We want to hear your perspective on chronic pain. We are looking for anyone interested in submitting writing or easy-to-reproduce visual art/comics on the subject and experience of chronic pain.
We are not as interested in pain management (drugs, therapies, treatments) as in the social and emotional aspects of living with chronic pain. We want to hear about the way persistent pain impacts people’s lives, relationships, and the way that they inhabit their bodies and communities. How has the pain experience informed how you identify yourself, how you feel about your body, and how you ask for help? This zine is about support, sharing, and respecting what we’ve been through with pain. Below are some ideas we’ve brainstormed for pieces… anyone want to run with any of these topics?
- Access to resources, class and chronic pain
- Body Image and chronic pain
- Being young or old/age and chronic pain
- Sex and chronic pain
- Chronic pain and introspection/change
- Parenting and chronic pain
- Art/creativity and chronic pain
- Mental health/depression and the pain experience
- The invisibility of pain
- Upbringing/how were you raised to approach pain?
- Book reviews/chronic pain reading guide
- Activism and educating and chronic pain
- Your ideas go here….
Additionally, are you a caregiver or support person to someone with chronic pain? Want to submit on:
- Self-care as a caregiver
- Communication around chronic pain
- Being an ally to people with chronic pain
- Being a healer and providing care to people with chronic pain
- Growing up in a house/family with chronic pain
- Etc etc etc!
We’d love to hear from interested participants. For your work to be considered for issue #5, please have it to us by October 15th. Please tell your friends, and pass this far and wide. You can contact us with comments, questions, or submissions: chronicpainzine<at>gmail.com
Take care,
Claire and Meredith
