LUPUS, YOU ODD UNNATURAL THING Quotes

“If I mention my father is blind, the response is rarely one of immediate concern or pity.…. The audience in receipt of this bare fact seems always to be in need of comfort. I cannot provide comfort. He cannot see light.
My life with lupus often provokes a similar response in others: the desire to be comforted. By me. The sufferer.”
― Shaista Tayabali, LUPUS, YOU ODD UNNATURAL THING: a tale of auto-immunity

“Just as the triggers for depression are correct and present every day, so are triggers for joy.”
― Shaista Tayabali, LUPUS, YOU ODD UNNATURAL THING: a tale of auto-immunity

“A friend visited and did not like to see the tears in my eyes, the tiredness. I am a river of sadness,’ I sighed.
‘Well you can’t be,’ he said, sternly. ‘There’s no such thing. Rivers move and change and take things away with them and pick things up, like flowers and happiness. Write me a happy poem!”
― Shaista Tayabali, LUPUS, YOU ODD UNNATURAL THING: a tale of auto-immunity

“Hospital leaves us more malnourished than before we enter the corridors. Not many nutrients enter our systems while we are in-patients.”
― Shaista Tayabali, LUPUS, YOU ODD UNNATURAL THING: a tale of auto-immunity

“I don't write for catharsis. I write to tell the truth of my life. I was here. I wrote. And I carried on living, just the same. With all those truths in tact.”
― Shaista Tayabali, LUPUS, YOU ODD UNNATURAL THING: a tale of auto-immunity

“We know, instinctively, that we don’t end at death. We know it through the practise of grief. We pull each other through. My grandfather taught me more about death after his death than any book of spiritual teaching. He never left me. Even though I left him, left the country, wasn’t there by his side when he died.”
― Shaista Tayabali, LUPUS, YOU ODD UNNATURAL THING: a tale of auto-immunity

“Imagine if the adult sections of all hospitals were filled with cheery pictures, illustrations, bright pops of colour – well, perhaps not the fluorescent variety that currently graces Burger King’s eating areas – but an equal measure of artistic and psychological research done into what makes humans happy and apply those images to hospitals.”
― Shaista Tayabali, LUPUS, YOU ODD UNNATURAL THING: a tale of auto-immunity