Lisa Marie Basile

The older we get, the harder it is to make close friends.

It’s Monday, 6 a.m. and Sarah, 30, wakes up — as she does five days a week (but really, it’s seven, because the body is a fickle thing).

Like a lot of people with chronic illness or autoimmune/autoinflammatory disorders, I went through a dead-end labyrinth to get my diagnosis.

This is the one time of year, Scorpio Season (Oct. 23 to Nov. 22), when getting a little closer and looking a little deeper is, in some ways, inevitable.

It can really take a toll on you when you have to parent a parent.

In this column, I talk about things other people think or say, but not out loud, and certainly not in public. No one wants to say, “People either love me or hate me” because it sounds ridiculous and arrogant and icky.

How much energy does it take to be jealous? Hint: Way too much.

When you hear about a person with a chronic illness working or not working or considering quitting a job, these decisions were not made lightly.

Some grief is inert. Some grief is an engine. Sometimes actively participating in grief, I’ve learned, is one small way we can learn to escape its riptide.