ll add it to the rotation next month.

1. “My PMDD Ruled My Life. Then I Got on Zepbound” by Elisabeth Donnelly from The Cut*

“Six months postpartum, my mood was dark and dreary. I didn’t quite notice. I was busy with the baby. My husband suggested therapy, and my psychiatrist prescribed Wellbutrin. The drug barely made a dent. Of course, it didn’t help matters that my emotional and physical nadir coincided with a global pandemic. My initiation into motherhood was lonely. I was the primary caretaker for our daughter, as my husband worked full time as a Legal Aid attorney and pounded the pavement for his City Council campaign during nights and weekends. In those months before the vaccine, my only ‘friend’ who I’d see regularly was Tyra Banks when I watched America’s Next Top Model: the complete series on Hulu, and she was no friend to women.”

*Paywalled, but a certain ladder will grant you access

2. “The Many Kinds of Neurodivergence” by Emil M. from Mosaic of Minds

“When people think about neurodivergence (natural variation in human brain development), they often mean autism, ADHD, or dyslexia. These developmental and learning disabilities are common, have a strong presence in the media, or both. However, there are many ways that human brains can develop differently.”

3. “Why Do I Minimize My Pain?” by Elizabeth Arbour from The Walrus

“Folks living with chronic pain have a harder time working or going to school. Pain affects our relationships with friends and family and with our broader communities. Pain is mostly invisible to others, which means that there is often the assumption that we are “able bodied” and do not require accommodation. We have to justify or explain why we need support, and we are sometimes met with disbelief, judgment, or minimization of our pain. This affects mental health, which, in turn, can exacerbate pain—a never-ending loop of hurt.”

4. “I Spent Years Begging Doctors to Help Me. I Wasn’t Prepared For What Happened When They Finally Did” by Kristina Kasparian, PhD from HuffPost Personal

“I was 24 when I started begging gynecologists for surgery. I’d just completed my master’s in Europe and was beginning an exciting Ph.D. program. I’d been awarded more scholarships than I could even accept. My brain was buzzing with ideas and the world was my oyster ... except I couldn’t use the bathroom like most people my age, couldn’t get through a morning without vomiting after my shower, couldn’t get myself out of bed during my period or exist without the ache weighing in my center. I’d bleed so much that I was chronically low on hemoglobin and passing out on the couch instead of attending classes or conferences. Medications only morphed the agony into an even more intolerable reality by making me forget how to think and speak and feel.”

5. “Present Tense: The Long Shadow of an Eating Disoder” by Maggie Slepian from Longreads

“I dove headfirst into a full-blown eating disorder. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Instead of confronting the ravaged ache of my teenage heart, I turned to what had always been there: restriction.”

6. “The List” by Noreen Graf from Electric Lit

“I try to think of what I’ve done. Was it that she saw me playing Solitaire on my phone when she got home from work? How could she know I was at it all day? I haven’t played in years, but today I played while attending Zoom meetings with my audio and video off.  I’m a Rehabilitation Counseling professor at a public research university that sits along the border with Mexico. But seriously, two back-to-back faculty meetings and then a department meeting with the dean. It’s grueling. Most times I garden on Zoom, but it was raining this afternoon.”

7. “From the Gut” by Will Boast from Virginia Quarterly Review

“While the root causes of our collective dyspepsia eluded me, never mind a cure, I did find strange comfort in such company. And I got some context and understanding. The literary history of indigestion, I came to see, has much to tell us about why we seem to be living, once again, in an age of the stomach.”

8. “He-Man’s Ripped Muscles Fueled My Eatin Disorder and Body Dysmorphia” by Justin Kolber from Open Secrets Magazine

“It certainly worked on us. James and I were ready to become heroes, creatures far better than our default weak selves. Of course, the strange twist of He-Man is that he didn’t really transform that much. Prince Adam had the same voice and haircut, and clearly had bulging muscles underneath his skin-hugging shirt. The only difference when He-Man raised up the Power Sword? Some lightning bolts popped his shirt off.”

9. “‘Simply good science’: Women’s health research reveals clues to aging and Alzheimer’s” by Elizabeth Cooney from STAT

“‘Historically, and even to this day, biomedical research has overwhelmingly focused on only male and not female cells in animals in pre-clinical research, and females are also underrepresented in clinical trials,’ Bronwyn Graham, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said in a media briefing. ‘We know less about how to diagnose and treat health conditions in women as well as people with variations in sex characteristics, trans, and gender-diverse people.’”

10. “The Doctor, the Biohacker, and the Quest to Treat Their Long COVID” by Erika Hayasaki from Men’s Health

“All of this has led Levi and the others here to this very room. Levi hadn’t planned on meeting, much less liking, Dr. Light. If nothing else, this pulmonologist was a bit of a curiosity, he thought: A doctor who has long COVID too? But maybe this could be his chance to get a lead on a breakthrough treatment. To finally feel like himself again.”

11. “How to Be a Caregiver to Aging, Difficult Parents” by Alissa Bader Clark from Open Secrets Magazine

“It’s almost thirty years later. My mother collapses at home and the ambulance brings her to the hospital, the one nearest to her house, in the town she always thought she was too good for. The hospital admits her to the intensive care unit. For the next few days, she’s only barely conscious. Eventually, she can mumble a few words, but none make any sense. You can tell that something has snapped, that something is not quite right with her.”

12. “Many People With Disabilities Risk Losing Their Medicaid if They Work Too Much” by Tony Leys from KFF Health News

“A paid assistant stays with Mecham at night. Then a home health aide comes in the morning to help him get out of bed, go to the bathroom, shower, and get dressed for work at his online marketing business. Without the assistance, he would have to shutter his company and move into a nursing home, he said.”

13. “For Some Women With Serious Physical Ailments, Mental Illness Has Become a Scapegoat Diagnosis” by Shreyas Teegala and Simar Bajaj from Smithsonian

“Upset about this dismissal, she sought out doctor after doctor—with little recourse. Denner says a gastroenterologist called her ‘a drama queen like many women her age,’ while another called her a psychopath, making up symptoms to manipulate those around her. ‘These doctors were getting frustrated that they couldn’t find the answer to my problems,’ she says.”

14. “Long Covid data are being erased, again” by Betsy Ladyzhets from The Sick Times

“In that vein, the lack of comprehensive Long COVID case counts may be considered one of public health’s greatest failures. But as we enter the sixth year of this ongoing pandemic, U.S. institutions are sweeping this mass disabling event under the rug perhaps more than ever before. We can’t let them get away with it.”

15. “Inking Against Invisibility” by Talia Hibbert from Longreads

“Yes, I did. In fact, I looked very well. I was a big, strong, sensible girl, one who kept up with the other children and never complained. Tall and solid, like my father, allergic to tears and nonsense, like my mother. I was the definition of fine, both physically and mentally.”

16. “There’s No Reason For People Not to Know”: Bella Ramsey Opens Up About Their Liberating Autism Diagnosis & The Epic New Season of The Last of Us” by Zing Tsjeng from British Vogue

“One could argue they also present a new kind of hope. On a planet that feels increasingly hostile towards queer people, here is a nonbinary person who, despite the rightward drift of politics, has millions in their thrall, including a devoted online following and the influence that comes with playing the lead in one of the biggest television hits in history. And they understand they have a voice too, even over a warming plate of beans on toast in the farmyard cafe. ‘It’s the golden age of America!’ they splutter, sarcastically, of Donald Trump’s election. ‘Like, really?’ they mutter, more angrily. ‘It’s terrifying, actually – how is he in power?’”

17. “The Evermaskers” by Daniel Engber from The Atlantic*

“The COVID-conscious people have not abandoned science, Dennis told me. It’s the opposite: They’ve come to think that science has abandoned them.”

*Again, a certain ladder will get you beyond the paywall

18. “RFK Jr calls autism an ‘epidemic’ and a tragedy. As an autistic journalist, I have some comments” by Eric Garcia from The Independent

“But Kennedy took it a step further by comparing what he has called the “autism epidemic” to a measles epidemic and diabetes, even though autism does not kill people the way measles or diabetes can.”