The Defiant Truth
The flagship long-form piece. Personal, provocative, and deeper than the public version.
Back to Defiant Truths ←
MEMBERS ONLY · NO BROCHURE VERSIONTHE ROOM BEHIND THE POST
Too honest for Facebook. Too important to water down.
The public work tells the truth. This is where the deeper, more personal, and more provocative work gets room to breathe.
Start your 14-day free trial ↗$7 monthly or $70 annually. Card required. Cancel before the trial ends and pay nothing.01 / THE LATEST DROP
New from The Defiant Few.
The latest premium release is live: honest, uncomfortable, and given enough room to say what the public feed usually edits out.
THE DEFIANT TRUTH · MONDAYNovember 2, 2026 · 8 min read
I Can Be Wrong About Why.
An uncertain explanation does not make an experience imaginary, but defending what happened should not require me to defend every story I build around it.
Read the premium article ↗Parkinson’s is the diagnosis. Humanity is the territory.
The Defiant Few is bigger than Parkinson’s. It lives at the intersection of chronic illness, identity, absurdity, psychology, loss, disability, relationships, anger, aging, medicine, mortality, and the occasional joke that has absolutely no business being funny.
These are not reheated Facebook posts behind a paywall. This is original work, access to the thoughts that are too complicated, uncomfortable, or personal for the public feed—and a private Facebook group where members can talk to one another without explaining the brochure version first.
03 / THE WEEKLY RHYTHM
Predictable enough to trust. Never predictable enough to bore you.
Original writing, honest conversation, Ask Richie, and occasional surprises. Enough value to matter without turning membership into another unread inbox.
What Nobody Tells You
The realities polite conversations avoid: sex, resentment, dependence, medication, fear, and dignity.
Inside My Head
Stories and journal-style reflections drawn from more than three decades inside Parkinson’s.
The Defiant Question
One question worth answering together. No small talk and absolutely no ‘How are you?’
Parkinson’s After Dark
Dark observations, satire, fake warnings, cartoons, and symptoms too ridiculous not to use.
PARKINSON’S AFTER DARK
Funny in places where funny has no business being.
Dark observations, fake pharmaceutical warnings, ridiculous symptoms, and satire from someone who has lived long enough with Parkinson’s to know the fine print is lying.
“Side effects may include sudden wisdom, inappropriate dancing, and the uncontrollable urge to explain dopamine to strangers.”
Every published release from The Defiant Few.
I Can Be Wrong About Why.
An uncertain explanation does not make an experience imaginary, but defending what happened should not require me to defend every story I build around it.
Read this release ↗Please Rate Your Recent Loss of Dignity.
In my imaginary patient survey, the blanket gets five stars, the unanswered question gets nowhere to go, and gratitude is asked to approve the entire experience.
Read this release ↗A Fair Vote Can Still Leave Someone Out.
Giving everyone an equal say does not make a decision inclusive when some people are choosing between preferences and someone else is choosing whether they can participate at all.
Read this release ↗I Want to Do It Again.
The part of a good weekend I keep returning to is the wish for another one, and I want to understand that wish without making it promise more than it can.
Read this release ↗We Share a Diagnosis. We May Not Be Friends.
A shared illness can spare us an explanation without making us compatible, and a community becomes smaller when belonging requires pretending otherwise.
Read this release ↗My Backlog Is Not My Life’s Work.
Illness can leave work unfinished, but I do not want a list of old intentions deciding what every usable hour is for.
Read this release ↗Your Miracle Came with Homework.
An unsolicited health tip can arrive as a gift while quietly assigning me the research, the decision and the job of making its sender feel helpful.
Read this release ↗The Laugh Does Not Settle the Argument.
I can claim the right to laugh at my own illness and still have to answer for what the joke reveals about somebody else.
Read this release ↗My Children Do Not Owe Me Their Futures.
A parent can want help, fear needing it, and still refuse to turn love into a debt collected from the children who grew up inside it.
Read this release ↗I Can Miss People and Still Want to Be Alone.
Wanting connection and wanting relief from the work of being company can be true at the same time—and the contradiction can make both needs harder to admit.
Read this release ↗Let Me Be New at Something.
After years of explaining what I know, I want room to do something badly without turning the attempt into a referendum on the life I have left.
Read this release ↗I Am Exhausted. Sleep Is Not Impressed.
Insomnia is bad enough without making every awake hour proof that I am managing my illness badly.
Read this release ↗A Real Apology Does Not Restore the Old Relationship.
Remorse can be sincere and change can be real without making closeness something the other person now owes.
Read this release ↗The Job That Paid for My Life Was Not the One on My Business Card.
My part-time years at ShopRite helped finance the life my law degree gets credit for, which makes me question how I learned to rank the work—and the people—holding a life together.
Read this release ↗Embarrassment Arrives Before the Symptom Does.
With an unpredictable body, shame can enter the room early and start canceling a life nothing has actually interrupted yet.
Read this release ↗Suffering Did Not Make Me Kinder. It Made Me Tempted to Keep Score.
Thirty-five years with Parkinson’s gave me perspective, but perspective becomes poison when I use my pain to disqualify somebody else’s.
Read this release ↗My Body and I Have Been Assigned a Group Project. It Is Not Contributing.
Parkinson’s can turn the body into an unreliable teammate, but blaming it too long eventually teaches me to despise part of myself.
Read this release ↗A Promise Can Become Dishonest Without Being Broken.
When capacity changes, honoring an old promise may mean renegotiating it before denial makes somebody else pay.
Read this release ↗My DNA Finally Explained Me. Then It Kept Talking.
The PRKN result answered why Parkinson’s found me—and turned one man’s medical history into family information.
Read this release ↗The Treatment Worked. Now I’m Afraid to Outearn It.
When treatment gives part of your life back, the system can make using that life feel like a threat to the care that restored it.
Read this release ↗My Diagnosis Does Not Own My Imagination.
When illness gives you an audience, changing the subject can feel like betrayal—even when the change is how you take your identity back.
Read this release ↗The Neurologist Has Entered the Room. Everyone Act Normal.
Nothing improves Parkinson’s faster than the arrival of the one person you desperately need to see it misbehave.
Read this release ↗Friendship Should Not Require a Perfect Attendance Record.
Chronic illness can make plans unreliable without making the friendship unimportant, but keeping the connection alive cannot become only one person’s job.
Read this release ↗I Was Trained to Run Toward the Emergency. Nobody Taught Me What to Do When It Moved In.
A crisis has an alarm, a role and an ending; chronic illness asks for a quieter kind of courage that may never hear the all-clear.
Read this release ↗I Have Become Easier to Help Than to Know.
Chronic illness can make a relationship excellent at managing needs while quietly forgetting to remain curious about the person who has them.
Read this release ↗I Have Won Arguments That Cost More Than Losing Would Have.
Being correct can become a way to avoid being vulnerable, and victory is expensive when the relationship has to pay for it.
Read this release ↗Everybody I Love Is Carrying an Outdated Map of Me.
Being known can become its own kind of loneliness when the people closest to me are still navigating by a version I no longer inhabit.
Read this release ↗Thank You for Calling Parkinson’s. Your Symptom Is Very Important to Us.
Please remain on the line while your tremor, fatigue, bladder, mood, blood pressure and swallowing problem are transferred to six different departments.
Read this release ↗Sometimes I Call It Protection Because Control Sounds Ugly.
Keeping painful truths from the people I love can spare them fear, but it can also steal their right to decide what love requires.
Read this release ↗I Checked Myself Into a Psychiatric Hospital. Parkinson’s Came With Me.
Dopamine-agonist withdrawal pushed me into psychiatric care and taught me how quickly medicine stops looking like medicine when the injury becomes psychological.
Read this release ↗Everybody Gets to Step Away from My Illness Except Me.
The people who love me deserve relief from the work of illness; the part nobody says aloud is that their necessary rest can feel like rejection when I cannot leave the body creating the work.
Read this release ↗I Don’t Just Want to Be Loved. I Want to Be Useful.
When illness changes what I can do for other people, reassurance cannot fully replace the dignity of still having something to contribute.
Read this release ↗Most Last Times Do Not Know They Are Last.
Life rarely announces an ending while it is happening; most final moments acquire their meaning only after we can no longer return to them.
Read this release ↗My Parkinson’s Has Been Denied for Lack of Prior Authorization.
The disease entered without permission; the care needed to live with it may have to wait while strangers review the paperwork.
Read this release ↗A Diagnosis Is Not a Family Press Release.
Illness may affect everyone in the room, but that does not automatically give everyone the same claim to the patient’s private information.
Read this release ↗I Know My Biography Better Than I Know Myself.
A diagnosis, a law degree, a career, books, testimony and a public voice can describe my life without answering who is living it.
Read this release ↗Sometimes the Applause Is the Insult.
Praise can sound kind while quietly revealing how little the world expected from a disabled person.
Read this release ↗I Keep Competing with a Father Who Never Existed.
Parkinson’s gave me a fictional rival: the healthy father I imagine my children should have had, a man who never had to survive a single real day.
Read this release ↗I Have Outlived Some of My Certainties.
Changing my mind can feel like betraying the person I used to be, even when that person was wrong.
Read this release ↗According to Facebook, Everything Is Parkinson’s.
The internet has created the world’s fastest neurology clinic, staffed entirely by people who begin with ‘not medical advice, but.’
Read this release ↗Pain Is Not a Permission Slip.
Illness can shape behavior and shrink capacity, but it cannot require the person who was hurt to stop being hurt.
Read this release ↗I Became a Lawyer. I Never Got to Become the Lawyer I Might Have Been.
Passing the bar proved Parkinson’s had not stopped me; it did not mean the career I fought for would become the career I imagined.
Read this release ↗Joy Starts Looking Like an Unpaid Bill.
When the future contains unknown costs, spending money on an ordinary pleasure can feel like stealing from the person I may need to become.
Read this release ↗Some Things Deserve to Be Abandoned.
We praise perseverance so blindly that people can spend years proving loyalty to goals, identities and versions of life that are already gone.
Read this release ↗I Keep Putting My Younger Self on Trial with Evidence He Never Had.
Regret becomes cruel when the person I am now prosecutes the person I was using knowledge that arrived only after the choice was already made.
Read this release ↗My Man Card Has Been Declined.
Chronic illness does not merely change what a man can do; it exposes how much of manhood was being rented from strength, independence, earning, sexual confidence and silence.
Read this release ↗Safe Is Not the Same as Alive.
Concern can protect a disabled person from harm, but when safety becomes the only value in the room, protection starts quietly repossessing the life it claims to preserve.
Read this release ↗The Treatment Worked. I Was Still Me.
Vyalev changed my movement dramatically, but a body that becomes more available does not automatically know how to rebuild the life shaped around its absence.
Read this release ↗I Still Care. The Feeling Just Doesn’t Always Arrive.
Apathy can leave my values intact while disconnecting them from the internal ignition that turns caring into action.
Read this release ↗I Refuse to Let Parkinson’s Write My Obituary.
A diagnosis can shape almost every chapter of a life and still have no right to claim authorship of the whole story.
Read this release ↗I Am Old Enough to Miss People I Would Never Want Back.
Nostalgia can make a lost relationship feel sacred, but missing what existed does not mean it belongs in the life I have now.
Read this release ↗My Body Has Been Recalled. No Replacement Parts Available.
Medicine can measure what malfunctions, but somewhere between diagnosis and treatment the person can start feeling like defective equipment with excellent paperwork.
Read this release ↗A Bigger Microphone Can Make the Truth Smaller.
Organizations can amplify an advocate’s voice, but amplification is not freedom when the sentence that most needs saying must first survive somebody else’s comfort.
Read this release ↗Almost Everything I Became Happened After Parkinson’s.
I was diagnosed before the law degree, the courtroom, the testimony, and most of my adult identity; Parkinson’s was present during the construction, but that does not make it the architect.
Read this release ↗The Help Was Free. The Debt Wasn’t.
Dependence creates an emotional economy where gratitude, guilt, resentment, and power begin trading places before anyone admits a transaction occurred.
Read this release ↗Not Everything I’m Angry About Is a Symptom.
The world is comfortable with sick people until our honesty stops being pleasant; then suddenly the disease is not the problem—our attitude is.
Read this release ↗Nobody Left. The Relationship Still Ended.
A person can remain in your life long after the relationship between you has quietly disappeared.
Read this release ↗My Nervous System Is on a Performance Improvement Plan.
After thirty-five years of missed deadlines, unauthorized movements, and hostile takeovers of ordinary tasks, management has finally scheduled a meeting.
Read this release ↗Hope Is Not a Gag Order.
Refusing to discuss death may feel protective, but the silence often serves the people who are afraid to listen.
Read this release ↗The Machine That Helped Save Me Is Quiet Now.
DBS changed what was possible for me in 2008; now it sits switched off while I live inside a body transformed again, this time by Vyalev.
Read this release ↗Desire Should Not Require a Medical Disclaimer.
Chronic illness can complicate sex without canceling desire, privacy, adulthood, or the right to be wanted without becoming somebody’s lesson.
Read this release ↗Survival Didn’t Just Make Me Stronger. It Made Me Harder to Reach.
Some of the walls people admire as resilience were built because needing anyone started to feel more dangerous than being alone.
Read this release ↗Still Being Here Is Not a Small Thing.
Not every act of survival looks brave. Sometimes it looks like waking up, telling the truth, and refusing to disappear from your own life.
Read this release ↗Congratulations. I’ve Reached Platinum Status with Parkinson’s.
After thirty-five years in a loyalty program I never joined, I would like to know where the hell they are hiding the complimentary upgrades.
Read this release ↗The Plan Was Real. So Was the Cancellation.
An unpredictable body can change the answer without making the original yes a lie.
Read this release ↗When Your Life Becomes Evidence
I spent years turning Parkinson’s into testimony, speeches, jokes, and stories—but sometimes I wonder what happens to a life when you become too damn good at explaining it.
Read this release ↗The Gratitude Tax
Needing help is hard enough without feeling like every act of kindness comes with a quiet demand to become easier, nicer, and less complicated.
Read this release ↗The Strange Jealousy of Watching Healthy People Waste Their Bodies
I don’t want anyone else’s life. Sometimes I just want the freedom they don’t even realize they have.
Read this release ↗
05 / ASK RICHIE
Three free answers do not always finish the conversation.
Everyone can ask three complete questions free every day—no shortened answers and no watered-down versions. Defiant Few members can keep going without the daily limit, with follow-up conversations, conversation history, deeper explanations, and voice interaction when available, all grounded in more than three decades of lived Parkinson’s experience.
Ask Richie ↗06 / MEMBERSHIP
Fourteen days to decide if this room is yours.
Both plans include every premium article, Ask Richie, the full weekly rhythm, access to the private Defiant Few Facebook group, and anything Richie decides is too honest for the public feed.
$7/month
14 days free, then $7 monthly
Start monthly trial ↗$70/year
14 days free, then $70 yearly — two months free
Start annual trial ↗Payment card required. Stripe bills automatically after 14 days unless you cancel. A valid complimentary code is applied by Stripe before checkout is completed.
The door is open. Use the same email you registered with.
Your Stripe membership status controls access automatically.
Enter the member room ↗