Welcome to MyCuppaJo on Substack

I've migrated the blog here and hope you'll join me. The focus will still be on pain, the power of stories, and being human. with a little Colorado nature thrown in.

Hey folks, I’m trying to get this Substack thing figured out and tried to send out an initial post that didn’t seem to go out to my email list, so hopefully this one finds you! My apologies if you’ve seen a version of this twice.

If you’re getting this post it’s probably because you were subscribed to my blog, MyCuppaJo.com. As a refresher, I’m Jo Belton, someone who lives with pain and anxiety (which long predates the pain thing). I started MyCuppaJo.com back in 2015 to share my thoughts as as studied pain science in graduate school and tried to make sense of my pain, and myself with pain. I’ve migrated MyCuppaJo.com over here, weeding out some of the unrelated and/or terrible posts (those early posts were…yeeesh…), and will get to writing some new content soon. Many of you know I started a book over seven years ago. I’m hoping this new platform will get me back to writing the darn thing!

If you’ve been a susbcriber, you know it’s been a minute. I haven’t written a blog post in over two years! The last few years I have been focused on pain advocacy, research, and education. I’ll share some of those endeavors here, too, including my work as a patient partner in research, as the Patient and Public Partnerships Editor at JOSPT, and as founding co-chair of IASP’s Global Alliance of Partners for Pain Advocacy.

I am a fierce advocate for people living with pain and believe their experiences, knowledge, perspectives, and expertise should be valued and integrated into the study, research, and treatment of pain. We need the science of pain, of course. Yet to truly understand pain (and what to do about it) we also need to understand the lived experiences of pain, including the experiences of living with pain, seeking treatment, and navigating health systems and society with ongoing pain.

I hope you’ll join me here. I’ll be sharing thoughts on pain from my lived experiences of pain as well as of being a patient in a healthcare system not built for us and being a patient partner in research, education and advocacy. I’ll also share musings on current pain research, the power of storytelling, narrative-based approaches to care, valuing lived experience as a valid way of knowing pain, and justice in health care. The latter is particularly important to me these days (justice is one of the four pillars of medical ethics (along with autonomy, non-maleficence, and beneficence), and my focus will be on epistemic justice as a way toward more equitable and ethical pain care.

I’ll be sharing some nature stuff, too. I live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and love to share the rugged splendor of this place. Below is a pic from our campsite last week.

Thanks for checking out this first post. I hope you’ll subscribe (or stay subscribed) and stick around for more. Please note that free subscribers will see all my posts. I have paid subscription options for those who would like to support my writing and advocacy and are able to do so.