change therapy

for this week’s frozen pea friday post – a post for and about cancer survivors, following the frozen pea friday movement – i’d like to point you to an interesting project by ms. frozen pea friday herself, susan reynolds.

susan is an artist, a mother, grandmother, prominent second life citizen, social media maven. and she has cancer.

my husband’s insurance covers cancer treatment – to a point.

while millions of americans are uninsured i’m lucky not to be among them. but copays and deductibles, transportation and complementary care not covered by insurance add up fast.

since my mixed media pieces have been published in national magazines and i’ve taught painting and helped artists use new media to show their stuff, now is the time for the art to help me.

these mixed media pieces are, in fact, “wearable art”. while you can, of course, mount them or otherwise display them at home, they’re also lovely pieces of jewellery – broches and pendants.

she calls the part of her blog that showcases this work “magpie”:

oooh shiny! handmade, handpainted papers, fibers, metallics, glass, beads and iridescence

in a twitter conversation, susan pointed out that she feels lucky that she can do something that’s not too strenuous and make some money at it – others may not be able to do this.

i have some personal investment in this – from experience i know how alternative healing can be very beneficial. i have derived great benefit from reiki, healing touch and TRAGER®. for example, when i had my gallbladder taken out and, in my crazy sensitivity to anything psychoactive, i was going bonkers with the after-effects of general anaesthesia, healing touch was one of the great boons in those days. and i’m using reiki right now to deal with this nasty cold that wants to take over my life. so i evangelized susan a bit. it looks like acupuncture is one of the things that helps susan.

and that’s what she needs money for – because those stupid insurance companies are totally happy to dish out tens of thousands for hyper-priced pharmaceuticals and sneer at giving a few bucks for well-documented complementary care unfortunately, the good insurance companies don’t have enough money to pay for it, either.

(this post was included in the may 24 carnival of healing)