The Gift of Letting People In

Living with Parkinson’s disease means constantly negotiating the unpredictable: tremors that come and go without warning, stiffness that turns a short walk into a major expedition, fatigue that hits like a wave. It’s easy, almost automatic, to want to handle it all quietly.

I don’t want to be a burden. I don’t want to be the reason someone cancels their plans. And perhaps most of all, I don’t want to admit to myself, or to anyone else, that some days I can’t manage things I used to do with ease.