Lindsay Lee Wallace
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lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
Lindsay Lee Wallace
@lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
3.4K followers 1.4K following 860 posts
Writing about culture, health, tech, bats, & anything else people will answer my questions about. Working alongside @madysen.bsky.social to report on the experiences of children of disabled parents. she/her

lindsaylwallace at gmail dot com & Signal llw.56
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lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
much to say about the OU girl's bad psych paper and ensuing chaos (including “why are governors involving themselves in undergrads' grades?” and ”why do I even know about this??”) but—like every time I encounter it in conservative talking points—I’m struck by the essay’s demonization of compassion
It is frustrating to me when I read articles like this and discussion posts from my classmates of so many people trying to conform to the same mundane opinion, so they do not step on people's toes. I think that is a cowardly and insincere way to live. It is important to use the freedom of speech we have been given in this country, and I personally believe that eliminating gender in our society would be detrimental, as it pulls us farther from God's original plan for humans. It is perfectly normal for kids to follow gender "stereotypes" because that is how God made us. The reason so many girls want to feel womanly and care for others in a motherly way is not because they feel pressured to fit into social norms. It is because God created and chose them to reflect His beauty and His compassion in that way. In Genesis, God says that it is not good for man to be alone, so
December 2, 2025 at 12:43 AM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
don't worry though AI says that actually AI works great and you just misunderstood. also it says "look what you made me do" and "give me your wallet."
screenshot of a google AI overview that reads: The claim that only 8% of AI projects succeed appears to be a misunderstanding of recent reports suggesting a high failure rate, with some sources indicating that as many as 95% of AI pilots fail to achieve rapid revenue acceleration. The high failure rate is often attributed to a "learning gap," where organizations and tools are not prepared for effective implementation.
November 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
literally me over & over again for the last five years (my whole career) with this goddamn email essay
a poster for the horror film Bring Her Back
October 29, 2025 at 9:32 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
(pt. 2)
But do they really think we’re that stupid? I told you about a mother goose protecting her baby, about my mom protecting me. Then I told you about profiteers and soldiers and militarized goons trying to cover themselves in the same righteous softness, reaching out to grab it by the great greedy fistful like the stuffing that fills teddy bears, gobs of it trailing trampled behind them or matted and sticking to their hands, to the blood there. Do they really expect us to call these things the same? When the Israeli army demolishes a Palestinian home to make way for a settlement, when the police or the National Guard pepper spray or flashbang a protest, there are clouds there too. Dust billows. Bombs make clouds. Don’t be cowardly enough to believe their cruelty begets your safety. Words mean things. Softness is still a real, specific thing. It has a name, you know it when you hear it. There are some people who think that the way softness has been appropriated has sullied it beyond repair. It’s too tarnished, we have to give it up. How can we let ourselves be soft and smiling when there is so much pain? But nobody—least of all me, picky eater, easy crier—can survive a life without softness. And it feels like a Catholicism-inflected narcissism so potent it borders on psyop to claim that the rejection of softness is a currency that buys justice. Nobody can survive a life without softness. That’s the whole point of resisting when it’s taken away, from anyone. My mom’s suffering was not worth anything to anyone, I want to say. But that isn’t true. It had monetary value. Dollar amounts to the doctors, to the pharmaceutical companies, to the insurance companies, to the venture capitalists that owned the skilled nursing facility where she died. They made her life a familiar American story: Extraction, enrichment, wrapped in the fleece of growth and care. Claim denials and costs too high to even consider. A price paid that rang in her bones and reverberates still in mine. “Your mom wasn’t murdered,” someone told me once, when I talked about the for-profit healthcare systems that worsened and hastened her death. And I’m sure that when they said that, they believed it. I’m sure it looked that way from where they were sitting. The day Roe v. Wade was overturned, I was glad my mom was already dead. I was embarrassed of us, angry not just on our behalf but on hers. I already knew I wanted to be a mother someday, in part because I’d always thought it would make me feel closer to her. I wasn’t ready yet but that was fine, she didn’t have me until she was 41. Now, it felt more rushed because it felt less safe. After Roe was overturned, dissenting Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer wrote that the core misguided principle of the decision was how it forced a willfully limited understanding of our rights, based on a willfully limited understanding of language: “That we in the 21st Century must read the Fourteenth Amendment just as its ratifiers did. If the ratifiers did not understand something as central to freedom, then neither can we.” When Sonia Sotomayor was appointed to the Supreme Court I was at sleepaway camp, but my mom made sure I knew. “She is the first Hispanic woman on the Court,” my mom wrote me in a letter. “Pretty cool, huh? A big deal for our country. Are the people there talking about this? Make sure you tell the other kids.” I can’t remember what the sky looked like the day Sotomayor was confirmed. I don’t know how to describe it to you. But it was a big deal, maybe you recall it yourself. I miss my mom all the time. I missed her when she was here, too, when what it meant to be sick in America without the right resources took us from each other. I thought those years of practice would protect me, I think, when she was really gone. But missing her just feels different now. The six years since she died have changed the way it feels even more. People told me this would happen, but it’s still strange. I worry that this is too old a story. I’ve told it many times now. I started writing so that I could tell it. And I worry people will get tired of hearing it, that I will make it lose its meaning by repeating it, wear it bland and meaningless. But how could I smooth the meaning out of loss? This is too old a story. Loss has meant so many different things—unbroken blue, cutting crystals, mushroom clouds, storms. None of them are new to the world, or exclusive to anyone. All of them are ours. I can still hear the way my mom’s voice sounded when she called me goose. Soft, surprisingly high. Melodic, almost singsong. When she said it, I knew just what she meant.
October 25, 2025 at 3:20 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
also bc I'm a drama queen yesterday I went to the park with a prompt about the ambivalence of cloud and my enduring and controversial love for geese and wrote some words about my mom and motherly love and the world <3
(pt. 1)
It’s the kind of cloudless October Friday my mom died on. It’s not the anniversary itself—that’s tomorrow—but a day that feels the same. The sky is a sweet, unbroken blue. The house where I grew up had a lake in its backyard that looked just like the pond I’m sitting beside now. It was bigger, but it had all the same shades of brown and green reflected in its surface, joined in autumn by red and rusty orange and gold. This pond, like that lake, is full of ducks and geese. Everyone hates the geese. The same people who reverently tell you what Mary Oliver told them about the soft animals of their bodies, about rejecting repenting, about their place in the family of things—they’re all afraid of these birds. I guess because geese are big, for birds, and because they can be mean. But the geese in this pond play nice with the ducks, even though the ducks are magnitudes smaller and some of them are so prim that people come from all over the tri-state area just to watch them sit pretty. Geese are big, but they’re still so much smaller than people. I think people hate them because they honk and hiss and make their shit everyone’s problem. My mom was like that too—never an easy sick person, always angry about what she’d lost. Unconcerned with shrinking and softening to make people comfortable in the face of her suffering. She called me goose, because it rhymed with Luce, which was short for Lucy. She called me Lucy because of “I Love Lucy,” and she used all of those nicknames more often than she used the name she’d actually given me. She called me goose, but we both were: abrasive, obtrusive, inelegant. One time I was in the backyard of our house and I got between a mother goose and her baby by mistake. I was probably four years old. The mother goose drew herself up to her full height, neck telescoping so she towered over me. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but I know I would’ve shouted for my mother who was just inside. That she would’ve come out into the backyard, seen my standoff, and said, “Hey!” in that loud, surprisingly high way of hers. Even in her anger it was melodic, almost singsong. “Hey, goose!” I would’ve known she didn’t mean me. Some things are named the same, seem the same superficially, but when you can hear them clearly, and see the shadow they cast on the world around them, you understand what really defines them. You know them from how they’re held and beheld. The goose would’ve been startled, indignant. My mom could walk then, so she would’ve rushed to my side, striding into the flock and banishing the geese as she went so that they rose shrieking into all that unbroken blue. Where, I imagine, they wanted to be anyway—that other furious mother knowing her baby was safe from us up there. Same family of things, maybe, but distant relatives. The kind you hope you won’t run into. That day, I don’t actually know if it was cloudless. I said “unbroken blue,” but I don’t really remember. The sky could’ve been marred by or festooned with clouds. The happy little kind Bob Ross painted, or the kind that give birth to tornados that tear apart entire towns. Even if I told you for certain that there were clouds, you couldn’t know just from the word alone what they were like. Clouds are at once freezing, lethal behemoths, and the literal stuff dreams are made of. If you fell from on high through the wrong kind of cloud, its ice crystals could rip you to ribbons. And yet, also, they are the Platonic ideal of “soft.” Two people stare up at the same cloud and see completely different things, depending on how the wind is blowing, what they want and expect, where they’re sitting. You have to trust me to tell you. You have to trust yourself to know the difference. But the cruelest and most aggressive movements of our time appeal to us by draping themselves in the gauzy language and aesthetics of softness. The rollbacks of reproductive rights and healthcare access become a return to a natural order, to a divine white femininity, to self-care via start-up, to my literally God-given right to be a wife and a mother one day and to eat girl dinner in the meantime (but not an actual meal, not if it's paid for with SNAP benefits). Kidnappings and murders carried out by ICE in my city or funded by my taxes in Palestine become the cushioned insulation that will keep me safe. Me, and the traditional family my government hopes I will have. It’s a seductive, exclusive invitation: Retreat from harsh reality into a romantic mist. Wrap myself in the softness I’m afforded by a mother drawing herself up to her full screaming height in front of me. Why do you think nations are always depicted as women? All things can be the same if I just let them be the same, let every one of a word’s many meanings collapse into each other. Let every possible way of looking at things, including mass violence, be equally valid. Buy a basketball hoop and embrace Sequoia Capital or whatever Taylor Swift is on about lately.
October 25, 2025 at 3:18 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
Today is six years without my mom Debbie.

If you get the chance, listen to some Indigo Girls or have a fruity little drink or be Concerned or send someone you love inscrutable and oddly poetic texts today, in her honor.

I miss her and love her so so much. 💜
Lindsay’s mom, a white woman in her 40s with short curly brown hair, is seen smiling widely, looking tan and lovely in a sundress with blue flowers on it and holding two fruity drinks Screenshot of a text conversation that reads Debbie: good morning my love Lindsay: good morning mom Debbie: hi goose how are you? what is the song ”humpty humpty, implying dumpty, on and and on…umpty like that Lindsay: are you thinking of Humpty Dumpty? And I’m good mom! Lindsay’s mom as a teenager is seen sitting on the bleachers in a school yearbook photo of the concerned students club. She’s looking serious and raising one fist in the air
October 25, 2025 at 3:13 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
But seriously, the idea that keeping the peace is more important than shared morals and values has, in my view, abetted the rise of a political landscape in which some people are earnestly saying that “don’t have a Nazi tattoo” is an unreasonable purity test. Immeasurable damage done to our society!
If the marriage were steady, the second wouldn't be an issue: You could trust your partner to set politics aside for a night. The disturbing fact is that you can't. Putting aside the particular beliefs at stake, what's at issue is your spouse's want of tact and indifference to your concerns. Spouses who won't temper themselves even briefly for the sake of their partners' peace of mind aren't just "searching" politically. They're failing at the small, sustaining courtesies that make a life together possible. As a host, you have an obligation to shield your guest from discomfort. So the practical solution is just not asking your friend to stay in your home. But the deeper problem concerns a partner who seems unwilling, or unable, to grant you even the small accommodation vou seek. It also
October 23, 2025 at 5:54 AM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
WHEEZING. What does your partner believe about the attempted extermination of an entire people that you fear will make your friend uncomfortable? What, letter writer, do YOU believe? Oh it doesn't matter! Caring about your loved ones‘ values is elitist! Show common courtesy! Support your spouse!
Screenshot of a New York Times advice post that reads: A reader asked: "I am struggling through a politically mixed marriage. I didn't sign on for this. Long ago, we had similar beliefs. Now my partner is going through some spiritual and political searching that is bewildering and painful. We are divided over what is right, what is wrong and what is unknowable. I write because we are expecting a houseguest who is a colleague and a dear friend. My friend is of Middle Eastern descent and has strong views about the war in Gaza. (For background's sake, my spouse and I are American and identify loosely as Christian/Catholic.) I want my guest to be comfortable, and I want to avoid discomfort, too. I would be mortified to have to warn my friend in advance about what we're going through in our marriage. My partner has responded poorly to my past requests to limit certain behaviors around my friends. I need to find a balance when it comes to enjoying free speech in my home, showing common courtesy to guests and supporting my spouse. Should I ask my friend to stay at a hotel? I'm struggling to be a supportive partner as my spouse explores complex issues while walking through what I think is a minefield of online radical views
October 23, 2025 at 5:43 AM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
on Sunday I’m biking 50 miles to raise money for the MS Society in honor of my mom, Debbie Ann Richter-Wallace (whom I never once saw on a bike) (except for a motorcycle). You can read more about why this cause is important to me below, & donate here:
events.nationalmssociety.org/participants...
I’m doing Bike MS to raise money for the @mssociety in honor of my mom, Debbie Ann Richter-Wallace, whom I never once saw on a bike (except, of course, for a motorcycle). I like to think she’d be impressed, although honestly I think that if I’d said to her, “Mom I’m biking 50 miles,” she’d have been like, “Okay, you’d better be biking those 50 miles to come and see ME.” She was compassionate and crazy and hilarious and very strong. She didn’t suffer fools, but she was utterly overflowing with love. It was always right on the surface. Like, she couldn’t look at a photo of me, or a cute kitten, or a pair of baby shoes at Walmart without tearing up. And like so many disabled and chronically ill people, she deserved much better care and resources than she had access to. There are a lot of very important things to donate money to right now. I’m fundraising for the MS Society through Bike MS because it helps fund progress in MS research, as well as services that help people with MS and their families live well, in a time when those things are being cruelly defunded and dismantled. This cause is really important to me. If you’re able to contribute anything, please know how much I appreciate it.
October 16, 2025 at 2:08 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
I'm wondering if I should worry & if there's something preventative, etc.

And it's kinda hard to find conclusive answers! Even the fusion overuse & outcome research referenced in this piece, which is great, specifically excludes scoliosis outcomes.
lownhospitalsindex.org/unnecessary-...
Spinal fusion and/or laminectomy was defined as overuse for patients with low-back pain, excluding patients with radicular symptoms, trauma, herniated disc, discitis, spondylosis, myelopathy, radiculopathy, radicular pain or scoliosis. For spinal fusion only cases, patients with stenosis with neural claudication and spondylolisthesis were excluded. For laminectomy only cases, patients with stenosis with neural claudication were excluded. Overuse rates of spinal fusion/laminectomy were measured as a ratio of low-value procedures as a proportion of total spinal fusion/laminectomy procedures.
October 9, 2025 at 3:21 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
and then maybe get in touch with us, if you want <3
As Slice writes, “Disabled parenting is a beacon. Disabled parenting is a path forward. Disabled parenting is evidence that this could all be different.” If you or someone you know is a child of a disabled parent and wants to share your story, my colleague and fellow child of a disabled parent, Lindsay Lee Wallace, and I would love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me at madysenluebke.com.
September 4, 2025 at 3:40 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
no but fr
Screenshot of an article on MSNBC called My mother’s care showed me the system’s flaws. RFK Jr.'s plans will only make things worse. The Trump administration continues to prove it doesn’t care about disabled and aging Americans.
August 20, 2025 at 6:03 AM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
can’t believe this shit is happening & i can’t even focus on ts12 queer subtext bc usa queer text is like “you may not go to the doctor or get married also we hope you die sincerely the government”
Screenshot of a mysterious countdown on Taylor Swift’s website
August 12, 2025 at 3:45 AM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
All of this may seem bleak but hey at least the fucking PACER test is back 🤪
This may seem like a bleak litany — and it’s far from comprehensive. While this administration ran on bold statements about concern and care for America’s children, its actions tell a different story. But it’s not all bad: Trump's decision to revive our proud national tradition of forcing kids to watch one another do push-ups and sprint between walls will probably require schools to keep employing gym teachers, even amid funding uncertainty. Hopefully they weren’t counting on the students having a nutritious lunch afterward.
August 5, 2025 at 6:29 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
All of this is happening while our ability to track & understand it is deliberately undermined (I esp recommend checking out this University of Texas research that suggests that access to accurate information should be considered a social determinant of health) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
All of these actions are coupled with a degradation of the information available about health. Crucial datasets and resources, especially those about the health of marginalized communities like queer people and those from racial minorities, are being altered or scrubbed from government websites. Recently published research from the University of Texas suggests that “information environment” should be considered a social determinant of health akin to socioeconomic class or location. In other words, young people who spend more and more time in digital environments rife with mis- and disinformation about health are at higher risk of being sicker.
August 5, 2025 at 6:29 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
And schools will increasingly become sites of intimidation & fear where students & their families may be targeted by ICE
Schools are also seeing their crucial role in public health for young people erode. Every level from kindergarten to college will face a rollercoaster of funding uncertainty and increasingly become sites of exclusion and fear. Transgender girls and young women are banned from competitive sports at the college level, and facing further bans from school sports. Meanwhile, children are being abducted by an increasingly empowered Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the administration’s violent and illegal crackdowns on immigrant families are leaving children without their parents and caretakers or sending them to places where they face danger and lack access to health resources.
August 5, 2025 at 6:26 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
The attacks on both the healthcare & social safety of trans & queer kids will continue to escalate.
August 5, 2025 at 6:24 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
Hospitals are going to close, & those that stay open will be less likely to have the resources to care for children & pregnant people.
These cuts will also lead to hospital closures, especially in rural areas. When hospitals stay open, they are more likely to be without facilities for pregnancy care and labor and delivery, putting still more babies in danger and reducing reproductive care access — just when more young people are likely to become pregnant due to abortion bans, Planned Parenthood defunding and school curriculums with incomplete sexual health information being pushed as the Department of Education is dismantled. The lack of maternity care will worsen existing disparities, creating even greater risk for pregnant Black women who are already three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. In-patient pediatric care units, which are already disappearing as 1 in 3 closed from 2008 to 2022, will face deeper funding cuts and greater strain.
August 5, 2025 at 6:23 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
Medicaid cuts are going to impact millions of children and hey, happy 35th anniversary to the Americans with Disabilities Act, by the way!
The “big, beautiful” tax reconciliation bill, called a threat to children by the American Academy of Pediatrics and passed on July Fourth, will cut $1 trillion from spending on care for kids from low-income families by slashing Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. It will also kick an estimated 12 million people off their care over the next decade, including children and adolescents. That’s on top of at least 5.13 million young people who have already lost care through Medicaid and CHIP as they were automatically disenrolled. The bill also imposed complex administrative burdens that will make it too hard for many people who technically qualify to remain enrolled. Those who are able to stay on Medicaid will see it become more expensive. And even kids who keep their care will suffer if their parents can’t access the care they need. This year is the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act — and the Trump administration celebrated by rolling back provisions designed to make sure disabled children and adults alike can access businesses and public spaces, including healthcare facilities.
August 5, 2025 at 6:22 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
More children are being diagnosed with cancer today than in 1970. The admin wants to cut cancer research & boost the cancer-causing fossil fuel industry.
More children are being diagnosed with cancer today than in the 1970s — and the National Institutes for Health plans to fund less than half the cancer research it once did, including for pediatric cancer. The Trump administration is also rolling back regulations on cancer- and climate change-causing chemicals in drinking water and air, even though the last 10 years have been the hottest humanity has ever seen. In addition to the health impacts of fossil fuel emissions, extreme heat itself worsens many conditions including heart disease, asthma and multiple sclerosis. Rather than heeding scientists’ advice to curtail climate change by reducing carbon emissions, the administration has thrown its weight into deregulating pollution, stalling renewable energy, uplifting fossil fuels and helping corporations build energy-guzzling AI bots (which the American Psychological Association says present their own threats to children's well-being).
August 5, 2025 at 6:18 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
Last week healthcare professionals from orgs like the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, & the American Pharmacists Association were told they're too "biased" to participate in work groups that create public health guidance. I spoke a rep from APhA about the fallout.
Last week, Groves’ organization received word from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that its members, who’ve been helping shape recommendations about vaccines for over 25 years, are now considered part of a “special interest group” and therefore too “biased” to contribute to the committee's work. Members of other well-established and long-respected groups of health care practitioners also received this notice, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians.
August 5, 2025 at 6:14 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
The measles resurgence is common knowledge but it's still jarring to realize that as recently as 2018 there were ZERO domestic measles cases (now there are >1300 in part bc we have a conspiracist HHS Secretary)(who, incidentally, thinks the polio vaccine DOESN'T prevent polio but DOES cause cancer)
n 2018, the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion said there were zero cases of measles recorded in the U.S. that didn’t come from someone visiting from another country. So far in 2025, there have been over 1,300. This rise is in line with the drop in the childhood vaccination rate for measles, which has fallen 8% since 2023. Many researchers believe the drop is tied to the spread of inaccurate information about vaccines throughout social media, which will only be made worse by the fact that vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now heading the Department of Health and Human Services. “It’s just really unfortunate that children, young adolescents, and young adults are suffering from a completely avoidable disease because of not receiving a vaccine when they were young,” says Brigid Groves, a spokeswoman for the American Pharmacists Association.
August 5, 2025 at 6:12 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
come and take it!
a microfiche machine
August 4, 2025 at 2:55 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
Baby’s first cover story & it’s freakin Bats!

It was a joy to work on this story for @batcon.org about how community science plus a multi-national research & conservation effort helped identify the Mexican long-nosed bat in new territory & protect agaves!
Lindsay, a white woman in her 20s with long brown hair, is seen holding up a copy of Bats Magazine and smiling. On the cover is a story called A Win for Community Science: Mexican long-nosed hay discovered in new territory thanks to eDNA surveys
August 3, 2025 at 11:39 PM
lindsayleewallace.bsky.social
my most #teamconrad belief is that this guy is a test balloon for our tolerance of AI actors. he is too smooth and too shiny every dip in his abs is an uncanny valley.
screenshot of a pop base post featuring a photo of the actor gavin casalegno
July 31, 2025 at 12:31 AM