The past two years have been extremely full and my body needed a fair bit of down time. I’m slowly playing catch up with my blog so here’s all the 2021 things!
In late 2020, Brianne Benness spoke at TEDxDeerfield and included an image of my embroidery paresthesia (hand 1) as one of her slides. Brianne advocates for people with stigmatized and under-diagnosed illnesses and is the founder of the NEISvoid. My piece is shown right at the beginning of this talk so you might miss it if you blink!
In April 2021, my embroidery piece she breathed got a lot of attention as part of the SciArt Tweet Storm, organized annually by Symbiartic SciArt.
In June 2021, during #MillionsMissing (the annual worldwide myalgic encephalomyelitis [ME/CFS] awareness campaign), MEAction held an artist salon. I was one of their featured artists along with some other talented people. You can read about the salon and all the artists here, as well as watch the entire salon. I’m the first artist on the video!
In October 2021, some of my embroideries were published by Kindred Cities in their Halloween Edition alongside a poem by Jennifer Sparrowhawk, Love Sanguine: A Sick Fairytale. Kindred Cities publishes creative work and interviews with artists in Saskatoon and Regina, Saskatchewan.
In December 2021, a five minute excerpt from my video poem susurrations was chosen as part of the Canadian New Music Network’s Listen Up! Forum. susurrations was part of their social media showcase featured on CNMN’s Instagram and YouTube pages. CNMN is doing some great work to support New music that doesn’t always fit into the classical music model.
Also in December, my essay, When Illness Becomes the way: Stoicism as a way through Chronic Illness and Disability, won Classical Wisdom‘s Stoic Essay writing competition. I wrote about how Stoicism has helped me flourish since becoming ill with ME/CFS and how important Stoicism is right now since more and more people are being diagnosed with ME/CFS as part of Long COVID. The editors also published some of my symptomatology embroideries along with my essay, first in their subscription magazine, Litterae. and then on their website a few months later where you can read the entire essay. I was also interviewed by Classical Wisdom founder, Anya Leonard.
In between all these things I was dealing with some new hepatobiliary symptoms which are still under investigation. We also finally moved into the house my husband has been renovating for the past few years which was a positive but a huge change. All of this is why I am so behind on my blog. A lot was accomplished in 2022 as well but I’m saving that for a separate post. Keep an eye out for it in the weeks to come.