A post on why I’ve been neglecting my blog.
My Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) has progressed to the point where some of my flares require long hospitalizations, more IV antibiotics, and ERCPs. I’ve been much sicker for much longer, and sometimes I don’t even have the focus to do much embroidery.
Late in 2024, Kathryn Vercillo of Threadstack and Create Me Free sent me some intriguing interview questions which I used as journaling prompts between liver infections. The interview is now online for all to read. In it I share the experience of changing mediums due to health, beginning to identify as having a disability, reading The Van Gogh Blues, and so much more.
I’ve been dealing with some recurrent liver issues the past few months so haven’t been able to write and post as much as I like, but ME Awareness Month is almost over so here is information for this year’s benefit!
I’m excited to announce that I’m once again a featured artist in Opera Mariposa’s 2024 Benefit + Awareness Month! 🦋 I’m honoured to share both art and music to support the ME | FM Society of BC and raise awareness for those affected by ME/CFS, Long Covid, and Fibromyalgia. Join me for this all-online charity extravaganza at Benefit.OperaMariposa.com from May 1 – June 1, 2025. There’s music, art, over $3,000 in prizes and more – and it’s all for a great cause!
This essay was originally published by Classical Wisdom after winning their Stoic Essay Writing Contest in 2022. You can read the original post here.
What happens to each of us is ordered. It furthers our destiny.
Marcus Aurelius[1]
We never know when our lives might be changed suddenly and irrevocably. 2015 was one of the most successful years of my career as a multidisciplinary artist and vocal coach. I was teaching privately and at our local university and collaborating with several other performing artists. My largest project was writing and performing libretto and music for an upcoming dance opera. After a three week intensive with the dance opera company, my collaborator came down with a virus. I gently hugged her aching body and said goodbye. The next day I was sick. I still haven’t recovered.
Stoicism has been of great help in managing my mental and physical health while living with chronic illness. I also believe Stoicism has the potential to shift how society views those disabled by chronic illness—from burdens to human beings capable of flourishing—and to offer the support necessary to make that happen.
Continue reading
I have completed The Hum—a piece of music based on my hyperacusis and tinnitus symptoms. It’s just over 11 minutes long, and is a calm, ambient, and somewhat minimalist piece. Here is a 1 minute, 20 second taste of the recording:
You can buy the entire 11 minute recording on my Ko-fi page as an mp3.
Read on for more information about my long and gentle music reintegration and composition process for this piece.
Continue readingNote: This has been cross-posted on ko-fi and on Medium.
2023 was a very full year with a few big projects done in tandem with other organizations. It was also the year that I finally felt I had a career again for the first time since the 2015 onset of ME/CFS. Here are some of my plans for this coming year, with the caveat that they are all fate-permitting since I never know what my body might do.
I have three main practices—embroidery, music, and writing—and have ongoing projects in each. My main embroidery project is a very large vagus nerve piece, my main music project is a composition/recording titled The Hum, and my main writing project is writing poems based on my notes from Deb Dana’s polyvagal theory audio course.
Continue readingThe date of the official launch of Sharp Notions: Essays on the Stitching Life, approaches! It’s out on October 10th, but you can preorder it now. Pre-ordering has become very important in publishing, so doing so will help the longevity and success of the book.
The cover for the forthcoming anthology, Sharp Notions: Writing From The Stitching Life, was revealed in February, and it features my embroidery, she breathed!
I’m very honoured that SK Arts has selected my embroidery sensorium (2016)—part of my symptomatology series—for purchase for their permanent collection.
sensorium is a depiction of the hypersensitivity and hyperexcitation of my nervous system due to ME/CFS and took approximately 60 hours to stitch. My main sensory sensitivity is to sound and vibration—hyperacusis—which can absolutely overwhelm me depending on the volume and timbre of the sound. My entire nervous system becomes involved, and though this symptom has improved with a lot of desensitization work it still affects me daily.
I recently finished stitching this large (18″x12″) hand embroidery piece based on one of my SciArt text/image pieces. I’ve been working on this piece since June 18, 2018 and finished the stitching July 18, 2020, so it took just over two years to complete it. I’m very pleased with it!