https://livingwithscleroderma.com/clued-in/ Reflections on the Messy Complexity of Chronicity Wed, 22 Feb 2017 00:44:46 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://livingwithscleroderma.com/clued-in/#comment-57676 Wed, 22 Feb 2017 00:44:46 +0000 http://www.livingwithscleroderma.com/?p=4455#comment-57676 Love crosswords as a stress reducer, but I am not as good at them as you are; I don’t have as much time to play with them, either. I save the Sunday crosswords from the Boston Globe and do one when I get a chance, like on a slow week-end or when I am travelling. I am also a word person, so it’s not surprising that I enjoy crosswords. But it might be surprising that I did not start doing them on a regular basis until my husband left me, very unexpectedly, some years ago. As my friends know, this was a devastating loss for me, and looking for comforting distractions, I lit on crosswords. There was something satisfying about getting all the squares filled in. It might also be surprising–it was surprising to me–that in using crosswords to buffer loss, I had something in common with Joan Didion, a wonderful word person, who describes turning to them after the very unexpected death of her husband. She tells about it in The Year of Magical Thinking.

]]>