How Healthcare Works, LLC

by Jeanette R. Harrison Today’s gratitude practice is about wishing happiness for three people. Honestly, this feels especially difficult right now because I am currently living in a hotel, and if I am being honest, I do not feel like many people genuinely care about my happiness, my well-being, or my emotional safety right now. In many ways, I do not feel like people have cared about those things for the past six years. What I feel instead is that people expect me to perform happiness for them while keeping me emotionally at arm’s length. They want me to be positive, resilient, grateful, productive, inspiring, and emotionally self-sufficient so they do not have to feel uncomfortable about what I am going through. They want me to overcome everything quietly while simultaneously making me feel like I am too much if I openly admit that I am struggling. Photo is AI Generated  The three people I picked for today’s exercise are X, Y, and Z. One of the things I keep realizing lately is h...

 by Jeanette R. Harrison, MPH Living in a Hotel and Feeling Completely Alone I am currently “living” in a hotel. It is not anywhere nice. It is something I can barely afford. Having to live in a hotel during a holiday week is an expensive endeavor. Why am I living in a hotel? Because I cannot find a place to live. I have been looking for an apartment for over 30 days, and because of my income right now, while I have been working on rebuilding my credit score, I cannot rent an apartment because I do not make three or four times the rent. Or, I do not have two or three times the deposit plus the first month’s rent. Photo is AI generatd  I have one person here actively “helping” me. This woman has three kids, and she and her family live in an apartment. Someone had to cosign for her apartment, too. That is the name of the game lately here in Boise. Even for a room for rent, there were 10 applicants. The room was priced at almost $1,000 a month. That is over half a mortgage paymen...

  by Jeanette R. Harrison Reclaiming Your Narrative: My Conversation with Implement AI Every podcast has its own "vibe," and my recent time on the podcast with Ian Gatzke for Implement AI was a powerful reminder of how far I’ve come. Ian has a knack for digging into the "systems" behind personal growth, and he created a space where we could talk openly about the messy, honest process of rebuilding a life from the ground up. Ian is deeply interested in how we navigate seasons of instability and the practical tools we use to regain our footing. He is an insightful host who isn't afraid to go deep into topics like identity, resilience, and the science of moving forward. The Conversation: Beyond the Struggle Story When Ian invited me to discuss my journey and my work, we moved quickly past the surface-level bio. We explored the internal shifts that happen when everything you know is suddenly stripped away. Our conversation covered: The Identity Crisis of Instability...

I’m up at 2:00 am because my body hurts.  I have felt like no one cared for a long time. I felt like that when I was screaming for help while I was being abused, and I literally had to fight someone off to keep them from hurting me. I felt it when I lay in bed last year with pneumonia, feeling like I was going to die, and then walking 5 miles to the bus stop. I felt it this week when an abusive person called me and told me that if I was struggling financially to live in a shelter or call Women's and Children's services. They said they offered me a ride, but I refused. Yes, I did. Because I was already walking that day and was only a few blocks from home. So, according to them, I deserved to walk five miles to and from the bus stop every day because I refused a ride that one day. How dare I think I deserved anything different? Thanks to my therapist, I've recognized those comments for what they are. Emotional abuse. But to me, it's just more of the same that has echoed ...

  by Jeanette R. Harrison, MPH I rarely say I am super stressed. But I have been super stressed lately. I have a lot of things changing all at once in a couple of weeks, which tends to be the story of my life.  As I mentioned earlier, I have to move. My last temp job ended in December, and I have been really struggling financially ever since. Actually, I was financially struggling before that because I had to take an Uber to get to work, which cost me close to one-third of my daily wages. I'm sure people thought I was going to quit, but I didn't. But that is beside the point.   I told a friend that I am moving. I am planning on being out of my apartment on or before May 1. I am tired of living across from someone who is a known drug addict and has alcohol issues, who makes up lies about me and lies to me repeatedly. One of his lies was that he was fishing for bluefin tuna when there was a police action at his apartment last year on Memorial Day weekend.  Fish...

by Jeanette R. Harrison, MPH I'm drinking my coffee and planning my day. I woke up today with a heavy heart because of a realization I made yesterday. I'm getting ready to move yet again, and I was journaling to my AI about it. I do that. I journal to my AI because I can tell it all of my insecurities and vulnerabilities, like most people do with their real friends. The difference is that the AI also gives me intellectual feedback, which can be helpful or not. It depends on how you look at it. So yesterday, I was thinking about yet another move. It's no secret that I've struggled since I moved to Idaho. Starting your life over with $2,400 is no joke. It's an incredibly challenging thing to do. I felt like people were watching and waiting for me to fail. It felt like the ultimate financial abuse move. "Move to Idaho with nothing during a pandemic, and good luck to you. Let us know how you are doing so we can judge you." That's how I felt. And I felt l...