The Mindful Migraine

When I was growing up, the word ‘alien’ was a shorthand way of conjuring up images of E.T. Phoning Home, eating mashed potato mountains while humming an electronic beep-bop tune, or an assortment of green-hued light beams, metal donuts, and other-worldly secrets deliberately concealed or accidentally revealed… oh, and THAT movie where no one can hear you scream (because an alien is sucky-stuck to your face… ugh.)

[If you know, you know!]

Then there was a lizard-human phase where the aliens came to inhabit humans… body-snatch us, or live within us and amongst us, taking over important government roles or the youth of today…

Later in life, the word ‘alien’ zoomed closer to home, and became attached to migrants. Sorry to single you out USA (I’m sure you are not isolated in this matter), but it’s from your news that my feed became flooded with terms such as ‘illegal alien’, ‘undocumented alien’ and ‘nonresident alien’.

According to Wikipedia: “The term ‘alien’ is derived from the Latin alienus […which] came to mean a stranger, a foreigner, or someone not related by blood…”

Much more recently, (late 2025), I came across a series of photographs taken of youth in Spain in an article with the title: ‘Suffering, betrayal, impending doom’: Spain’s alienated youth – in pictures | Photography | The Guardian

The article opens: “Magnum photographer Lúa Ribeira worked intensely with young people – shooting them in dystopian landscapes on city limits to reflect their feelings of disconnection.”

The collection of images was published in a book “Agony in the Garden” – you can visit the site to see some of the images (I don’t want to get in trouble with copyright): Lúa Ribeira – Agony in the Garden (or larger, in the Guardian article mentioned previously).

The Guardian article notes that “The project’s title refers to the biblical passage about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane before his crucifixion. My intention was to connect contemporary reality to more universal themes of suffering, betrayal and impending doom.”

Oooph.

It hurts my soul that young people feel that way.

I vaguely remember being a teenager in the 1980s, crying about the extinction rates of animals, singing the Sting lyrics “I hope the Russians love their children too” (1985) and having nightmares for weeks after watching the post-apocalyptic American movie “The Day After” (1983) and the British version “Threads” (1984):

[file source: 1983 – The Day After – Movie Trailer (Rated PG)]

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30 years later, my specific fears have, and have not, come to fruition… some still linger… and a few new worries have been added to the mix.

BUT – on the whole, I confess, my life is #blessed enough that I remain optimistic – I look for the glimmers of happiness and hope, and try not to catastrophize (too much) on all the things that could go wrong, without letting myself become indifferent to the suffering that is happening to others.

I’ve been lucky enough to finish school, have a rewarding career, marry the man of my dreams, raise wonderful children… so perhaps my fears are tempered by the knowledge that as much as I want it all to continue, I’ve had a good life.

For the youth of today, they’re yet to have those experiences – so it must feel disheartening to hear the news, and read the paper, or worse still, live through the horrors modernity might offer… “suffering, betrayal and impending doom” become all too real…

How terribly sad that makes me.

The days where my migraine-brain makes me very unwell (and an attack makes me feel like my head is stuck in a vice, my right eye starts to close over and my right side becomes paralyzed, I drag myself across the bedroom floor to get to the bathroom, or just use a blow-up mattress to sleep there), I too feel alienated from the rest of the world.

Chronic pain will do that to you.

And yet – on those days when the pain is less, and the suffering lifts, then the sense of betrayal and doom lifts too…

My mood is absolutely tied to my pain levels…

…especially when I feel paingry.

This post is starting to sound more depressing than I would ever want to share – so let me end by saying – you’re not alone – reach out if you feel alienated (on my CONTACT page or to others closer to home who can give you a hug).

AND – keep an eye out for those around you who might be feeling disconnected to the world around them (due to pain, relocation, separation or worse). Reach out to those people and lend a hand.

In the same way that scientists send pulses of sound and light into outer space in the hope that someone, or something, will reply – send some love and good will into the world around you and know that one way or another, it WILL bounce back…

Take care taking care, Linda x

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PS – shoutout to my blogger-friend Z.F.Thrimej’s (When Deadlines Become Zombies) who, in response to a post last year (Is Life Becoming Kafkaesque?), put me in touch with a movie called “District 9” whose trailer implies it is perfectly suited to today’s post. It refers to aliens who accidentally arrive here on their (space) ship in search of a better life and are poorly (and poignantly) received as… illegal aliens.