When you are living with chronic illness like ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia, engaging in healthy grieving can be among the many challenges. You may face periods of shock and numbness, denial, anger, and intense emotional pain. Experts say it is essential that you engage your grief reaction and practice patience with yourself as you learn to express your feelings—journal, cry, sing, and talk to others about your pain. Some, like Donni Lockridge, have found art to be a tremendous outlet for their feelings.
Donni is a person with ME/CFS/FM; she has generously chosen to share some of her body of work with us.
“I paint about our collective experiences, trying to give voice to our feelings through this medium.”
It is Donni’s hope that through sharing her art with a wider audience, someone else may connect with it and be able to better express their own feelings.
If you have artwork, poetry, music, or a story to share, please let us know.
Learn more about how you can make a submission to the Patient Voice HERE
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My Story in Art
by Donni Lockridge
It is often so hard to put words to our lives and feelings. I became ill with ME/CFS 8 years ago. I began painting last year. Images, stories conveyed on canvas, expressions of our pain, frustration, confusion, and the outside world’s often lack of compassion or inability to understand what it is like to be locked into bodies that merely exist. So, the art was born.
I hope it brings a sense of understanding for sufferers & non-sufferers.
Lucinda Bateman, MD, is a renowned clinician, researcher, and educator. Her Johns Hopkins University Medical School training instilled an approach to care that she has employed throughout her career – the patient comes first and the unknown or unexplained does not equate to a lack of proper and compassionate care. Since starting her own practice in 2000, she has served on six boards or committees, been the principal investigator for 45 studies, authored/coauthored 40 journal articles, served as adjunct instructor and adjunct assistant professor in the University of Utah Departments of Preventative Medicine, Internal Medicine, and Anesthesiology, and lectured around the world.