StoryMusings
Treasure Maps: The Georgia Storytelling Roadshow 2021
Treasure Maps is a pop-up, interactive, drive-in theatre! The Treasure Maps drive-in show will include live-local hosts, installations, and safe interactive activities. The roadshow feature is the film screening of Treasure Maps on the big screen. Treasure Maps showcases a collection of 10 Georgia Storytellers’ Life Maps which provide an up-close and personal viewpoint into what it’s like navigating the complex webs of life in our communities as a person with a developmental disability.
Making Visible What’s Invisible
As I prepare for this project, I invite you to talk to me. Over the next few months, on my social media, I will be hosting “Food Fridays.” I will ask questions such as…What’s a food that makes you feel really good in your body when you eat it?
Who is someone you really trust that you think could help fix our food systems?
What do you think of when you hear the words ‘food systems’?
The Clock, The Coffee, The Decision
Did I have enough time to take a good shower and dry my hair before the call? If not, was I willing to go through the video call with wet hair? [Side note: I’m not one of those women who looks cute and dewy after stepping out of the shower. My face gets flushed from rosacea, and my stringy hair makes me look rather like a drowned rat. In other words, I generally try to avoid having people see me in such a state.] If I didn’t take a shower then, was I willing to spend the rest of the day feeling gross? [Another note: This is the pandemic, so you know, it had indeed been, um, a whiiiile since the last shower.]
The Garlic Epiphany & My Superpower
What emerged was an essay, “The Garlic Epiphany,” comprised of short reflections on a world without him, a world where his voice was silenced, how I struggled to feel alive on some days spent stretched out for too many hours on the couch he’d left to me. The title came from the ending where I was struck with the very sensory experience of standing at the stove, stirring garlic in a pan, the pungent odors and crackling sounds washing over me…
The Curving, Carved, and Curated Path
A spiritual walk with grief in some ways is, and in some ways is not, like these paths. A walk with grief, especially at the beginning, is more like being totally off the grid, mucking around, with no discernible path at all.
The Pandemic “Play” List
Here are some of my favorite ways that I’ve kept going–what I’ve done to keep myself occupied, reflections on my best and hardest moments, and what I hope to carry with me into next year when we emerge into another new reality…