I am ecstatic to welcome you to the launch of what we know will be a very different, very special resource for the greater aneurysm and AVM community—TAAF Talk Magazine.  TAAF Talk is an online magazine with a casual, home-spun, chat-between-friends feel showcasing aneurysm and AVM conversations from people just like YOU. We will feature quarterly focus pieces, also called TAAF Talks, designed to give the community something it’s craved for years: answers to common questions from each affected community. It’s not the clinician’s thoughts in January, mixed with your aunt’s ideas from 1987, plus the survivor you met online last week trying to help you puzzle through the question What should I really say to my employer after my treatment?. Rather, these TAAF Talks will cover a single topic from three specific and separate perspectives, survivor, clinician and care team member/s all in the same place at the same time. Like I said, different, and we believe special too.

Additionally, TAAF Talk Magazine offers monthly editorials from the community, called Soapbox articles. These pieces will range in topic and author, and as we branch out, will include authors from around the world. Later this month we’ll share one from the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. And lastly TAAF Talk Magazine offers interactive weekly opportunities to share special dates of celebration and remembrance, or YOU Day posts.  These are things like Annie-versaries, AVMembrances, memorials or ANY day that is special enough to you to be celebrated with us.  We’ve started you out with our own unique YOU Day posts and look forward to reading each and every one of yours as they roll in.

TAAF Talk Magazine is one of my longest running “heart projects,” a dream several years in the making, a gift that would have been impossible without the grace and grit of our team. I want to thank them for believing in the magazine enough to share of themselves and of their time. I’d also like to thank the different authors and our artist who contributed to the inaugural series. Without you our pages would be blank and our hearts would be low. Finally, and only because you save the best for last when you write these things, I want to dedicate this first issue in gratitude to the service and dedication of my friend and TAAF Talk Magazine’s Managing Editor, Nancy Nauman. I always say that service is healing; you keep holding my hand and living it.

-Dina Chon, Editor in Chief