Monday, 27 October 2014

Rachel: Exploring Dysautonomia Through the Arts for Dysautonomia Awareness Month 2014

(Cyan-ide - Rachel Faith Cox)

Today's contribution for Exploring Dysautonomia Through the Arts, is from Rachel. I love Rachel's picture and accompanying poem and once again it feels like slipping into familiar clothes the themes are so close to home. 



Hi, I'm Rachel, I have Pandysautonomia and live in New Zealand. I am a Mum of two and a wife too. My picture is called Cyan-ide. It’s a play on the colour cyan, blue being our awareness colour for Dysautonomia Awareness Month.  Cyanide because sometimes it feels like I have been poisoned slowly. My form of Dysautonomia is progressive, so that relentless decline and fall feeling is often with me. I drew this with pencil, ink pen, felt pen and coloured pencils. Anything I could find easily in the kids’ homework supplies drawer. I find so often that my creativity is drained by the efforts it takes to set up supplies and get it all ready to go. But this project had a deadline which was good motivation to get it done, somehow! I wanted to show how Dysautonomia feels. In those moments when your family have gone to work and school and you don’t have to have your brave face on anymore. I wanted to show how trapped and held we feel when we wake to face another day of it.

I also wanted to write a poem to accompany the picture, but the poem took longer to put together. Finally, today, after three straight days in bed, I got it done.  Thanks Michelle for waiting for me to send it to you. I've called the poem Free Fall and it is really an exploration of the desperate relationship I have with sleep. With hope. With the difficult thoughts. I am usually more upbeat in my writing, but it has been a true release to have this opportunity to express myself and my feelings so freely.




Remember to head on over here to donate to my Clicking My Heels For Dysautonomia, raising money for the Greg Page Fund for Orthostatic Intolerance and Dysautonomia research, at The Baker IDI. Thanks to the generosity of many we've already raised over $3,200, keep donating and hopefully we can reach $10,000.

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