June is Migraine Awareness Month. Throughout the month, I’m sharing parts of my journey and some things I’ve learned along the way.

I was well into my 50’s when I begin releasing the idea of migraine-as-nemesis and began meditating on the “what ifs”: What if, as I first wondered back when I read Oliver Sacks’ book Migraine, there is a link between migraine and creativity? What if my ability – such as it is – to write poems and stories is somehow connected to my migraines? Is it possible, and if so, then what? I begin to read everything I could to explore such a possibility. I spoke to healers, mentors and my intuitive friends. And, of course, I wrote poem after poem about it.
And then one day in 2007 my very intuitive best friend Deborah called me with a new insight. We had already talked extensively about migraine as a kind of malfunctioning of the brain. “What if it is a misfiring,” she said, “but what if your ability to write poems is the flip side? What if the misfiring mechanism opens something in the brain that makes the words come?”
What if, indeed? Oh…my…goodness… Could it be? I thought back to Oliver Sacks’ mathematician, whom I discussed previously. He went off the medicine that had cured his migraines because he had also lost his creative math ability.
What if I were to be given a similar choice? What if I could wake up every morning headache-free but when I picked up the pen nothing came? What then? Which would I choose? The answer was a foregone conclusion. It was really no choice at all. I could live with the pain. I’ve been doing it all my life, after all, but I couldn’t live without my writing. It’s my soul, my prayer, my connection to G-d. And maybe built into the migraine itself is a gift I hadn’t even thought about. Maybe my malfunctioning brain, or my soul, or G-d was saying, “Slow down. Stop. Close your eyes. Then pick up the pen. The words will come.”
Shortly after the conversation with my friend I wrote the following sonnet. The writing of it in itself was hugely cathartic, instructive and life-altering for me. Full acceptance would take a few more years, but this has probably been for me one of the most important poems I’ve ever written. It changed me forever.
What If I’ve Been Wrong
(2007)
What if for a lifetime I’ve been wrong?
I’ve always tried to fight the migraine pain,
But what if it’s a signal to my brain
Without which I would have no healing song?
What if when the pain invades my head
I’m meant to calm my body, seek the cave,
The solitude and darkness that I crave;
To still my mind, let Spirit speak instead,
Then through my pen to process what I’ve heard?
What if I could choose: the pain would lift,
But I would never write another word –
Would I relinquish my poetic gift?
No! My joy; my pain. Two sides; one face.
May I accept them both, dear G-d, with grace.

I was well into my 50’s when I begin releasing the idea of migraine-as-nemesis and began meditating on the “what ifs”: What if, as I first wondered back when I read Oliver Sacks’ book Migraine, there is a link between migraine and creativity? What if my ability – such as it is – to write poems and stories is somehow connected to my migraines? Is it possible, and if so, then what? I begin to read everything I could to explore such a possibility. I spoke to healers, mentors and my intuitive friends. And, of course, I wrote poem after poem about it.
And then one day in 2007 my very intuitive best friend Deborah called me with a new insight. We had already talked extensively about migraine as a kind of malfunctioning of the brain. “What if it is a misfiring,” she said, “but what if your ability to write poems is the flip side? What if the misfiring mechanism opens something in the brain that makes the words come?”
What if, indeed? Oh…my…goodness… Could it be? I thought back to Oliver Sacks’ mathematician, whom I discussed previously. He went off the medicine that had cured his migraines because he had also lost his creative math ability.
What if I were to be given a similar choice? What if I could wake up every morning headache-free but when I picked up the pen nothing came? What then? Which would I choose? The answer was a foregone conclusion. It was really no choice at all. I could live with the pain. I’ve been doing it all my life, after all, but I couldn’t live without my writing. It’s my soul, my prayer, my connection to G-d. And maybe built into the migraine itself is a gift I hadn’t even thought about. Maybe my malfunctioning brain, or my soul, or G-d was saying, “Slow down. Stop. Close your eyes. Then pick up the pen. The words will come.”
Shortly after the conversation with my friend I wrote the following sonnet. The writing of it in itself was hugely cathartic, instructive and life-altering for me. Full acceptance would take a few more years, but this has probably been for me one of the most important poems I’ve ever written. It changed me forever.
What If I’ve Been Wrong
(2007)
What if for a lifetime I’ve been wrong?
I’ve always tried to fight the migraine pain,
But what if it’s a signal to my brain
Without which I would have no healing song?
What if when the pain invades my head
I’m meant to calm my body, seek the cave,
The solitude and darkness that I crave;
To still my mind, let Spirit speak instead,
Then through my pen to process what I’ve heard?
What if I could choose: the pain would lift,
But I would never write another word –
Would I relinquish my poetic gift?
No! My joy; my pain. Two sides; one face.
May I accept them both, dear G-d, with grace.

June is Migraine Awareness Month. Throughout the month, I’m sharing parts of my journey and some things I’ve learned along the way.

For most of my life migraine was my nemesis, the enemy that had to be vanquished. And while my quest led me to many healthful habits and reduced severity of the attacks, I never did vanquish them and for a long time did not recognize the gifts they brought me
But then something began to change some years ago when I read Oliver Sack’s book, Migraine. The book greatly expanded my understanding of the migraine mechanism and what he calls the “migraine landscape” in all its complexity. The many case histories and references to famous migraineurs throughout history made me feel less alone in the morass of pain. There is a huge amount of information in this book and much food for thought.
However, the life-changing part of the book came for me in a brief recounting of a case history, introduced at the beginning and followed up late in the book. (Moral of the story: always read the whole book; you never know what nuggets await.) This case involved a creative mathematician who was able to do his work all week but then would suffer a terrible migraine every weekend, culminating in the need to stay in bed most of every Sunday. The attack would eventually pass and he would have a surge of creative energy to begin the work week again. Sacks recounts that he was able to find effective drugs for his patient, but as he says, “when I cured him of his migraines, I cured him of his mathematics, too – he seemed, however paradoxically, to need one for the other.” (p. 268) The patient opted to keep his migraines.
I was stunned when I read this. I had never heard of such a thing. I am certainly no mathematician, but this started me thinking about the intriguing “what-ifs.” What if there is, indeed, a link between migraine and creativity? Was such a thing possible?
Years later I read A Brain Wider Than the Sky – A Migraine Diary, by Andrew Levy (©2009.) He explores in great depth the possible migraine – creativity link and writes about famous people – artists, writers, creative thinkers – who had or seem likely to have had migraine. These include Virginia Woolf, Frederick Nietzsche, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, Gustav Mahler, Frederick Chopin, Sigmund Freud and Thomas Jefferson. Lewis Carroll was known to have migraines and Levy talks about the intriguing possibility that some of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland as she went down the rabbit hole may actually be representations of migraine aura. Likewise, there is speculation that elements of some of Picasso’s paintings may be the same.
The author also writes about neurological issues involved in migraines, including what researchers call the hyper-excitability of the migraine brain. This means that the neurons may fire more quickly than in a normal brain and “for much less inspiration.” (p. 154.) I found the use of the word “inspiration” very interesting since it is so often used in the context of creative work. For me it goes along with the fact that I have so many migraine triggers and it doesn’t take much exposure – an accidental taste of something or a whiff of the wrong fumes, etc.  – for the mechanism to click in.  So I have had to ask myself whether this heightened sensitivity might correlate with a heightened degree of creativity.
I still don’t know the answer for certain; maybe no one does at this point. And while I certainly don’t place myself anywhere near the constellation of luminaires that Levy discusses, I do know that words and drawings come from my pen and that my creative work is very important to me. And by this time I’ve learned enough to know that I am who I am, and I have to accept the whole package. And with that realization comes a great deal of peace.

For most of my life migraine was my nemesis, the enemy that had to be vanquished. And while my quest led me to many healthful habits and reduced severity of the attacks, I never did vanquish them and for a long time did not recognize the gifts they brought me
But then something began to change some years ago when I read Oliver Sack’s book, Migraine. The book greatly expanded my understanding of the migraine mechanism and what he calls the “migraine landscape” in all its complexity. The many case histories and references to famous migraineurs throughout history made me feel less alone in the morass of pain. There is a huge amount of information in this book and much food for thought.
However, the life-changing part of the book came for me in a brief recounting of a case history, introduced at the beginning and followed up late in the book. (Moral of the story: always read the whole book; you never know what nuggets await.) This case involved a creative mathematician who was able to do his work all week but then would suffer a terrible migraine every weekend, culminating in the need to stay in bed most of every Sunday. The attack would eventually pass and he would have a surge of creative energy to begin the work week again. Sacks recounts that he was able to find effective drugs for his patient, but as he says, “when I cured him of his migraines, I cured him of his mathematics, too – he seemed, however paradoxically, to need one for the other.” (p. 268) The patient opted to keep his migraines.
I was stunned when I read this. I had never heard of such a thing. I am certainly no mathematician, but this started me thinking about the intriguing “what-ifs.” What if there is, indeed, a link between migraine and creativity? Was such a thing possible?
Years later I read A Brain Wider Than the Sky – A Migraine Diary, by Andrew Levy (©2009.) He explores in great depth the possible migraine – creativity link and writes about famous people – artists, writers, creative thinkers – who had or seem likely to have had migraine. These include Virginia Woolf, Frederick Nietzsche, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, Gustav Mahler, Frederick Chopin, Sigmund Freud and Thomas Jefferson. Lewis Carroll was known to have migraines and Levy talks about the intriguing possibility that some of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland as she went down the rabbit hole may actually be representations of migraine aura. Likewise, there is speculation that elements of some of Picasso’s paintings may be the same.
The author also writes about neurological issues involved in migraines, including what researchers call the hyper-excitability of the migraine brain. This means that the neurons may fire more quickly than in a normal brain and “for much less inspiration.” (p. 154.) I found the use of the word “inspiration” very interesting since it is so often used in the context of creative work. For me it goes along with the fact that I have so many migraine triggers and it doesn’t take much exposure – an accidental taste of something or a whiff of the wrong fumes, etc.  – for the mechanism to click in.  So I have had to ask myself whether this heightened sensitivity might correlate with a heightened degree of creativity.
I still don’t know the answer for certain; maybe no one does at this point. And while I certainly don’t place myself anywhere near the constellation of luminaires that Levy discusses, I do know that words and drawings come from my pen and that my creative work is very important to me. And by this time I’ve learned enough to know that I am who I am, and I have to accept the whole package. And with that realization comes a great deal of peace.

June is Migraine Awareness Month. Throughout the month, I’m sharing parts of my journey and some things I’ve learned along the way.

Many gifts have come to me because of migraine. Some are rather obvious. Others require I follow a sort of trail of breadcrumbs in reverse in order to recognize the gift: oh yes, I found this, or that, because of my migraines.
So, to begin at the beginning: I came of age along with transistor radios and grew up on Long Island, New York, not far from Jones Beach. My friends and I used to lie on the beach like everyone else, baking in the sun with the music blasting. No one talked in those days about the damage the sun could do to the skin. But I got terrible headaches from the sun, so I would lie there with a towel across my face. It was the antithesis of what nowadays would be termed “cool,” but today my skin thanks me.
In my quest for migraine prevention I began more than thirty years ago to eat a diet of whole, unprocessed foods. This was long before such a notion had entered the pop culture; it was decidedly uncool. Nonetheless I gave up almost all food products that came in boxes, cans or jars; refined sugar; alcohol; all the “bad” fats; caffeine (except for very dark chocolate); soda drinks and just about all foods now referred to as the SAD – Standard American Diet.
Did this cure me of migraines? No, but it reduced the intensity and frequency. Do I miss any of it? Not at all. I actually love the green veggies that I eat so much of. Besides, I’m like the proverbial rat in the maze. Go the SAD way, get the shock of a horrific three-day migraine. Go the other way, feel infinitely better (although I can’t eat the cheese!) And the gift in all this is that now in my 60’s I enjoy good health and energy, thank G-d, and take not a single pill (except Actifed on airplanes.)
Other gifts: I began meditating because of migraines, And I began to take my daily, endorphin-producing, lines of poetry-inducing power walk. Both are positive essentials in my life now. Would I have come to those practices anyway? Perhaps, but for me the migraine was the catalyst.
And then there are the wonderful people who have come into my life because of migraine.
For years I had been trying to teach myself calligraphy. I came to realize I needed a light board in order to use a lined guide. But the ones I found in local art stores all had fluorescent lights that gave me migraines. So I did something I rarely did in those days: I went online looking for non-fluorescent light boards. Instead, I found links to calligraphy classes, and it occurred to me that I really ought to take calligraphy lessons, that this was the next step for my work.
And so I met DeAnn Singh of Designing Letters, a master calligrapher and magnificent teacher. She taught and continues to teach me not only calligraphy but so much about art, design and medieval manuscripts. She taught me how to format my soon-to-be released children’s verse fairy tale, Mindel and The Misfit Dragons. It is safe to say this would not exist in its current form if not for DeAnn.
Through DeAnn I met Emily Denis a Freelance Art Director. I would not have been able to birth Mindel and The Misfit Dragons into the world if not for Emily. She is a digital art director, graphic designer, branding specialist and all-around tech genius who has brought my medieval manuscript into the 21st Century.
And then there’s Ruby Asiss Roff, PR and social media specialist. I first met Ruby years ago when she was a young college student needing a part time job, and I was a mom-writer-teacher needing someone to shop for me because the lights in supermarkets and other stores gave me migraines.
Wow! Follow the breadcrumbs and see how often the trail leads back to migraine. What a gift!

Many gifts have come to me because of migraine. Some are rather obvious. Others require I follow a sort of trail of breadcrumbs in reverse in order to recognize the gift: oh yes, I found this, or that, because of my migraines.
So, to begin at the beginning: I came of age along with transistor radios and grew up on Long Island, New York, not far from Jones Beach. My friends and I used to lie on the beach like everyone else, baking in the sun with the music blasting. No one talked in those days about the damage the sun could do to the skin. But I got terrible headaches from the sun, so I would lie there with a towel across my face. It was the antithesis of what nowadays would be termed “cool,” but today my skin thanks me.
In my quest for migraine prevention I began more than thirty years ago to eat a diet of whole, unprocessed foods. This was long before such a notion had entered the pop culture; it was decidedly uncool. Nonetheless I gave up almost all food products that came in boxes, cans or jars; refined sugar; alcohol; all the “bad” fats; caffeine (except for very dark chocolate); soda drinks and just about all foods now referred to as the SAD – Standard American Diet.
Did this cure me of migraines? No, but it reduced the intensity and frequency. Do I miss any of it? Not at all. I actually love the green veggies that I eat so much of. Besides, I’m like the proverbial rat in the maze. Go the SAD way, get the shock of a horrific three-day migraine. Go the other way, feel infinitely better (although I can’t eat the cheese!) And the gift in all this is that now in my 60’s I enjoy good health and energy, thank G-d, and take not a single pill (except Actifed on airplanes.)
Other gifts: I began meditating because of migraines, And I began to take my daily, endorphin-producing, lines of poetry-inducing power walk. Both are positive essentials in my life now. Would I have come to those practices anyway? Perhaps, but for me the migraine was the catalyst.
And then there are the wonderful people who have come into my life because of migraine.
For years I had been trying to teach myself calligraphy. I came to realize I needed a light board in order to use a lined guide. But the ones I found in local art stores all had fluorescent lights that gave me migraines. So I did something I rarely did in those days: I went online looking for non-fluorescent light boards. Instead, I found links to calligraphy classes, and it occurred to me that I really ought to take calligraphy lessons, that this was the next step for my work.
And so I met DeAnn Singh of Designing Letters, a master calligrapher and magnificent teacher. She taught and continues to teach me not only calligraphy but so much about art, design and medieval manuscripts. She taught me how to format my soon-to-be released children’s verse fairy tale, Mindel and The Misfit Dragons. It is safe to say this would not exist in its current form if not for DeAnn.
Through DeAnn I met Emily Denis a Freelance Art Director. I would not have been able to birth Mindel and The Misfit Dragons into the world if not for Emily. She is a digital art director, graphic designer, branding specialist and all-around tech genius who has brought my medieval manuscript into the 21st Century.
And then there’s Ruby Asiss Roff, PR and social media specialist. I first met Ruby years ago when she was a young college student needing a part time job, and I was a mom-writer-teacher needing someone to shop for me because the lights in supermarkets and other stores gave me migraines.
Wow! Follow the breadcrumbs and see how often the trail leads back to migraine. What a gift!

June is Migraine Awareness Month. Throughout the month, I’m sharing parts of my journey and some things I’ve learned along the way.

Here are some outstanding migraine books that have helped me on my quest for healing:
Migraine – The Breakthrough Study That Explains What Causes It and How It Can Be Completely Prevented Through Diet by Professor Rudolfo Low (©1987)
This is an excellent discussion of the link between sugar and migraine. It came out in the 80’s but he wrote another a few years later called Victory Over Migraine. (I have not read it.)
Buy the book here.
Migraine by Oliver Sacks (©1992)
This book was the beginning of my awakening to the potential link between creativity and migraine. More about this later…
Read an overview and learn where to purchase this book here.
Read a review here and here and here.
An Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide to Headaches by Robert D. Milne, MD and Blake More with Burton Goldberg (©1997)
Though this book came out in 1997, it is still to my mind one of the clearest and most comprehensive guides to types of headaches, their triggers and treatment modalities. It is still available online – I recently bought one for one of my daughters (yes, unfortunately, migraines are hereditary.)
Read reviews here.
Buy the book here.
A Brain Wider than the Sky – A Migraine Diary by Andrew Levy (©2009)
This is a superb chronicle of one man’s journey through migraine. His discussions about the migraine-creativity link are particularly intriguing.
Read a Q&A with the author here .
Read reviews here .
Buy the book here .

Here are some outstanding migraine books that have helped me on my quest for healing:
Migraine – The Breakthrough Study That Explains What Causes It and How It Can Be Completely Prevented Through Diet by Professor Rudolfo Low (©1987)
This is an excellent discussion of the link between sugar and migraine. It came out in the 80’s but he wrote another a few years later called Victory Over Migraine. (I have not read it.)
Buy the book here.
Migraine by Oliver Sacks (©1992)
This book was the beginning of my awakening to the potential link between creativity and migraine. More about this later…
Read an overview and learn where to purchase this book here.
Read a review here and here and here.
An Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide to Headaches by Robert D. Milne, MD and Blake More with Burton Goldberg (©1997)
Though this book came out in 1997, it is still to my mind one of the clearest and most comprehensive guides to types of headaches, their triggers and treatment modalities. It is still available online – I recently bought one for one of my daughters (yes, unfortunately, migraines are hereditary.)
Read reviews here.
Buy the book here.
A Brain Wider than the Sky – A Migraine Diary by Andrew Levy (©2009)
This is a superb chronicle of one man’s journey through migraine. His discussions about the migraine-creativity link are particularly intriguing.
Read a Q&A with the author here .
Read reviews here .
Buy the book here .

June is Migraine Awareness Month. Throughout the month, I’m sharing parts of my journey and some things I’ve learned along the way.

There is something about the altitude and/or the cabin pressure on airplanes that seems to trigger migraines. It is sheer misery to go on a four-day trip and walk off the plane with a migraine that you know will last three days.
I bless the friend who gave me the tip that has worked beautifully for me – about 30 minutes before take-off I take an Actifed. (As I never take medications, this is very radical for me but, thank G-d, effective.) It makes me drowsy so I can no longer work in-flight as I used to, bit it’s well-worth the trade-off.
If the flight is longer than six hours, I take another pill in the fifth hour. Once on a cross-country flight, I took the pill at boarding time as usual, but then we sat on the tarmac for almost two hours. About four hours into the flight, sure enough, I felt that horrible roiling, sick feeling that signals the start of a migraine attack for me. In a panic I fumbled for water and my humble Actifed and, thank goodness, saved myself.

There is something about the altitude and/or the cabin pressure on airplanes that seems to trigger migraines. It is sheer misery to go on a four-day trip and walk off the plane with a migraine that you know will last three days.
I bless the friend who gave me the tip that has worked beautifully for me – about 30 minutes before take-off I take an Actifed. (As I never take medications, this is very radical for me but, thank G-d, effective.) It makes me drowsy so I can no longer work in-flight as I used to, bit it’s well-worth the trade-off.
If the flight is longer than six hours, I take another pill in the fifth hour. Once on a cross-country flight, I took the pill at boarding time as usual, but then we sat on the tarmac for almost two hours. About four hours into the flight, sure enough, I felt that horrible roiling, sick feeling that signals the start of a migraine attack for me. In a panic I fumbled for water and my humble Actifed and, thank goodness, saved myself.

June is Migraine Awareness Month. Throughout the month, I’m sharing parts of my journey and some things I’ve learned along the way.

Following are some things you may not know about migraine.  But please remember, I am not a medical professional, nor am I dispensing medical advice. I am merely offering areas of investigation.
There are hundreds of potential migraine triggers, and they are different for each person. Furthermore, it may take up to 48 hours for a particular food to trigger a migraine, so you really do have to become a detective.
Some common food triggers include:
- Corn
- Wheat
- Dairy, especially hard cheeses
- Sugar
- Soy, including tofu
- Certain nuts, notably cashews and peanuts
- MSG, which is often camouflaged under names such as natural flavorings, hydrolyzed vegetable protein and calcium caseinate – to name a few!
- Alcoholic beverages
- Aspartame
- Cured meats
- Anything containing preservatives
- Fermented foods
Note: One person’s medicine is another person’s poison. For example, chocolate is a common trigger, but nibbling very dark (80% cacao and higher) organic chocolate at the onset of a migraine will often stave it off for me. On the other hand, while some people get the same relief from coffee, it is a huge trigger for me.
Meal times
It’s not just what you eat but when that matters, Going too long without eating is a common migraine trigger. I make sure to eat something every two or three hours. Many migraineurs, myself included, find that eating six small meals a day works much better for prevention than the traditional three meals per day.
Exercise
While gentle to moderate exercise may ease or prevent migraines, vigorous activities such as jumping and running are common triggers. (Now I know why I dreaded those jumping jacks in P.E. class back in the day.)
Sleep
Not getting enough sleep or having an irregular sleep schedule can trigger migraines.
Environmental factors
Triggers include:
- Second-hand smoke
- Gasoline fumes
- High humidity
- Certain strong perfumes
Lighting
This is very idiosyncratic but if you have migraines you might want to pay attention to what happens to you in certain stores and other places. I have found that I get very sick – dizzy, nauseated and disoriented, followed by going into full-blown migraine – from just a few minutes in certain, though not all, supermarkets, big box stores and chain pharmacies. A friend has a similar experience, but her list of stores is completely different!
Looking back to graduate school, I remember being unable to do four minutes of work in my little TA office with its fluorescent lights, but I could go deeply into my work for four hours at the campus café – with it’s warm, mellow lighting.  If your child is prone to headaches and tells you he or she can’t work in the library, consider the lighting (and yes, unfortunately, children get migraines, too.)

Following are some things you may not know about migraine.  But please remember, I am not a medical professional, nor am I dispensing medical advice. I am merely offering areas of investigation.
There are hundreds of potential migraine triggers, and they are different for each person. Furthermore, it may take up to 48 hours for a particular food to trigger a migraine, so you really do have to become a detective.
Some common food triggers include:
- Corn
- Wheat
- Dairy, especially hard cheeses
- Sugar
- Soy, including tofu
- Certain nuts, notably cashews and peanuts
- MSG, which is often camouflaged under names such as natural flavorings, hydrolyzed vegetable protein and calcium caseinate – to name a few!
- Alcoholic beverages
- Aspartame
- Cured meats
- Anything containing preservatives
- Fermented foods
Note: One person’s medicine is another person’s poison. For example, chocolate is a common trigger, but nibbling very dark (80% cacao and higher) organic chocolate at the onset of a migraine will often stave it off for me. On the other hand, while some people get the same relief from coffee, it is a huge trigger for me.
Meal times
It’s not just what you eat but when that matters, Going too long without eating is a common migraine trigger. I make sure to eat something every two or three hours. Many migraineurs, myself included, find that eating six small meals a day works much better for prevention than the traditional three meals per day.
Exercise
While gentle to moderate exercise may ease or prevent migraines, vigorous activities such as jumping and running are common triggers. (Now I know why I dreaded those jumping jacks in P.E. class back in the day.)
Sleep
Not getting enough sleep or having an irregular sleep schedule can trigger migraines.
Environmental factors
Triggers include:
- Second-hand smoke
- Gasoline fumes
- High humidity
- Certain strong perfumes
Lighting
This is very idiosyncratic but if you have migraines you might want to pay attention to what happens to you in certain stores and other places. I have found that I get very sick – dizzy, nauseated and disoriented, followed by going into full-blown migraine – from just a few minutes in certain, though not all, supermarkets, big box stores and chain pharmacies. A friend has a similar experience, but her list of stores is completely different!
Looking back to graduate school, I remember being unable to do four minutes of work in my little TA office with its fluorescent lights, but I could go deeply into my work for four hours at the campus café – with it’s warm, mellow lighting.  If your child is prone to headaches and tells you he or she can’t work in the library, consider the lighting (and yes, unfortunately, children get migraines, too.)

June is Migraine Awareness Month. For me, migraine awareness is not a month; it has been a lifelong journey. Throughout the month, I’ll share parts of my journey and some things I’ve learned along the way.

In my youth I simply tried to cope. I wore the hammer-crushed ice compresses my father made for me out of his white handkerchiefs. Night after night I did my homework with a bandana around my forehead and the melting ice dripping on my papers. I was a determined student and I never missed a day of school or failed to study for a test because of migraines. I did not heed my father’s well-meaning injunction, “Go to bed. You’ll be a professor a year later.” (In fact, finishing college in three years, I became a “professor” a year earlier.)
No one talked about migraine triggers in those days. No one – least of all I – would have associated the secondhand smoke from my mother’s then-habit, or the delicious cakes and cookies she baked, or my morning bagel, or the school bus ride, or the glaring lights in the school building, or the oppressive New York humidity with migraine. I learned all this later. Much later.
In my late teens, in college and married to a medical student – then physician – I had access to cutting edge medical care. For the next decade or so I tried every new treatment conventional medicine had to offer. Nothing worked and I found the side effects unbearable. The “devil you know” was always preferable. The migraines got worse but pregnancy was a wonderful reprieve. I was always migraine-free in the second and third trimesters; I have four children.
In my thirties, much to the chagrin of my gastroenterologist husband, I began to explore the world of alternative medicine. I tried just about everything Southern California had to offer. (This was the 80’s – you can just imagine.) Some of the bodywork could temporarily lessen the severity of the pain, but nothing healed me. I tried talking cures. I read everything I could find about migraine. I learned that it was genetic and neurological – perhaps some misfiring of the brain – and found out belatedly that my grandmother had walked around with dripping compresses throughout my father’s childhood. I learned about the hundreds of potential triggers and how they are different for each person. I learned that I have what is called chronic continuous migraine.
My wonderful nutritionist, the late Eileen Poole, finally told me that I was the only client she’d ever had who actually followed her diet without cheating and yet continued to have migraines.
That was when I realized that, for me, this was not so much an issue of the mind or the body, but of the soul. Yes, it was biological, neurological, and genetic. But it was also spiritual and there were lessons to learn. That realization was the beginning of my healing. That is not to say I don’t have migraines anymore. I do. But they are not as severe and I’ve learned to prevent or stop many of them. Most of all I do not regard them as the enemy anymore. I have made peace with them…

In my youth I simply tried to cope. I wore the hammer-crushed ice compresses my father made for me out of his white handkerchiefs. Night after night I did my homework with a bandana around my forehead and the melting ice dripping on my papers. I was a determined student and I never missed a day of school or failed to study for a test because of migraines. I did not heed my father’s well-meaning injunction, “Go to bed. You’ll be a professor a year later.” (In fact, finishing college in three years, I became a “professor” a year earlier.)
No one talked about migraine triggers in those days. No one – least of all I – would have associated the secondhand smoke from my mother’s then-habit, or the delicious cakes and cookies she baked, or my morning bagel, or the school bus ride, or the glaring lights in the school building, or the oppressive New York humidity with migraine. I learned all this later. Much later.
In my late teens, in college and married to a medical student – then physician – I had access to cutting edge medical care. For the next decade or so I tried every new treatment conventional medicine had to offer. Nothing worked and I found the side effects unbearable. The “devil you know” was always preferable. The migraines got worse but pregnancy was a wonderful reprieve. I was always migraine-free in the second and third trimesters; I have four children.
In my thirties, much to the chagrin of my gastroenterologist husband, I began to explore the world of alternative medicine. I tried just about everything Southern California had to offer. (This was the 80’s – you can just imagine.) Some of the bodywork could temporarily lessen the severity of the pain, but nothing healed me. I tried talking cures. I read everything I could find about migraine. I learned that it was genetic and neurological – perhaps some misfiring of the brain – and found out belatedly that my grandmother had walked around with dripping compresses throughout my father’s childhood. I learned about the hundreds of potential triggers and how they are different for each person. I learned that I have what is called chronic continuous migraine.
My wonderful nutritionist, the late Eileen Poole, finally told me that I was the only client she’d ever had who actually followed her diet without cheating and yet continued to have migraines.
That was when I realized that, for me, this was not so much an issue of the mind or the body, but of the soul. Yes, it was biological, neurological, and genetic. But it was also spiritual and there were lessons to learn. That realization was the beginning of my healing. That is not to say I don’t have migraines anymore. I do. But they are not as severe and I’ve learned to prevent or stop many of them. Most of all I do not regard them as the enemy anymore. I have made peace with them…