making meaning: creative practices for transmuting chronic pain

Within these pages you will find care rituals, lessons felt and lessons learned, reaching hearts, fragile hands, floating bodies, bone deep fatigue, new vocabularies, and an abundance of unlikely gifts. The writing and art in this zine was created by people who experience chronic pain as we communicate our experiences to the world, and especially to each other.

Those new to chronic pain will be welcomed with tender arms and invited further into your own process of truth telling. There are as many ways to survive as there are potential pains in the body. This zine is a guide to help us mourn what was lost as we survive into new vulnerable, creative versions of ourselves.

making meaning is a collaborative, participatory art project by Anne Mondro, Bridget Quinn, and Owólabi Aboyade.

making meaning features the work of Aiko Fukuchi, Amber D. Harrison, Ashley Joshua, Ann Patnaude, Lauren Rossi, Chandler Storrs, Dawna Allore, Matthew Shlian, Morgan Burgard, Patti Malmquist, Rachel Frey, Ren Cedar Fuller.