Julie is a REAL BIRD

So much love to you! I hope we get to the "all the way healed" part FREAKING SOON 😆 💜🫂

I do, yes! Especially since my energy has dwindled, those chapters are like bite sized and so perfect every day.

They truly are. They get almost as many cuddles as they want 😂 (Maggie would prefer to continue getting scritches and hugs instead of going to bed!)

GORGEOUS!

I love it so much I read it every October!

A big bunch of fuchsia pink blossoms in a bunch on a single stem, with many large green leaves in the background. It's called "pigsqueak"!

I'm certain I can't fully update in 300 characters, but I did want to boop everyone. I have been wishing, quite frequently, that I had the ability to get back into this. But I'm still working through so many things. I'm tired of the "healing isn't linear" mantra, but it's excessively true.

Flower:

A black cap conure snuggled into my grey hoodie, getting a little birdy hug. She looks very happy.

Niko the gold cap conure snuggled on the belly of my grey hoodie, his feathers all fluffed up and his eyes closed. He looks Happy-Sleepy.

Maggie and Niko getting cuddles:

Thank you so much! 💜 I love that!

Maggie the black cap conure asleep in my hoodie sleeve. Only her head is sticking out, and her eye is closed.

Even I am sick of hearing myself complain! 😂

But of course that means I keep shrinking away from all my support systems, and I lose connection with people and I feel ever more isolated and alone WHICH DOESN'T HELP EITHER.

Why couldn't I be an octopus instead?

Anyway, sorry. Here's Maggie:

And also, all I have to say these days are depressing things! I'm struggling, I'm sick, I'm stuck, I'm a pincushion and bruised and scarred. I can't even dredge up a single cheery "but hey at least this thing is great!" sign off to end on an artificial high note so we can pretend I'm ok.

I already lost almost all my gains thanks to pneumonia popping back up (it wasn't even something I caught fresh; it was just an opportunistic relapse after taking prednisone), and that's already devastating enough.

So I just...can't know more. I can't do more. I can't see or hear more.

It's been a really long slump for me. Previously I held out hope for successful treatment because I thought it would mean I would get to go back out into the world and be a part of things. But I'll never get so much better that I'll be able to catch a disease with no fallout. I'll lose everything.

And if I poke my head up and get more details on exactly how this world has gone to shit, knowing all the intensely horrible things I'm going through now are for nothing...I won't survive.

I know these things are happening. But looking at them dead in the eyes will kill only me, not them.

But the truth is, all these treatments are as brutal as everyone warned me they would be, and healing is non-linear so I'm currently in a slump where I've lost all my gains and am scared all this will be for nothing, that this is just a treadmill of bad stuff to suffer through with no end.

I tried reading here, but part of my recovery is managing all the things that will make me feel even more hopeless and helpless.

As I subject myself to some of the most invasive, painful, and traumatizing treatments, I have to tell myself it will all be worth it when I'm done.

Thank you. All the zerbets. ❤️

Thank you! ❤️

Colored drawing of a bunch of different shapes and sizes of birds, surrounding a pool of water with city skyscrapers behind them. A house is to their right, where a cat watches through a window dotted with white circles (which keep birds from smashing into the glass). Bottom of image says “Shared Space: Creating Bird-friendly Cities and Communities”. Art by Annamaria Savarino Drago of Mexico

🪶 Happy Big Migratory Bird Day!! Today, if you can, spend some time making spaces around you more bird-friendly, and reporting birds you see & hear so scientists can know how bird populations are changing and migrating.
Here’s how to do this!! 🧵 1/n

A spotted towhee poking out from behind a trunk of a camellia bush.

Trying to break the ice I've accidentally covered my account in. I'm not sure I am ready for social media yet.

It's been a very rough seven months. I am told the total recovery time is more like 18 months.

(And I'll likely need another surgery, so I'll have to reset the timer again!)

Eh.

Bird:

I dunno, I miss subjecting everyone to my every ridiculous thought, and reading everyone else's much better thoughts, lol.

Also I realize I over-shared on the old 🐦 app and thus could use it to look up when I did XYZ, like a diary 😂

Now everything is in the wind & forgotten! Oops.

Niko's so good!

Maggie the black cap conure and Niko the gold cap conure sitting on a spiral rope perch hung from a wooden beam in an outdoor structure with steel mesh on all sides. Both birds look pretty content to be outside.

Brain power, I still have slightly more than before the surgery but I roused an old pneumonia from hibernation after using prednisone so I'm pretty foggy.

Birds are ok - it's springtime so they're both hormonal and Maggie has so many feelings!

I've been trying to get them outside every day:

I'm doing... Very varied. It's been nearly seven months from the fusion and as promised, it's a roller coaster of gains and losses, and at present more losses than gains.

I'm trying to both rest and be active, which is impossible. Lots of pain, but in the last couple of weeks slightly less...

It's been a minute 😭 (such a long minute in fact that the app lost all its permissions and logged me out so I never got any notifications, haha)

As a present, please enjoy Niko using me as a tree to finish taking his bath.

A very large patch of little yellow violets, with some pink camellia flowers peeking in from the upper left corner

Likewise, and thank you!

Here's a huge patch of stream violets!

A cottontail rabbit sitting in a messy lawn with dandelions beside it

I hope the same for you! ❤️

Here's a bunny!

A gold cap conure leaning his face on my hand while looking lovingly at me

A black cap conure with her eyes closed, cuddled up to my chest with my hand over her back

Miss you too. I frequently think about all my ethereal pals and wish I were in a place where I felt right about being on social media and saying all the things in my head.

I think I'm waiting to have good news to share or something.

Anyway, here's Niko and Maggie being lovebugs:

❤️❤️❤️

I am working very hard on getting to okay! ❤️

I exist, under protest 😂❤️

Apparently I big lied about getting notifications! The whole app just went AWOL on me. Just giving you lots of hugs right now because I'm sorry it has been so long! 🫂🫂🫂