Adjusting to a New Normal

Today’s post is a little bit different. This confession has been weighing on me for years now. It feels good to get it off my chest, as scary and difficult as it is. Here is the typed version of what I say in the video:

Hi, I’m Miss Wondersith and my favorite medium to work with is the medium of Wonder. That tends to take many forms. The ebbs and flows of my life have been shaped by illness. Everything I am, everything I do, is a direct result of falling very ill in my late teens and having to find ways to define myself and engage with wonder over and over. 

The near-overnight onset of my symptoms meant going from an extremely active lifestyle to one that was much more painful and sedentary. My interest in art grew from a side hobby to a life-saving fixation, a way to channel the energy that I couldn’t push out in hockey games or skiing races. My newfound passion pulled me in the direction of art school rather than the botany programs I’d previously been considering. 

At school, art became a coping mechanism to deal with physical and emotional pain. I poured all of myself into it. I worked hard. Too hard. At the end of my third year, my body completely shut down. I had to drop out, to leave my education and the life I’d built around it behind and focus on surviving. 

As I slowly recovered from that terrifying period of bad health and near-death experiences, I sought out something gentle to ease my way back into the world again. I started apprenticing for a local herbalist and rekindling my love of wild plants. That set me on a deep path of exploration as I began designing experiences around the landscapes that offered me such comfort. I grew well enough to spend most of my days outdoors, foraging and working with the earth. 

As I got my feet back under me, I started hosting commercial events. Guests could buy tickets to attend an immersive experience of my artistic expression filtered through my love of nature. Foraged foods on handmade ceramic vessels. A ritual of connection. But again I flew too close to the sun, and soon realized that my health was too unpredictable to risk not feeling well and letting down people who’d paid me a lot of money to deliver something that I was unable to. (I did anyways - far too many events saw me masking my pain only to end up in the ER once the guests left.) I needed to create on my terms. 

That’s when Miss Wondersmith was born, of a desire to give and to share my passion for meaningful gatherings and wild plants. I started gifting free surprise events to strangers, leaving invitations in public places. I loved the feeling of existing in a world of giving freely, financially supported by my patrons. My guests were so much more understanding on the several occasions when I had to re-schedule due to flare-ups or hospital trips. Everyone was grateful and gracious. It felt good. It felt really good. All of my passions worked in this model - my love of foraging and wild plants, my nature-inspired ceramic creations, my fascination with ritual and desire to give my guests the experience of wandering into a fairytale. 

Then, my health got worse. The pandemic hit. It was no longer safe to host such events, even if I’d been able to. That kept me from facing a difficult reality: I’ve been too sick to do that kind of work sustainably for years now. The events I have done were wracked with pain and led to weeks of slow recovery. I can no longer get out into my beloved woods to go foraging, can no longer travel throughout my region bringing magic to others. My illness is progressing, and the vast majority of my time is spent in bed. 

I’ve been in denial. I’ve been thinking of myself as a forager, as an outdoorsy creator who would easily return to hosting fairytale gatherings as soon as it was safe to. I didn’t want to grieve the loss of so many things that I felt defined by. I didn’t want to feel this pain. 

Backed into yet another wall (a mattress, in this case), once again I am faced with the difficult task of accepting my reality and reinventing my way of being in the world. It’s time to do what I have always done: stop focusing on what ability I have lost, and focus instead on what brings me joy that I am still able to do. 

I can no longer eat at all due to the progression of my illness (I get all of my nutrition through a line in my arm), but I still love to bake, at least on days that I feel well enough to. I love the sights, sounds, smells of the kitchen. I love surprising my partner with creative baked goods that they can eat. I love taking my time with little details. I love dreaming up ideas and flavors when I’m confined to my bed. 

Every time I have to adjust to a new normal and change the way I show up in the world, it feels like coming out all over again. I feel immense pressure from the people that joined my community because of something I can no longer do. Will I lose support, community, income because I can no longer be that version of myself? Of course, I always do. Will it hurt? Of course, it always does. It’s so frustrating to have to grapple with the grief of these changes, then grapple with the loss of identity that accompanies them. I don’t talk about that part very much. 

So I wait. I wait until I have healed enough to have found a new path, one I can be excited about sharing. I wait until losing support over something I am myself grieving doesn’t sting quite so bad. I wait until I can express my limitations as something positive instead of something that has made me feel so lost. 

With that, I’m ready to share: my passion and purpose, right now, is to be an author, a baker, and an artist. I want to finish my long book series showcasing wild foods and then transition to a new way of thinking about food, one that isn’t rooted in wild foods that I can no longer gather. Letting go of that identity as a forager and wild foods educator is heart-wrenching and terrifying still; it feels like losing a big chunk of my identity. But it also floods me with relief to be able to stop pretending to be something I lost the ability to be years ago. 

I want to focus on wonder-filled recipes with more common ingredients, flavors you can find at a grocery store rather than after a 5 mile hike in the woods. I want to channel my love of wonder into creating treats that bring joy to my partner, and hopefully to all of you as well. I want to be the best version of myself I can be, which means honoring my limitations while staying true to my creative spirit (that part of me will never change.) 

I don’t know what my future holds, or how long I have ahead of me. I don’t know if I will regain back some of my ability, or if I’ll ever eat again. Perhaps Fairytale Gatherings will come back on the menu someday, I would really love that! Or maybe my work will go through iterations I can’t even imagine at this stage as my health shifts. I’m at the mercy of my body’s changing needs, and the best life I can live is one of kindness to my own limits. Right now, that is beginning to take a clear form as I excitedly dream of what is to come. I can’t promise Fairytale Gatherings or Wild Food recipes or long detailed video content, but I can promise you this: as long as I’m still alive, I’ll always find a way to share Wonder. It is the essence of my purpose and my spirit and I will always find my way back to it one way or another. 

Magic Always,
Miss Wondersmith

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