This week’s JOY: getting my opinion piece published in the Minneapolis StarTribune.
As many of you know, COVID caused significant hearing loss in both of my ears. I am still getting used to hearing aids, which is indeed a difficult process. Still, I am grateful that I have a solution to this loss. For many people, the solution to their COVID is not so easy.
I knew from the start that I would be writing about this experience, because it was long and painful and traumatic. I wrote an opinion piece for the Tribune, which was published on March 9, 2024.
This is over-the-top JOY for me to have gotten this published. First and foremost, let’s face it, there is the ego part. To know my writing was good enough to get published in a big city newspaper. Second, to know that I have touched people with my story. People wrote to me to thank me – people who had long-Covid and those who had lost their sense of taste and smell. They were thankful that I was speaking for them. How gratifying is that?
Finally, the JOY of getting this piece published was hearing from friends, old and new. Friends who I hear from once in a while. Friends I have not heard from in a very long while. But they remembered me, and I was so happy to hear their (fond!) memories of me.
This week’s JOY was an easy one: having my voice heard, and having at least some small influence on people who need to be reminded of the continuing effects of COVID.
Read it here: Martha Wegner’s opinion piece.