The Chronic Market is excited to welcome “Auntie Meg” to its tribe of creatives, and have her cheerful, earth-friendly cards available for purchase through the marketplace.
In her words: “I’m Megan (a.k.a. “Auntie Meg” to my close friend’s daughter). I feel most at home in the high desert, love free flowing rivers, am an ongoing student of Feldenkrais and Organic Intelligence, and love to garden, write and make art. I’m from Northern Arizona, and have lived in Ohio, Vermont and Oregon. In the “before times” I worked in the field of non-profit river conservation, engaging with hydropower issues, dam removal, recreation, Wild and Scenic Rivers, and the Clean Water Act.
The start of my ME journey is a bit out of the norm. I’ve had funky symptoms my whole life, and as a kid I assumed that everyone felt the same in their body as I did. Even though I had a relatively normal childhood, I wondered the whole time how everyone else was pulling off this thing called life so much more easily that I did.
I began having severe pelvic/abdominal pain in high school, and missed several months of school my sophomore year as a result. I eventually did make it back, but never at the same rate as my peers. I had several ups and downs along the way, but was able to make it through college, majoring in Geology, and later graduate school, focusing on Environmental Law. I took an interest in environmental protection and restoration as a kid, and developed a passion for rivers and water resource issues in high school.
Over the years, I was able to manage my health relatively well, although didn’t have the energy to have much of a life outside of work. I explored many different diagnoses and treatment modalities during that time. But in 2018, things took a dramatic turn, and within the span of six weeks I went from working 35 hours a week to not being able to hold a two-minute conversation. I felt like I had a severe concussion, but had not hit my head. During that time, I finally received an ME/CFS diagnosis, along with Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder and the alphabet soup of other diagnoses that commonly accompany it.
In recent years I’ve been exploring the possibility of structural influences on my symptoms, and in the fall of 2022 I had surgery to address Tethered Cord. I know now that I’ve had it since birth and that it likely played a key role in my severe pelvic pain as a teen. Additionally, a month before that surgery I was diagnosed with a cranial CSF leak and now know that it was present during my decline in 2018. In March of this year, I had surgery to repair it. I’ve been able to make some progress through these surgeries, but still remain disabled by my conditions.
I truly loved making art when I was a kid, but just didn’t have the energy for it while I was working. It’s been a tough road, and I’d much rather be working, but one silver lining in all of this is that I have the space in my life to make art again, as energy allows. I hope that people enjoy looking at and sharing my collages as much as I enjoyed making them!”
Click here to shop Megan’s store, featuring cards printed from original collages on tree-free banana leaf paper.