Lisa Marie Basile

What do you do when your workplace is so toxic that it makes you sick? How do you take action then? What happens when you have nothing left to give?

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.

I grew up knowing my family always had its very own black cloud. Like a backyard pet that comes and goes when it pleases, a room locked but filled with things we weren’t allowed to look at or set free. And it was all passed down to me like some broken heirloom — my ancestor’s weaknesses and fears, swirled into DNA’s mad ritual. Does the body sometimes take into itself — take from its creators — what it cannot heal from? Sometimes, yes.

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.

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

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.

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.

The sum of a city isn’t always made up of its parts.