Clarity, Awareness, Presence, Acceptance, and Gratitude: A Conversation with Claire Jones of Sista Creative Rising and Musings of a Black Disabled Elder

Welcome to a new episode of A Friend for the Long Haul - A Long Covid Podcast! Claire Jones, co-founder of Sista Creatives Rising and creator of Musings of a Black Disabled Elder, is a repeat guest of the pod. She has developed a five-part framework for navigating life's chaos: Clarity, Awareness, Presence, Acceptance, and Gratitude. In this episode, Claire and I talk about what it means to build a life when illness, disability, trauma, grief, and change knock us sideways.

We talk about:

• Learning to live and resist within your capacity, and why your contribution doesn't have to look like anyone else's

• Claire's experience with cancer and how it changed her relationship with self-love, joy, and worthiness

• Why acceptance isn't the same thing as forgiveness

• Grieving the life you thought you would have while still making room for a different kind of joy

• The cognitive cost of constantly trying to manage other people's experience of you

• Living a COVID-conscious life without allowing other people's perceptions to define what makes a life rich or fulfilling

• "Getting ahead of life before life gets ahead of you”

Claire reminds us that life will always contain suffering, disruption, and uncertainty. The goal isn't to become so grounded that nothing ever knocks us off course, it's to develop a way back to ourselves.

Read Sista Creatives Rising and Musings of a Black Disabled Elder on Substack.

A Friend for the Long Haul is a podcast about chronic illness, disability, Long COVID, community, and the messy business of building meaningful lives when our bodies and circumstances don't cooperate with the plans we made.

If this conversation resonates with you, subscribe/follow the podcast and share it with someone who might need it.

#LongCOVID #ChronicIllness #Disability #DisabilityCommunity #ChronicIllnessCommunity #Acceptance #Grief #SelfLove #SistaCreativesRising

Find Claire and Amaranthia's Instagram account for Sista Creatives Rising here: https://www.instagram.com/sistacreativesrising

and their website is: https://www.sistacreativesrising.com/ Follow A Friend for the Long Haul - A Long Covid Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afriendforthelonghaulpodcast/

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