Lisa Marie Basile

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

When the spread was published, all the girls in the shot were small — small enough to notice their not-bigness. It was the first time I felt “othered,” the first time I noticed how some versions of thin weren’t thin enough.

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.

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.

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