Here's For Grace's Story of the Month as we continue featuring women in pain who've made comebacks from the pitfalls of high-impact chronic pain. All was going well for Glenna McPartland, enjoying her single life as a preschool teacher. Then her body fell apart, getting sicker and sicker until she was eventually diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Despite being challenged by constant anxiety, depression and pain, Glenna fought back to give her life purpose by becoming an advocate for other EDS patients as well as a writer and a poet.

The full power of expressive therapy was on display as For Grace leaders Cynthia Toussaint and John Garrett read excerpts from their book, Battle for Grace, at Unitarian Universalist Church of Studio City's first annual Literary Jam. Bringing in local writers to speak about their works, Cynthia and John shared how their chronic pain journey brought them from the pits of despair to peaks of love and compassion. Cynthia's excited to be writing Part Two of her forthcoming memoir, Scapegoat, which will spotlight the connection between childhood trauma and chronic illness as well as family estrangement and elder abuse. Check back for details!

Team For Grace is active in promoting therapies that produce better days ahead for women with chronic pain, especially those impacted by Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.This includes new medications that are winding their way through clinical trials. Ambros Therapeutics will be presenting updates about their Stage III medication, AMBTX-01 (Neridronate), at their April Investigators Meeting in San Diego and they've asked For Grace to provide consumer information about CRPS. We're happy to oblige and send good wishes for a successful event.

For Grace has hit the double dozen anniversary, celebrating 24 years of staying strong and reaching high for our women in pain community. After countless media pieces, legislative successes, public speaking engagements, think tanks, educational conferences and more, our mission has remained clear, year in and year out - to better the lives of women in pain, forward awareness of gender bias in pain care and impress upon policy and decision makers that chronic pain is a public health crisis. We continue to do the work with passion and persistence in our hearts and we thank the angels who have and continue to guide and assist us along the way. Here's to the Dream of Never Again, to the day when lives upended by pain are no more...