Hi dear ones,

While we’ve been quiet in your inboxes, there’s been lots going on behind the scenes at Sick Stories. We’ve been to markets and run events and felt our energy become depleted and rested and then started the cycle over.

One of the biggest things happening behind the scenes, however, is that we’ve been in discussions to open a full-time, in-person store!

We now invited you to join us on September 19th, 12-5pm EST for the launch in suite 124 at 401 Richmond St W, Toronto. Does the address sound familiar? Well, that’s because we’re partnering with the iconic Tangled Art + Disability gallery, taking over a large section of their library shelving space to fill with books and zines by D/disabled, D/deaf, chronically ill, mentally ill, Mad, and neurodivergent writers and artists, as well as offer other resources on a sliding scale/PWYC basis.

Tangled Art + Disability is boldly redefining how the world experiences art and those who create it. They are a not-for-profit art + disability organization dedicated to connecting professional and emerging artists, the arts community, and a diverse public through creative passion and artistic excellence. We couldn’t think of a better place to collaborate with to bring to life one of the world’s first disability-focused bookstore storefronts!

In a time of eugenics, rising ableism, and terrifying policies aimed at taking away the little public resources we have available. It’s community connections like this we’ve been dreaming of. By standing up, and showing we’re proud to be ourselves, we will fight to prove that disabled is not a bad word, our lives are whole and worthy (even when living with disabilities and chronic/mental illness can really suck) and that when our governments try to push us to the side, we have multiple ways of resisting.

Our store hours will match Tangled’s, 12-5pm Wednesday - Saturday. Online orders for pick-ups will be available too! We’re so excited to be able to expand our stock of authors and zines, as Sick Stories has existed in a closet in our personal home so far.

We’re in the process of planning activations and activities for the launch, as well as making our ongoing operations for sustainable behind the scenes by growing our collective with full-time members, and will be back in your inbox for details on that soon (we hope).

Just because we’ll have a storefront though, doesn’t mean we’re stopping events (though we will likely be slowing them down).

You’ll be able to find us at the following:

• Saturday August 22nd, Zinetopia backyard edition, 43 Cameron Street North, Kitchener-Waterloo, 4-7pm.

• Saturday + Sunday September 26-27th, Word On The Street, David Pecaut Square, Toronto. 11am-6pm/10am-5pm. Author signings to be announced!

• Sunday, October 11th, Anti-Capitalist Book Fair, Cecil Community Centre, Toronto.

Looking forward to celebrating with you!

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With care,
Sophie from Sick Stories

Hi dear readers,

Everyone in Toronto has been discussing the long winter we’ve had, the extra weeks we had to wait to see the flowers bloom. It’s always a wonder to watch the world come back to life after the cold. Leaves blossoming from branches, turtles emerging from brumation. The circle of life coming back around. Juxtaposed this year has been some seriously stressful times, both personally and politically. I can’t help but read news headlines with a sense of disbelief. How can we have learned so much from the devastation of the past and, as a species, still insist on sowing more? It feels that so many of us are metaphorically holding our breath, waiting to see how things will go, while also just trying to live our lives as best we can.

Sometimes the work we’re doing at Sick Stories can feel less than a drop in the bucket against global eugenics, transphobia, genocide, AI, and far-right nationalism. And sometimes that fraction of a drop is exactly what we need to sustain ourselves.

We are excited to announce that we’ve opened a call for submissions for completed art-based zines from creators in “Canada” (or anyone who can accept e-transfer for payments). We will be considering zines on a consignment or wholesale basis, and expanding to chapbooks and prose and poetry based works later this year. To submit, head to this form.

On Wednesday June 3rd, we’re also hosting an online celebration and launch for our zine, Nano, which has admittedly been out since March, but spoons and existential crisis have made planning events difficult until now. This free event will have activities, readings, and (we expect)some great community vibes. Get the event link via sign up here.

Want something more interactive? We’re launching Writer Circles! A virtual, self-paced program where you’ll provide and receive feedback from other writers for 3 weeks. The conclusion will be an optional but encourged live session to discuss each others works. Register interest here and we’ll be in touch when a cohort space becomes available!

We’ve also made online ordering for pick-up a little simpler. While we’re still limited to offering pick-up at pop-ups and events we’re tabling at, you can use a unique code for online purchases to make shipping “free” and let us know you’ll pick-up in person instead.

Where you can find Sick Stories in-person over the next month:

• Hot Off The Press Book & Zine fair, Saturday May 23, 10am-4pm at Hamilton Farmers’ Market, 35 York Boulevard, Hamilton, Ontario. This is our first time in Hamilton and we’re excited to have been invited by Odder Seeds!

  • Free pick-up code: HOTPPICKUP

• AccessFest, June 6 (timing TBA) David Pecaut Square, Toronto.

  • Free pick-up code: ACCESSFESTPICKUP

• Glad Day Book & Zine fair, June 14, 1-6pm, 32 Lisgar St.

  • Free pick-up code: GLADDAYJUN14PICKUP

• You can still shop a selection of Sick Stories originals at Loohoo in Parkdale. Alongside some books, we have our Lucky Dip Poetry and Magic Medicine Charms there! Loohoo is open Thursday - Sunday 12-5/6pm at 1380 Queen Street West.

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For now, that’s all of our news, though we have lots more exciting stuff on the way to help keep the doom at bay.

With care,
Sophie from Sick Stories

Hi folks,

It’s mid-March and I’m creeping back into your inboxes after a slight newsletter hiatus. I’ve taken the winter to rest, have a mental breakdown, and finally put a wild theory to test that my community does indeed come through if I ask for help.

Without going into details on the trauma-hungry internet, I’m waiting for surgery which has had a moving timeline and is my only chance at getting back to baseline. This has meant there are several ideas for Sick Stories that we’ve had to put on pause, and a few time-bound opportunities we haven’t been able to show up for. Such is the way with disability and chronic illness.

However, something we’ve had on the back burner for a while is an update to our newsletter structure. Last year, we turned on paid subscriptions, which helped fund our newsletter stories series. Substack in turn takes a % of each payment (as is standard for most payment processing services). Within that time, we were also made aware that Substack has (on several occasions) highlighted and financed far-right individuals for special features and commissions. We believe free speech should never be at the expense of marginalized communities and don’t want any of our supporters’ donations going into the hands of folks who don’t hold that as a core value.

We’ve been looking into other platforms for our newsletter, but being at the intersection of a writing community and business, it’s been hard to find something with the same features and capabilities as Substack. It helps us prioritize building connections alongside opportunities to promote events and books, so we’re taking a middle ground (at least for now).

We’ll still be sending news, events, and hopefully more stories through this channel, and we will be de-monitizing it. If you’d like to financially support Sick Stories, we’re redirecting folks to Ko-Fi. We love the choice Ko-Fi provides to creators and their supporters, with “pay what you want” options for both one-time and recurring support/subscriptions. It’s also not (yet) incorporated AI into its functions. Our main online store will remain hosted independently.

As for some upcoming things you might want to check out (from ourselves and the wider community):

• Alice Wong’s virtual celebration of life will be on March 25th, 11am-1pm PST (2pm-4pm EST). Details to join can be found here.

• Sick Stories will be tabling at Paperjam on March 28th, 12-5pm. Come find us at 292 Brunswick Avenue. Masks are strongly encouraged and provided.

• You can shop a selection of Sick Stories originals and curated books at Loohoo in Parkdale until the end of the month (in person only - 1380 Queen Street West).

• Released this week, Rebellious Bodies and Radical Acts: Deaf and Disabled Artists Raise the Curtain on Cripping the Stage, edited by Alex Bulmer and Debbie Patterson is now available in our online store. Shipping costs apply, but any online orders may be picked up in person at a market or event we’re attending.

We also have two new zines available!

• Nano is available for pre-order on a sliding scale, and will be launching at Paperjam, alongside a digital version online. All profits from pre-orders, digital sales, and sales at Paperjam will be going to participant honorariums. This zine is a collection of 11 writers who took part in our “Nano: A Month of Tiny Writing” emailed writing series in November 2025.

• Cocoon is a new standalone story zine by Leif Conti-Groome. If you like horror, you’ll love this creepy, winter-themed short story inspired by depression.

  These zines are the first of their kind for Sick Stories as we explore different publishing pathways beyond calls for submission. We’re hoping the models we’re creating will pave the way for regular and sustainable opportunities for artists and writers in the future.

For now, that’s all of our news. We’ll be getting more new releases in soon, and you can expect some launch events, more publications, and workshop announcements beginning in earnest again this summer. We all have opportunities to help shape the future, and that’s what makes us hopeful for a brighter one.

With care,
Sophie from Sick Stories

Happy end of December! Welcome to our final newsletter of the year. The holidays are here, it’s been an incredibly snowy month in Toronto, and we’re wrapping up our newsletter story series with a look at something that’s been built behind-the-scenes this year by Sick Stories team member Bella.

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A couple of updates and announcements:

• Looking for a last-minute gift? We’re selling eGift cards! Perfect for those who deserve a treat but might want to choose it themselves.

• Starting in the New Year, you can shop a selection of Sick Stories titles and products at Loohoo in Parkdale, as we’re renting a shelf there!
  This cute gift store is wheelchair accessible and full of good vibes. Owner Lindsay is always down for a recommendation too.

• We raised over $200 for Crips 4 eSims Gaza by donating 40% of profits from sales of full-priced copies of Alice Wong’s anthologies and memoir. We were also able to get copies to several folks for 40% off. Rest in Power, Alice.

D-Word.Art - A Study of Death & Digital Media

I’ve been through a lot of grief over the past 5 years. Judging by my Instagram feed, I don’t think I’m alone in this, but my grief feels very isolating. Why do I feel so awkward when talking about it? Why am I still avoiding talking to my parents about their end-of-life wishes? With the rise of AI-powered digital twins, how would I feel if my friends re-created a virtual “me” to hang out with after I die? And how can I process these things in a way that feels authentic to who I am?

This became the inspiration for my Master of Digital Media thesis research at Toronto Metropolitan University. Supervised by Carmen Galvan, I explored grief prevalence, death rituals, legacy work, grief-tech, art therapy, protest art, social media advocacy, and theories of grievability, grief supremacy, technological determinism, disability justice, critical-making, practice-based research, and more.

As a creative output of this research, I developed a virtual gallery of death-related art & writing related to the question: how can digital media tools be used to creatively support an individual and self-determined relationship with grief, legacy, and death? I curated this gallery through an open call for submissions on social media.

My goal with this is to destigmatize discussions of death and protest against the oppressive & capitalistic systems which control how we are allowed to grieve & dictate who is worthy of legacy. The full thesis paper will be available to read in the new year, but I’ve included the opening below. The virtual gallery is free to view at d-word.art

If you find this topic interesting, I also recommend watching these videos:

Link: Documenting Her Wife’s Death on Social Media | The New Yorker Documentary

Link: Back from the dead: could AI end grief?

Content warning: death, grief, suicidal ideation, mentions of abuse

My first involuntary psychiatric hold in a hospital was in January of 2020. The world knows what happened two months later.

To cope with my personal struggles having been overshadowed by a global pandemic, I (like many people at that time) decided to adopt a pet cat. On my 26th birthday, I masked up and ventured out to pick up my new fur-baby, Sprite. Once she trusted me enough to get close to her, I noticed a growth on Sprite’s tongue. I quickly learned to balance my time between taking myself to psychiatric appointments and taking Sprite to specialist vet appointments for her autoimmune disorder.

In February of 2021, my Nonna caught COVID from a home care support worker. I helped my Nonno say his final goodbye to her by using my phone to video call with the ICU nurse. I brought Sprite to his house for visits after Nonna passed, and Nonno found moments of joy in sneaking her pieces of cheese behind my back. He died a few months later.

Exactly one year after I adopted Sprite, I came out as queer to my family, friends, and coworkers by posting on Instagram. Sprite insisted on being included in my rainbow-filled photoshoot.

Upon leaving an abusive relationship at the beginning of 2023, Sprite and I spent 2 months sleeping on a couch in my dead grandparents’ otherwise empty house, with no working shower or oven. I wrote suicide notes that begged my family to take care of Sprite when I died. I was so worried about someone being able to feed her the next morning that I admitted myself to the ER instead.

Six months later, at a Taylor Swift dance party, I had my first date with my (now) fiancée. They immediately and lovingly accepted both my and Sprite’s many quirks. They supported me when my Grandma Hilda “lost” her battle with cancer, then spent Christmas with me and Sprite in my basement apartment.

Sprite’s autoimmune disorder got worse. As the vet stepped out of the exam room to write us a new prescription, my mom called to tell me that my Grandpa Pickle had died unexpectedly that morning. I drove Sprite and my partner on the 3-day road trip to Saskatchewan to attend his funeral.

Last summer, my partner and I decided to move in together. We joked with our real estate agent about “what Sprite would think” of each place we viewed. We submitted an offer for an apartment we really liked and I returned home to find Sprite’s cold body hiding under the couch. The landlords didn’t accept our application.

Two months later, I watched my partner read a eulogy at her childhood friend’s funeral as I held her mother’s hand.

I wish I knew what to do with this grief.

Isabella Iannetta is a queer, Mad, chronically ill, and neurodivergent marketing strategist, dance/drag performer, and writer. Publishing highlights include “Thoughts that Got Stuck in My Head,” a book of OCD-inspired, intrusive thought poetry by AOS Publishing, as well as two pieces within “Holes,” an anthology by JLRB Press.

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Welcome to November’s Sick Stories’ newsletter story series! In Toronto, deciduous trees have mostly lost their leave, the days are darker, and my body craves more rest instead of increased activity leading up to the holidays - yet my spirit always gets so full from the festivities.

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Before we get into the story today, a couple of updates for Sick Stories:

• We’re hosting a virtual event tomorrow, 7-9pm Eastern Time: Rotting: a virtual community event about waste, preservation, and messy practice. Bring fermented snacks, your curiosity, and something to write with! If cost is a barrier, please reach out.

• To honour the life of Alice Wong, we’re offering her edited anthologies and memoir at cost, or donating 40% of full-cover purchases to mutual aid fundraisers in her memory. Shop our books here. At this time we’re only shipping to Canada, but you can pick up in person at upcoming events to avoid shipping costs.

• We’ll be at Glad Day’s Queer Zines and Local Authors’ Book Fair on November 30th, 12-6pm.

• We’ll be at The Disability Collective’s Disability Holiday Festival on December 7th, 11am-5pm.

Now, onto the more exciting part! Today’s story by Mary Poirier is an excerpt of a novel she’s working on. I’m a sucker for a good YA, and this left me wanting the whole story - hopefully one day we can see it in print!

Mary shared: “Morning Glories” is a chapter from my manuscript, working title “Wish Bones”. Jean is a young mixed raced (Filipina and white), girl who suffers from chronic migraines. Jean ponders what it means to feel and be fine as someone with chronic pain compared to her family, who are all able-bodied. As she’s getting ready for her day at school, she makes an empowering discovery.

Morning Glories

Jean sat on her bed, mouth clamped shut, lips curled in, sheltering a groan in her throat. Her head pulsed. Each swipe of her eyeshadow brush shocked her with pain. But she had school today and an appointment with her therapist. She couldn’t afford to miss another class. She was already behind, and the semester had only started a little over a month ago. She closed one eye like an eye-patched pirate, and it gave her a little relief. But she couldn’t keep it closed forever; her left eye needed a winged liner too.

She eyed the makeup wipes sitting on her nightstand. She could pull one out, scrub off the layers of makeup, and go to school as she was. Bagged, tired eyes, lids red with friction, and all the colour stripped from her face. Or she could sit here, avert Mama and Princess’s “No makeup? What’s wrong?” comments.

It was more exhausting to explain she was in pain than to just go about her day without acknowledging it. There was never a good enough answer for Jean to accept either. She’d heard them all before. They could simply say “I’m sorry,” despite not having any fault, they could offer her an unhelpful suggestion, or even try to explain to her that jogging and water cured their headaches, and she should try those too. What could they possibly say to Jean that would make admitting her pain any better? She didn’t need anyone’s help. She was suffering, but she wasn’t dying.

Another searing pain coursed through her. She dropped her hand mirror and brush on her bed, and covered her eyes with her hands, trembling as she waited for it to pass. Jean squeezed her eyes closed, and open mouth gaping, tears ran down her face.

Am I stuck like this forever? She wondered, just wanting to get on with her day.

It was the fifth time this semester she had woken up to unbearable pain. It always disappeared by the afternoon, but the time it took to get there was an eternity. A stuttering dry sob escaped her throat. The reality was she would be stuck like this forever. Her doctor had explained it to her: the chronic pain made her more sensitized to the pain. She was more heightened to how her body was feeling, and she had to find ways to cope.

There was only so much that over the counter pills, stretching, and the basics of well-being could do. She knew for a fact she wouldn’t be like her Mama, who dealt with her pain by suckling on wine bottles like a baby with a pacifier.

It wasn’t Jean’s fault that her migraines disappeared by lunchtime. Being “fine” was a spectrum. Jean was fine to rest at home. But she wasn’t fine enough to sit through a period of math class. She was fine to lay in her bed, paint in a dimly lit room while laying down, or listen to an audiobook with her eyes closed. But Mama always caught her lazing around at home, looking fine. Yet Mama only saw her when she was okay enough to get out of bed. Fine enough to perform the task that the working world demanded of her, and to do it in pain if it didn’t alter the quality of her job. Mama expected her to be hunched over, screaming, sobbing in pain for her to have the excuse to rest.

There were so many scents and smells that triggered her, and Jean refused to touch the dishes or laundry. So Jean preferred to be called lazy rather than for her head to hurt. What difference was agitating the lull of a migraine than scratching at the scab of a wound? Both were painful options, but only one mattered to her. So she’d prick her finger on the thorn of being called lazy a million times over if it meant she didn’t have to deal with another migraine.

Jean reached over for a tissue, thoughtfully tapping it under her eye instead of smudging, so as to not ruin her makeup. She picked up her mirror and frowned. Her eyeliner melted into her eyeshadow. Her mascara had run.

She only had ten minutes before she had to go to school. She looked up at the posters on her wall, one of them catching her eye. A person in one of her favourite goth bands. They had always looked cool to Jean, but she never thought she could pull off the goth look. She didn’t know where to start. Then she smiled, looking at the now thickly placed black smokey eye. Perhaps there was something she could inherit from their style. Her eyes were already halfway there anyway. Hesitantly, she packed on black eyeshadow and fanned out the pigment across her crease until she blended the tears of her pain into something beautiful.

She sensed another wave of pain coming through her. She relaxed, lowered her brush, and breathed. Waited. When it passed, she looked at herself in the mirror and smiled. A weight lifted in her. The pain, despite how awful it was, simmered in the back of her mind. Her newfound makeup expertise was more exciting. She glanced over at the clock. Time to go. No matter how much the headache sucked, she rested and worked on her own terms. She was excited to tell her therapist after school how great it felt to accomplish something new.

Mary Poirier [she/they] is a hard-of-hearing, lesbian, and Filipino writer. They have a graduate certificate from Humber for Creative Writing. Her writing has been featured in Fifth Wheel Press, Feels Zine, Ginger & Smoke, Queer Toronto Literary Magazine, and Ricepaper. You can see her work here: https://linktr.ee/marypoirier

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Welcome to October’s Sick Stories’ newsletter story series! For many of us, Halloween is around the corner. In Toronto, pumpkins are popping up on every other porch, leaves are falling off the trees, and disability is still not a costume.

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Today’s story by zaynab shahar gave me chills in the best way. I’m always yearning to see more elders as protagonists, so when we talk about revolution and resistance, Black crip elders leading the story is something I want so much more of.

Want to submit your own fiction or creative-non fiction piece for this series? We pay $50CAD for each accepted piece. Read the guidelines here and head here to submit!

Want to write daily in November? Sign-up for our “Nano: A Month of Tiny Writing” series and have daily prompts sent straight to your inbox! We’ll be accepting participant submissions to an exclusive zine, with a virtual launch party in December, contributor copies, and a small honorarium.

Back to today’s story. zaynab shared this about the piece: I wanted to write anarchist literary fiction that centers Black disabled characters and the complex decisions they make in not just surviving but trying to dismantle an anti-black world (which, per T.L Lewis is already always an ableist world). This particular story is about two Black crip elders weighing the best method for stopping ICE raids: direct action vs non-violent resistance. At the point in the future where this story takes place, ICE has existed for 63 years. Both protagonists are products of movements that have defined the 21st century, and reflect varying tensions and sensibilities therein.

Please be aware of the following content warnings: Mentions of ICE raids, Covid.

Nobody Borrows a Cup of Sugar Anymore

“So many options.”

Prompted by a familiar voice, Mira’s daydream came to an end. Harsh, disorienting fluorescent light flooded her eyes. Pop standards pumped through the speakers overhead, generic melodies rendering each tune indistinguishable from the last. Sharp gusts of cold air coated the entire store, pumping from a matrix of vents woven across the ceiling, each aisle a variation on the theme of “arctic ambiance.” Mira wasn’t aware of her momentary departure from reality. A decision to splurge on her favourite organic dark brown sugar or pinch a few pennies on the store brand had seamlessly shifted into the den of dreams.

Mira’s mind periodically revisited the early days of Covid quarantine when she wasn’t the only person wearing a mask, the days of designated shopping hours for immunocompromised customers. Her mind languished in those fleeting memories of safety, before it had all been undone. The sharp collective desire to avoid any rumination on the ways a pandemic had unmade a society already fraying at the edges.

Like many millennials in their twilight years, anything could be a source of escape from the world’s malignant malaise. Active imaginations coupled with the decline of cognitive faculties made for a unique toolbox of survival skills. Yet her desire to slink back into the escapism provided by a row of sugar boxes had been interrupted by her neighbour, Rachel.

“There are so many options now,” Rachel remarked, carrying on the conversation as if they had already dispensed with the pleasantries.

“Back in our day,” Rachel continued, unprompted, adjusting a sagging, well-worn surgical mask hanging off her nose. “We didn’t have so many options. It was either real sugar or that sad sugar substitute shit they give to diabetics.”

Mira nodded, quietly bracing herself for whatever twists and turns this conversation entailed. Despite being neighbours for over a decade, Mira never knew how a conversation with Rachel might unfold. A simple “hello” tossed over the chain-link fence in the throes of weeding could turn into a full-blown diatribe about how Roundup was engineered to kill Black communities.

“So many options,” Rachel repeated. Mira’s mouth formed, as if to chuckle, but paused.

Rachel seemed unusually pensive. A child of fourth-generation Black Panthers, Rachel’s demanding demeanour was well known throughout the South Shore neighbourhood. Whereas their peers enjoyed leisure activities like marathon chess games or walks in the park; Rachel’s preferred retirement pastime was spreading the good news of revolution, especially to those who’d prefer not to hear it. Depending on the time of day, Rachel could be found on the corner of 71st and Jeffrey, hands heavily adorned with African-inspired rings pushing pamphlets on anyone kind enough to take one.

Yet Rachel was not herself. Her eyes frantically darted between Mira and the emptiness of the aisle. Usually, she carried stacks of handbills for activist groups known only to Rachel. Today, her hands were conspicuously empty, bare fingers drumming the dashboard of her powerchair. Even her speaking voice was remarkably low, squeaking with trepidation; a strict departure from the booming baritone that commanded the attention of crowds and commuters.

The contents of Rachel’s powerchair’s basket piqued Mira’s curiosity. Three large bags of white sugar were haphazardly piled on top of each other, their edges flopping over the side, threatening to fall apart and break open.

“I didn’t think you were into baking,” Mira probed, her eyes darting between the basket and Rachel.

“Oh me?” Rachel chuckled nervously. “This is just for,” she paused, her eyes searching the ground. “This is for a bake sale. AFRICOM isn’t gonna get itself out of Africa, ya know?”

“A bake sale?” Mira’s face contorted, struggling to appear neutral.

“Yes,” Rachel nodded, “You gotta meet people where they are. People like baked sweets, so maybe homemade chocolate chip cookies will get them to join the struggle.” A weak raised fist complimented a smile that alternated between sheepish and possessed.

“Okay,” neutrality evacuated Mira’s face, “what’s really going on here?”

“What do you mean?” Rachel chuckled nervously.

“Rachel,” Mira paused, leaning down towards her powerchair so they were eye to eye, “you literally stuff our mailboxes with flyers on the dangers of white sugar. At Christmas.”

Rachel let out a whimper, averting her eyes from Mira’s gaze once again. Beads of sweat formed on Rachel’s brow, congealing with the homemade body butter on her skin. They stood together, a silent exchange of glances, an attempt to decode the other person.

“Okay, okay,” Rachel cracked, her whisper dropped a few more decibels. “I’ll tell you.” She looked around quickly, “but not here.”

“What are you afraid of? A listening device in the Crisco?” Mira chuckled but noticed the paranoia on Rachel’s face had not abated.

“Oh, good lord, you’re serious,” Mira searched her thoughts. “Okay, well, I know you... scooted here. So just tell me on the way home.” The word ‘walked’ almost slipped from Mira’s mouth, but thankfully her tongue changed course. At one time, the conversational conventions of disability justice spaces had felt so fluid. These days, the public pretense for caring about disabled people had long fallen out of favour, and the nomenclature of a movement felt like an unrecognizable stranger; its slippage sharpening, becoming more acute with the mind’s rapid retreat into old age.

“Meet me by the bike rack.”

Before Mira could say anything, Rachel took off. The hum of her powerchair echoed down the aisle. As Mira watched her fade out of sight, it dawned on her that powerchair technology had stagnated, if not met its innovative end in the 2020s.

Quieter and more powerful drones were being built every day, redefining the landscape of sonic warfare; but no one had seen fit to invent a silent powerchair.

“Go figure,” Mira mused as she ambled down the aisle. Her drugstore cane clicked with a similar taunt - the false promises of modernity.

Near the bike racks, Rachel’s powerchair paced, whirling in noticeably wide ellipses.

“So, what’s going on?” Mira queried, modulating her voice so it remained appropriately out of range. Thankfully, the outdoor speakers of the chicken joint next door did the heavy lifting.

“Not here,” Rachel hissed before jetting off toward the parking lot.

Tightening the grip on her grocery tote, Mira ambled after Rachel.

So much for pacing, Mira thought, as she all but jogged to catch up. Most people who passed through disability justice community knew something about pacing - being led by the slowest people in the group. Yet the aversion many militant Black liberation movements had towards disability meant that Rachel’s speed demon act may stem from genuine ignorance. As she jogged, the mala under her sweater thumped against her chest, a subtle reminder to extend compassion to all beings. “May the source of her militancy not be the source of her suffering.”

By the time Mira caught up to Rachel, they were across the street. Their only bystanders consisted of corner boys too preoccupied to care about two old women.

“So,” Mira huffed as she hunched over her knees, struggling to catch her breath, “what are you really doing with all that sugar?”

“Sabotaging ICE vehicles,” Rachel whispered.

“I’m sorry, what?!” Mira asked.

“Just what I said,” the bold timber of Rachel’s voice had returned.

“Have you lost your mind?” Mira exclaimed.

“I have nothing to lose but my chains,” Rachel nodded resolutely.

“Oh, get real,” Mira exclaimed. “You’re not in Black Youth Project anymore. You... you could go to prison. You could die.”

“So what? Rachel shrugged.

The anxiety of the baking aisle had given way to a cheeky bravado. Emerald flecks conspired with sienna, illuminated by the light in Rachel’s eyes. Odd as it was, Mira had to admit to herself, “Renewed confidence looked good on you.”

“Look,” Rachel said sharply, once again impeding Mira’s train of thought, “the days of calling your representative died before our thirties. There’s no one to call. Nobody is coming to save us.”

The acuity of Rachel’s words gutted Mira. South Shore had become an epicentre of immigration raids on Chicago’s south side. Multiple times a week, fleets of Ford Explorers barreled down 67th Street, weaving in and out of traffic with syncopated urgency. No one could predict when or where they would appear. Yet every time, the neighbourhood held its breath. Only when the last blank license plate rounded the corner did the trees breathe in relief. For a predominantly black neighbourhood, the increased presence of law enforcement always spelled trouble. Cops could go looking for one thing and stumble upon another.

“There has to be a better way,” Mira said. “A peaceful way.”

“Don’t you think someone would have found it by now?” Rachel quipped, “Sixty-three years. ICE has existed for sixty-three years. This shit started when we were twelve, thirteen. We’re about to be worm food, and it hasn’t stopped. How many years will it take before you put down the mala and pick up a Molotov?”

Reaching into her pocket, Rachel brandished a burner phone, a compact relic from the days when constant connectivity was not king. With a firm, gentle grip, Rachel pressed the phone into Mira’s palm.

“If you want to do more than send lovingkindness to law enforcement, meet me tomorrow at 3:30 am.”

Before Mira could ask questions, Rachel rolled off down the block and out of sight.

At home, Mira slowly paced the length of her living room. Her fingertips traced the top of loveseats and armchairs, occasionally gripping them for support. She could hardly call it walking meditation; with each haggard step, her mind puzzled over Rachel’s words. Her commitment to nonviolence sat at the forefront of her mind.

For decades, Buddhism provided a life of peace, quiet, and contemplation - a distinct departure from her childhood in the charismatic church. Yet renewed calls for Black liberation left Mira wondering whether sangha life provided true refuge or cowardly retreat. Meditative focus wasn’t powerful enough for her to tune out carceral soundscapes. In the wake of continual carnage, some of her sangha siblings managed to sustain such focus. As time wore on, she wasn’t sure if she envied their disposition or if it frightened her.

As she paced, her eyes locked onto the corner bookshelf. Surrounded by plants and prints, this shelf held a modest personal library. Wedged between books and zines on decolonizing the dharma, a photo of a younger Aunt Aretha adorned the center shelf.

The wear and tear of time did nothing to hamper the majesty of a perfectly coiffed updo. The sharp lines and features of Aretha’s face concentrated at the photo’s center, where a stiff, thin cigarette hung carefully from perfectly painted lips. Spindly hands cradled a shotgun whose length threatened to overpower her short stature. One hand steadied the body while long manicured fingernails remained wrapped around the barrel, as if positioned on the fingerboard of a cello.

Mira remembered the conversation her mother had with her about self-defence in Black communities when she gave her the photo. Mira’s mother never spared her from sharp truths; women armed themselves while men worked late shifts and odd jobs at even odder hours.

“Back then, nobody was going to protect us. We had to do it ourselves.”

The longer Mira gazed at her aunt, the more her mind wandered, wondering whether her coveted conception of the middle way and the march of her ancestors were two distinct trails. Invited by her own curiosity, she turned an armchair to face her aunt. Seated upright, her back erect, she closed her eyes and embraced the silence.

By the time her eyes opened, the sun had drifted to the garden. Usually soaked in abundant sunshine, the living room dwelt in faint crests of light. Taking a moment to stretch, Mira pulled the burner phone out of her pocket before walking to the kitchen.

Originally from Chicago, zaynab shahar is a scholar, writer, and artist living in Denver, CO.

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Welcome to September’s Sick Stories’ newsletter story series! (Is there a shorter title we can use for this, we wonder?)

Behind the scenes, we’ve been chatting about who and what Sick Stories is at our core now we’re expanding into a whole-ass pop-up bookstore, but that’s for another newsletter, because today we’re bringing you our longest story of the series yet!

It was a joy to work with Nathalie De Los Santos on this piece. The more we spoke, the more this eerie near-future world came to life, and I hope you come to love it as much as I have.

Want to submit your own fiction or creative-non fiction piece for this series? We pay $50CAD for each accepted piece. Read the guidelines here and head here to submit! And if you want to support the longevity of this project, upgrade to a paid subscription today!

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About the piece: “Dream Machine,” is a short story that merges near-future science fiction elements with a deeply personal exploration of grief, burnout, and resilience. In this piece, Sarah Mendoza—a talented engineer on the verge of physical and emotional collapse—navigates a society in which bodies literally disappear when minds can no longer keep pace with relentless demands.

“Dream Machine” explores the push-and-pull between the need to maintain productivity and the desire for genuine human connection. Sarah’s struggle becomes both literal and metaphorical as her body fades in response to her mental exhaustion, prompting desperate measures by a friend whose invention promises a miraculous, if precarious, solution.

Please be aware of the following content warnings: AI, grief, neglect

Dream Machine

In the dim upstairs of the video shop, a fatigue-blurred Sarah methodically corrected misplaced DVDs—documentaries wedged among horror films, directors’ minor works separated from their masterpieces. When she stepped back, the shelves were pristine, but her mind felt utterly blank. She tried to conjure more thoughts, but found only embers falling and fading into the darkness of her mind.

She went down the stairs to the showroom, each wooden step generating a creak and thud from her weight. Suddenly, her right foot began stinging. She ignored it, a sufferer of chronic pain, until she realized she couldn’t grip with her toes. She hit the bottom of the staircase, dazed.

“You okay?” her co-worker Peter called.

Sarah groaned. She pried off her shoe. Her toes had disappeared from her right foot. A gasp escaped her lips. She tried to wiggle her toes, but her stubby foot just waved back and forth.

Sarah’s panic curled into a brittle smile. Only those who generate enough novel work are allowed to keep their bodies, and here she was working a mundane job of organizing. She thought of all the people like her: clerks, drivers and nurses, who disappeared because their repetitive work was deemed useless. AI and other machines could do those tasks. When the Pitch system senses the body rejecting the mind’s commands, it lets the body fade and ports the mind into a fresh vessel—a clean reset that, deep down, she almost welcomed.

She heard Peter’s footsteps and frantically slid her shoe back on. As he walked over, his brown eyes peered at her through his circular glasses. His olive shirt complemented his warm ochre skin.

“I’m fine,” Sarah groaned.

Peter helped her up. They walked back to the front of the video shop, Sarah limping behind him.

“Are you sure?” Peter looked back in concern.

A man drifted in, phone already up. “Whoa, retro,” he said, panning across the aisles like he’d entered a museum. “I’ve never seen an actual video store. Do you guys do, like, a nostalgia discount if I grab three?”

Sarah’s brain lagged; words reached her late, like sound over water.

He snapped his gum. “Hello? Anyone home? Is this cash register even real or just for the vibe?”

“Five,” she managed. “It’s five for three. And… ten. Ten for a week.”

He turned his shoulder to her and addressed Peter instead. “So… is there a discount?”

“Did you not hear what she just said?” Peter shot back.

The man smirked, already framing another selfie in front of the endcap Sarah had just aligned; he thumbed a case out of place to make the shot cuter. Sarah retreated to the register, staring at her shoe, willing her toes to curl, like after a hard stub. Nothing. Not broken: gone. She fixed her gaze on a hairline crack in the paint and held it there, as if she could keep herself from slipping through it.

Peter began speaking with a smile, “I’m Pitching soon. It helps reconstruct your body to what your inspirations and dreams are. I collaborated with a scientist, and…”

Her mind slowly wandered; no matter how hard Sarah tried to stay focused, the sound of his voice lulled her into a dissociative state. A Pitch is where they reported their ideas to a small council. Sarah had nothing for her Pitches for years now.

After work, Peter offered a ride to the grocery store. As he drove, Peter kept the cheer up, “Thanks for organizing the DVDs.”

Coasting into the store’s fluorescent aisles, she felt herself unclench at the soft hiss of the produce misters, the steady beep of scanners, the neat parade of labels all facing forward. A small, ordinary order she could breathe inside. Peter’s easy chatter bobbed along beside her, and for a moment she let herself enjoy the nothing-special of choosing milk, comparing beans, lining two cans so their barcodes matched, fully aware he’d spot tomorrow’s crooked DVDs and not mind.

Under a washed-out sky, Sarah emerged from the subway. Sidewalk drones hummed as they buffed tiles; a delivery bot threaded past with six identical takeout bags; the crosswalk AI pulsed green in tidy, data-timed waves that kept people moving. As she crossed, she looked at the driverless cars called Loops, and she was entertained by what people did in the back. Some were doing yoga, some were watching movies, but most were on their phones. She steadied her toe-less foot through stabbing aches and limped past a barista kiosk where a robotic arm poured perfect lattés, past ad screens praising “fresh ideas” while maintenance bots wiped away yesterday’s flyers. Then she climbed the stone steps of the imposing Ministry of Unity. Once her ID cleared and the navy doors sealed behind her, she entered a vast neon-lit chamber where three holographic judges waited at a lone sleek table.

They hovered above bolted steel chairs. Their wordless greeting made Sarah’s heart hammer—her digital slate was blank, and she had nothing to give.

What broke the silence was a sigh from the man in the middle. “Does your life mean nothing to you?”

They used to sterilize people like Sarah. Now the state lets the Pitch, an AI that audits every citizen’s “novelty yield” from work logs, geographic data, and posts, decide who stays embodied. When the system forecasts a sustained deficit in innovation and flags a person as “maintenance-dominant,” it initiates a “humane fade”: the body dissolves while the mind is ported to a fresh vessel for potential re-deployment. On paper, it’s compassionate and efficient. In practice, it erases people like Sarah, and her mother, who both found joy in the unremarkable. Their lives were claimed by optimization.

It always started with disappearing toes.

A small thing no one noticed, except the person suffering.

When Sarah rose, the act felt pointless. And then her legs vanished, sending her face-first to the floor. She wanted to leave this meeting, but not in this humiliating way. Without much fanfare, the council called for helpA motorized wheelchair and an assistive robot entered the room. The robot scanned her vitals and gave her water before it hoisted her into a wheelchair. At its affirmative beep, the wheelchair hurried out of the building. Sarah called for a larger Loop to get herself home. The loop opened its door and lowered its ramp, and the wheelchair responded, rolling up and locking itself in. As the ride began, she sat in the back staring out into space, wishing she had someone to talk to.

Before the video shop, Sarah was a rising star at a tech startup whose open-world game became an instant hit the same day her mother died. She smothered her grief in a torrent of post-launch emergencies that kept her from helping her grieving father.

Three years later, Sarah sat alone in the dim corner of the lunchroom. She gazed out the window, her eyes tracing the raindrops that meandered down the glass, each one pausing momentarily at obstacles, gathering weight, then continuing downwards.

On the third anniversary of her mother’s death, the startup’s bustle couldn’t dull Sarah’s grief. What gutted her wasn’t only the loss—it was the ordinariness of it, the way the state filed her mother into a “humane fade” like an administrative errand. A mundane death for a woman who loved the mundane: colour-coding pill boxes, fastening a stubborn cardigan button, walking Mrs. Reyes to bingo and waiting outside with a thermos. Each night Sarah reread her mom’s texts, the little check-ins about bus routes and sale grapefruits. Each day her own tasks felt heavier, her reserves spent on holding a mask of normalcy. It drained her to act unchanged and capable while the world had quietly erased the kind of work her mother excelled at: care that made life livable, one small, repeated kindness at a time. Meanwhile, Sarah spent hours fixing bugs in her code, which would only create more issues in its implementation. She only heard complaints from her user base on forums; never truly talking to the people who enjoyed her work. She spent her lunch breaks “offline” just for a fleeting moment of inner peace.

What do you need? Her boss asked her once.

Even that question felt taxing. It’s my mom’s death anniversary today.

Her boss paused, then said, But it’s been three years since that happened—I mean, I’m sorry. It’s just very busy, Sarah.

Sarah lifted her coffee with a slight tremor, discovered it was cold, and set it down with a sigh as the lunchroom buzzed around her.

The day after the council, Sarah lay in bed, relishing how glorious it was not to go to work. Revelling in a day free of filthy trains and nostalgia tourists, Sarah hauled herself sideways with just her arms, eased into her wheelchair, and coasted toward the kitchen. The taste of freedom lingered only a heartbeat before a sharp knock shattered the quiet.

“Sarah!” It was Peter.

“It’s open.”

Peter pushed his way inside. He looked down at her in the wheelchair. “Why didn’t you say anything?” He asked.

“What could you have possibly done?”

“My Pitch can fix you.”

He knelt, pulling out a small metal device, shaped like an egg.

“No, Peter—” Sarah said, impatiently. There was nothing to fix.

“But I don’t want you to disappear,” Peter protested.

Sarah’s mother came into her mind, running circles around grief’s edge. She sighed, humouring him: “How does it work?”

“It replaces a fading body with one based on your dreams and inspirations. You retain your mind, but you can replace your fatigued body by your own will and not the system’s.”

Fixing her body and mind seemed far from what needed to be done, but she nodded warily. She had nothing left to lose.

Peter powered up the palm-sized, egg-shaped device. Its soft glow painted lace-like patterns across the room as he set it on a stand beside Sarah’s wheelchair and tweaked the controls.

“This machine will weave your memories, hopes, and idea of beauty into a body more ‘you’ than ever,” he said.

Sarah nodded again, anxious but resolute, as Peter’s device hummed into a pulsing whirl, encircling her with radiant particles that shaped limbs from light. Layer by layer, a body appeared. She wore her mother’s warm eyes, Peter’s strong hands, and a poised grace fused into one new form.

Able to stand again, Sarah felt strength in her limbs, balance in her step.

“How do you feel?” Peter asked, his voice barely a whisper.

Angry.

This new body was like her robotic smile back when she lost her mother. And she remembered options she felt she had back then:

1. Mask again and everyone will love you.

2. Destroy everything and BURN IT ALL.

3. Set boundaries and have everyone hate you.

If you choose A, your anger increases. B will get you arrested. So, you eventually choose C, which leads to these choices:

1. Take time off work to rest, but have your boss question your sanity.

2. Destroy everything and BURN IT ALL.

3. Ghost your friends to bed-rot and have them question your sanity.

She heard a dish smash at her feet—

“Stop it, Sarah! Stop!” Peter called to her.

Sarah awoke to scenario B. Her chairs were strewn on the sides of the room, their legs snapped. Dishes were in pieces all around her feet.

“I didn’t realize this thing gives people superhuman strength,” Peter managed to joke.

Sarah leaned into her exhaustion, tears running down her face.

“Turn me back to before. I’m not some dream machine.”

Peter obliged, and all that was left was Sarah’s head. He held her in his hands, standing in the eye of the storm of her ravaged apartment. When he looked into her eyes, tears filled his own. In the dimly lit room, he cradled her head to his chest.

Sarah’s head sat in a bowl on her wheelchair, surrounded by viscous nanotech residue, while Peter tenderly cleaned her up and brushed her teeth. His gentle touch triggered goopy residue to re-form a neck beneath her, and after she spat into the sink, he calmly combed her hair.

She offered gently, “Do you want to go on a walk?”

He nodded, “Sure, where would you like to go?”

“The seawall would be nice. I used to walk it all the time with my mum.” Sarah’s neck branched into newly formed shoulders, giving her head a stable base. Peter then lifted her from the bowl and settled her onto the wheelchair.

“Did you two walk the entire thing?”

“Yeah. Those were my favourite days.” Her shoulders cascaded to her breasts, and despite the softer base, she began to bloom on her seat.

“Did you ever stop at Budgie’s cart?”

Thinking of the coffee cart whisked Sarah to a gentler memory: her mother handing her a steaming cup of hot chocolate, its warmth seeping into chilled autumn fingers. The memory of the heat rekindled her heartbeat, and she felt her new chest blossom into a full torso.

“Always,” Sarah said, remembering.

As Peter draped his jacket over her shoulders, he slipped his camera strap around her neck, and kissed her. The thought of walking the seawall with him set Sarah’s arms unfurling with shy delight. Their lips parted in wonder, and love’s quiet magic coaxed her legs to shimmer back into existence, settling gently on the wheelchair’s footrests. It wasn’t invention that knit her back together, but these soft, ordinary mercies.

Nathalie De Los Santos (she/they) is a writer and creator of PilipinxPages and the Filipino-Canadian Book Festival. She’s presented at Vancouver Writers Fest, PechaKucha, LiterAsian, and more. Her work appears in Magdaragat, Globe and Mail, Ricepaper, SAD Magazine and many others. She hosts the Filipino Fairytales, Mythology and Folklore podcast.

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After a very low-spoons summer we’re appreciative of finding the capacity to send a mid-month (okay it’s a little later than that) check-in with upcoming events info, and SICK STORIES FIRST EVER DISABLED AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH AMANDA LEDUC!!

If you’re looking to connect with us ASAP, here’s some confirmed spots we’ll be at coming up:

Book Bar at Cake Cabaret, 627 Danforth - Tuesday September 23rd 4-6pm

(that’s today, the day this email is being published. I know, give us an award for marketing).

Come hang out with us in the lobby of Cake Cabaret, the Danforth’s queer and body-positive burlesque bar! We’ll have a menu of books to choose from, plus other literary goodies. Interested? RSVP here and we’ll send you a reminder when it starts!

Word On The Street - Saturday September 27th, 11am-6pm & Sunday 28th, 10am-5pm. David Pecaut Square.

That’s right, we’ll be at Toronto’s hottest literature event of the year, slinging books, poetry, and zines all featuring disabled writers and artists. We’ll be at booth D6, which looks generally to be right in the middle of the action!

Book Swap and Reading Club! Saturday October 11th, 12-2pm. 627 Danforth Avenue

We’ll be back at Cake Cabaret, this time in the balcony bar (3rd floor, full elevator access) for a Fall book swap! Bring up to six books or zines to swap for new reads over the winter, and settle into the chairs and tables provided to silently read alongside others. Completely free to participate, masks required, RSVP link coming soon!

Anticapitalist Book Fair, Sunday October 19th, 10 am - 6 pm, Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Ave.

We’ll be bringing our radical selection of literature to the Anticapitalist Book Fair. While we will be charging money for these, we’ll have several PWYC options for used books and other goodies. We’re excited to meet other bookish folks who believe another world is possible outside of capitalism.

Now, for what we’re TRULY excited to share with you.

A few months ago, we sat down with Amanda Leduc for Sick Stories’ first-ever Q&A with a Disabled author! We chatted grief, disability representation, and most importantly, her new book, WILD LIFE. Today, we’re excited to share that conversation with you!

Amanda Leduc is a disabled writer and author of the non-fiction book DISFIGURED: ON FAIRY TALES, DISABILITY, AND MAKING SPACE, which was published by Coach House Books in 2020 and shortlisted for the 2020 Governor General’s Award in Non-Fiction and longlisted for the 2020 Barbellion Prize. She is also the author of the novels THE CENTAUR’S WIFE, published in 2021 by Random House Canada, and THE MIRACLES OF ORDINARY MEN, published in 2013 by ECW Press.

Sophie (Sick Stories):

Hi Amanda, thanks so much for chatting with us for Sick Stories’ first Q&A. It’s a huge honour. To get right into it, a central theme of WILD LIFE is grief. It shows up in such a myriad of ways throughout the novel. What made you want to center grief so solidly throughout?

Amanda Leduc:

Grief is a central theme of a lot of my work. My first novel in 2013, THE MIRACLES OF ORDINARY MEN is about a man who grew wings and a woman who was struggling with a brother who was himself struggling with mental illness. DISFIGURED is ostensibly about fairy tales and disability, but I think it’s also about how we tell stories as a way of making sense of grief. And THE CENTAUR’S WIFE, my novel after that, is built around that theme.

In 2019, my best friend died at the end of the year after battling breast cancer, and so grief suddenly became much more of a prominent force in my own life. And I figure out the world through writing. So in many way it was a natural progression, I think, that grief has come to the forefront of the things that I'm thinking about both as a writer and as a human being. And one of the things that really struck me from my personal experience of grief is how alien and yet how natural it felt at the same time.

And so in WILD LIFE, here's this eruption of grief, and the characters basically have the same choice we all do. You can allow your grief to change you and to bring you into a space that you didn't expect and certainly didn't want, or you can refuse the grief, as much as you are able to, and refuse the lessons that it might teach us.

Sophie (Sick Stories):

I find that people who explore grief to the level and depth within their writing that you have, have often been through the depths of it personally, too.

Amanda Leduc:

It's such a strange experience. It seemed in many ways almost a natural fit. In WILD LIFE, I'm speaking in many ways specifically about the grief of losing someone that you love. But there are many shapes and turns that grief takes in our lives that don't have to do with death. As disabled people, the reality of our lives is that we deal with grief on an ongoing basis. We’re always having to say goodbye to elements of ourselves because of our disability. That might be temporary, as it is with people who have cyclical conditions or recurring conditions, or it might be permanent for people whose disabilities are progressive.

In the West, certainly, I think we are very bad at dealing with and talking about grief in general. And certainly in disability circles, talking openly about the grief that we feel is a conversation that we have not had as much in public spaces. And I think it needs to happen more.

In my work, I hope that I can help to further these kinds of conversations. Talking about grief and being comfortable talking about grief is not just for people grieving; it's for everybody.

Sophie (Sick Stories):

Absolutely. I lost a childhood friend in September last year. We grew up disabled together. The grief has really given me perspective on how we often don’t know how to show up for each other, and how to start having these conversations more.

What do you think an ideal grieving process looks like, whether that’s in our current reality or an alternate one, and what would you change about the way our Western society treats grief?

Amanda Leduc:

I think it comes back down to that idea of change. In the West, we really don't deal with grief very well. The goal is to deal with your sadness and then move on. For some people, that is how they move through the world. Where I think it becomes an issue is when it’s a cultural approach.

When my friend died, we were very close. It was very much a soulmate friendship. Two years later, family members and friends were starting to worry about me. But if this monumental change happens in your life, there is no going back to the life that you had before. There is no getting over it.

We could do a lot of good in the world if we really lean into the change that comes as a result of grief. I think part of what makes it so difficult for a lot of people is that it's hard to let go of the life that you had before. And that doesn't need to happen right away. But if we focused more on the tools that people can use to both honour the life you had and embrace the change in the life that you are now living, and the life that is going to come to you later.

We don't talk about that as much, and I wish it were more a part of the conversation of grief, much like I wish that was part of the conversation with disability too. A focus on, okay, now what lies ahead? We would all be a lot softer and a lot healthier, in mind and spirit, if that were an approach we could take.

Sophie (Sick Stories):

There’s people who are born with their disabilities and people who acquire them. And even though we’re all part of the same community, sometimes it feels like there are conversations that one or the other side can’t really access or take part in. What are your thoughts on that?

Amanda Leduc:

It's such an interesting juxtaposition, right? No community is a monolith. We all have different stories when it comes to disability. We all have different expectations in our own lives of what we are capable of and what we are going to do in the world, disability or not. The more people you have fighting for something, the more power you have, right?

I think it’s a tension that isn't going to be resolved by the disability community, because it doesn't actually lie within disability itself so much as it lies within the way that we have built society, and the way that we expect certain things of certain bodies. It requires whole-scale infrastructure rehauling and redesign. And that needs buy-in from both the disability community and the non-disabled community. That change is going to take a really long time.

As we move forward, all we can do is try and pay attention to the way that change and grief and transformation operate in our own lives, and look at how they operate in other people's lives as well, and see what lessons we can take.

We live in a society right now that is very militant about efficiency. Disabled bodies and lives are not efficient. The only way that we move forward from that is by embracing a society which looks at efficiency, value and worth in very different ways than we do now.

Sophie (Sick Stories):

I struggle a lot with efficiency versus inefficiency. It can be very hard to stay in the mindset of inefficiency being just as valid and essential to be comfortable within ourselves, instead of striving to be a part of a bigger capitalist machine.

Amanda Luduc:

Yeah, I'm always down for destroying the capitalist machine.

Sophie (Sick Stories):

Getting back to WILD LIFE, Disability shows up frequently. Can you talk a little bit about your choices for the disabilities you chose to portray?

Amanda Leduc:

WILD LIFE grew out of one of the central stories about a character, Lizzie, who lived in an apartment beneath a pair of married hyenas, which was inspired by 20th-century surrealist English writer Leonora Carrington. Initially, in the short story, Lizzie was not portrayed as hard of hearing, and in the novel, she is. Once I realized that Lizzie is hard of hearing, that really started to shape how the rest of the book unfolded for me.

Each particular chapter is written from the perspective of characters who interact with the hyenas, and are all disabled in certain ways. Separate from that, they’re also feeling grief and really trying to come back to a place of equilibrium.

All the characters operate in that same space. Their disability is kind of woven into the fabric of the book. Lizzie’s is more to the forefront, in almost a coming-of-age element, with understanding how to move through the world. In other chapters, some of the disabilities are incidental, and the characters kind of move around them in the way that we as humans move around disability in our lives.

It was really important to me to have true-to-life elements of how disability is portrayed in our stories and our popular culture. I mean, I wear glasses, right? It shapes my world in a particular way because if I didn't have glasses, there are certain things I wouldn't be able to do. But it's not a focal point in the way that my cerebral palsy is, and has shaped my life in particular ways.

So I think there is room between those spaces of disability being really political in how we choose to portray it in fiction and nonfiction, and the media we consume.

There is a lot that we as writers and storytellers can do to portray the fullness of disability in the world because it's already woven into the fabric of life.

Sophie (Sick Stories):

That's what I appreciated so much about WILD LIFE, it feels true to life for a whole spectrum of disabled experiences. It's surprising how many books just don't talk about the experience of living within a body.

Amanda:

When you look at things through a disabled lens, you see the world differently, right? I can look at a story or TV show now and be like, Oh, look at that character with a disability, and the character is actually not written as disabled at all.

I find it fascinating how, because I openly identify as a disabled person, people are able to read my work, and they'll sa,y “Obviously this character is disabled because the writer is disabled.” There's this way of seeing the proximity to disability.

That's another part of the conversation that I would like to participate in through my work. Disability is not just someone who uses a wheelchair or a cane. It is people who wear eyeglasses. It is people who have different educational plans at school, people who have learning disabilities, people who have sensory issues or can't be around really strong perfume.

We are taught not to think about these things as disabilities, because we, as a society, have a very real fear of disability. We equate disability with being less, with not being able to do as much. We can see all that happening in real time in the US right now, with everything Kennedy is doing and talking about in terms of autism, and the dichotomies that he's setting up.

On one hand, I look at my work and I think, “Oh, I write about disability and fairy tales, and I'm writing about hyenas that talk.” But actually, there are very clear connections between the way I shape narrative, and how disability has a very key role to play in how we shape narrative in the world, and actual, real-life things that are happening in politics right now.

It's important to pay attention to this kind of stuff and really ask these questions.

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Welcome to August’s iteration of Sick Stories’ newsletter story series!

We hope you’ve been staying well-rested and keeping cool wherever you are. This month has been full of challenges behind the scenes at Sick Stories, with a decreased capacity lingering far longer than I’d like, and brain fog and dissociation rendering it hard to focus for long most days. Nevertheless, we show up when and how we can.

Aptly, this month’s newsletter story is about brain fog induced by an ME/CFS flare-up. There’s a lyrical quality to it with a flow of prose and poetry, and one of the best descriptions of how it feels to scroll that I’ve ever read. David Archer also graciously provided an audio version for increased accessibility, and images to go along with the piece - thank you David!

Want to submit your own fiction or creative-non fiction piece for this series? We pay $50CAD for each accepted piece. Read the guidelines here and head here to submit! And if you want to support the longevity of this project, upgrade to a paid subscription today!

Subscribe now

About the piece: This summer, David Archer has been going through a bad flare-up of ME/CFS. One of his main symptoms is brain fog, and he’s been trying to articulate what that feels like. That has proven a challenge. It’s impossible to write when the illness is at its worst (and his ME/CFS is considered mild), so he kept an empty doc open to capture impressions and analogies as they float past. On better days, he turned some of those thoughts into this short memoir that begins as prose and finishes as poetry. He used poetry because he finds shorter-form writing to be more accessible right now. He also thinks our disorientation as individuals reflects the chaos happening in the wider world. It is becoming harder to tell what's real both inside and out, and especially through the screen, which is sometimes the most accessible portal for a chronically ill person to participate in society.

Please be aware of the following content warnings: mentions of medical neglect, war, insects

The Wind Feels Nice: A Brain Fog Memoir

The weather’s been strange lately. It's meant to be a bright, clear day. My hands appear in front of me like VR inside a primary blue sky, but every sensation seems too close and too far away to be real. A green-grey cloud of static suffuses everything, playing burst transmissions. The wind feels nice, though. Realistic.

I exit the car alone, so I know I’ve driven here. My foot lands gently on the concrete. Muscle memory carries me to the elevator. The doors part, and I float down the hall to the doctor’s office. The dim clinic feels more like a law firm than a place of healing. There are files everywhere, tacky 90s wallpaper, and one incredibly put-upon administrator. For this woman, precision is everything. She speaks in sharp, staccato bursts, answering routine questions before I finish, her body language sending a clear message: My paperwork flows by her grace alone. I state my name for the record and sit down.

I’m entering an adversarial system, so I prepare to testify. As a musician, I’m good at rehearsals, and I use the interlude to prepare, swiping through screens full of notes, whispering the essential phrases, logic chains, and dialogue options that I hope will lead me somewhere better.

When I enter the courtroom, the evidence presented by the doctor is not helpful. My medical tests have returned within acceptable ranges, but I still cannot function. The doctor shuffles papers to buy time, his Hawaiian shirt sleeves fluttering. He does not know what to do, but pretends he has always known, as sure as gravity. My heart rate spikes. I present my arguments anyway. Whether right or wrong, he’s not interested. He suggests it’s depression. I suggest where he can put that theory. We talk about chickens and eggs.

Back at the desk, I try to calm down as the administrator books my next appointment.

She and the doctor are like two eyeballs practicing their best middle-distance stare. Maybe they’re waiting out the clock. Whose clock, I wonder. Maybe tomorrow they’ll take a long lunch and drink a margherita and retire forever. Bon voyage, I think. The car drives me back to my cocoon.

Later, when the weather has shifted just enough, I go out to buy some bananas and milk. Since I can afford clean clothes and a hat, I look like any other NPC in the overworld, doing his routine, following his loop, and, above all, avoiding the obligation to explain how destroyed he’s feeling. For this public appearance, I’m okay. The bags under my eyes can pass for confidence, aging, and even the hard-won evidence of labour. I am a man, after all, and I am good at smiling and saying hello, even when I wear an N95. I clutch my list of two items.

I wave to an acquaintance I haven’t talked to since last year’s party. “Next,” the teller says. I shamble forward. NPCs always get their groceries without incident. Bananas, milk, beep, boop, bag, tap. There is a rhythm to it. The weather follows me back to my cocoon.

The next day is swampy with a chance of void. My mind is smaller on the inside than it looks on the outside. I am a phone booth without an occupant. My phone rings constantly, but the caller always hangs up. The receiver plays only static.

The dog licks my face, and I eat a strawberry from the garden to remind myself that thoughts aren’t everything. The wind feels nice.

Back in the cocoon, I scrape for something, anything to focus a thought. I know I am interested in things but can’t remember what they are. I’ve already watched the whole internet, and the weather prevents me from reading. I tap on the screen, again and again, skimming past almost everything, not pausing to learn who it came from or why they said it. Muscle memory carries me onward.

Swipe: a dog turned seven today
Swipe: a stop-motion euphonium concert
Swipe: you should try the all-spider diet
Swipe: a stand-up comedian’s bit about horse tranquilizers
Wait, the all-spider diet was a parody, right? (Confirmed.)

does your barista serve these eight kinds of milk
here’s what it would look like if a giant banana orbited the earth
here’s the worst day of someone’s life
two golden retrievers lunge for a wet tennis ball
help the children in gaza
earnest anniversary photos
look how i ruined this song on purpose

a fake newscast with real anchors
a real newscast with fake anchors
jeff bezos’ dick rocket
skibidi algo rizz
gimme the chimken
gaza
shrimp jesus
come to the rally
war crimes
a screenshot of a meme of a tweet of an emoji of a brain exploding

As web crawlers weave my cocoon, I tap my profile to check yesterday’s post.
The results have returned within acceptable ranges.
My heart rate spikes.
For this public appearance, I’m okay.
The bags under my eyes can pass for authenticity.
I am good at smiling and saying hello.
Tap tap: I wave to an acquaintance I haven’t seen since last year’s party.
I am secure.
I am angry.
I am happy.
I am sad.
I am frustrated.
I am grateful.
There is a rhythm to it.

My foot lands gently on the curb.
The infinite scroll unwinds into static storm clouds,
my mind a dandelion puff,
a skipping record,
a sea of concrete,
an empty phone booth,
a banana,
an all-spider diet,
a seven-year-old dog.
The wind feels nice, though.

David Archer is a writer, composer, pianist, and audio producer based in Haida Gwaii. David’s creative work is deeply influenced by human responses to the climate crisis, life with a chronic illness and neurodivergence, science fiction, and his location on Haida territory at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

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Greetings to you and your inbox!

We hope you’ve been staying well-rested and keeping cool wherever you are. In Toronto there’s been a persistent heatwave with a lot of humidity. The older I get, the more I struggle to understand how and why anyone wants to stay outside in this weather for prolonged periods. It sounds much nicer to stay in and read a book, or a newsletter.

Speaking of, stay tuned for more upcoming emails from us. We’ll be bringing you information on some programming in the next week or two, both paid and free.

Want to submit your own fiction or creative-non fiction piece for this series? We pay $50CAD for each accepted piece. Read the guidelines here and head here to submit! And if you want to support the longevity of this project, upgrade to a paid subscription today!

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Today, we’re here with a non-fiction story by Malaysian writer Atiqah Ghazali-alKashif.

This creative non-fiction piece traces Atiqah’s journey with endometrial hyperplasia without atypia—a rare, often overlooked condition in Malaysia. Blending memory, pain, and medical gaps, it explores how womanhood and illness intersect with silence. She wrote it to give language to what so many endure quietly.

Please be aware of the following content warnings: medical negligence, descriptions of medical procedures.

The Girl Who Ran From Pain

I was nine when the blood first came with pain so sharp it stole the strength from my legs.

Every time I bled, I was moved to the teacher’s room. Not the sick bay, not home because no one could fetch me. So I slept in a quiet corner with a rickety bed next to the window panels under the fluorescent lights, which buzzed louder than the questions in my head. The other children called me “the special girl.” Not for any superb talent or extraordinary gift, but because I was the girl who skipped class, who cried in her school uniform, who needed to lie down just to survive her period. No one looked further into it. By the time I turned ten, the pain started to fade, but only because I began to be active in sport, especially running.

And so I ran.

I ran for school. I ran for the district. I ran to escape the memory of that pain, as if speed could keep it from returning. I joined every sport I could find. Netball, volleyball, relay, hockey, swimming. Anything that kept my limbs moving and my womb distracted. I even ran marathons, finishing 1km in just under twelve minutes. The body of a girl who once slept through classes was now hailed as unstoppable.

But then I turned into a working woman. The running stopped. The walks got slower. Life moved fast, but my body began to slow down. Really slow. The first month after I got married, I bled for eleven days straight. The pain came back, but this time it had grown teeth. I lost five kilos in a week. Still, I was misdiagnosed. "Stress," they said. "Hormones."

It wasn’t until I turned 35, after years of waving off my own suffering with a tired laugh and five types of menstrual pads at home, that one doctor finally paused long enough to look properly, and referred me to the hospital.

My obstetric and gynaecological appointment was at 8am. I arrived on time, hopeful but utterly anxious. After nearly three hours of waiting in a cold, crowded space, my number finally blinked on the screen. I walked nervously to the assigned room. The young specialist barely looked up before pointing me to the curtain. “Remove your undergarment. Lie down. Legs wide.” No small chat, no reassurance, no psychological prep-talk.

Outside, the waiting room was overflowing. Inside, I was just another womb.

She called in a nurse to prepare the tools. “Please bear the pain,” she said, her voice clinical. I was dumbfounded upon hearing this. Then my body and soul froze like an iceberg, just floating around. She opened the speculum wide, unscrewed it, then screwed it back to face her. I stared at the ceiling. Then came the first scrape.

Then the second.

Then the third.

The pain hit the base of my spine. I clenched both fists, bit my lip, cried silently and whispered my syahadah under my breath. In that moment, I felt like a martyr, not on the Sahara battlefield, but on a hospital bed, somewhere between neglect and necessity. When she finished, she told me quickly to sit and handed me the next appointment slip. No eye contact. No apology. Just the date.

I drove myself home, curling my left leg up to my chest to breathe through the ache. I swallowed two painkillers, fell into deep sleep in the afternoon, and bled for four more days - not from my condition, but from the procedure meant to understand it. That was how I began to learn what I had.

Endometrial hyperplasia without atypia. Rare, they said. Especially here. Especially for someone like me.

My next appointment came with a different kind of silence, not one of fear, but of waiting for something better. This time, I was assigned to a far more experienced OB-GYN specialist. She entered the room like sunlight, soft and sure. Her smile was warm, and unlike the others, she asked me how my day was going. She enquired about my work, my husband, my family, not out of curiosity, but care. Then she broke the news.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” she said gently.

She pulled out a piece of paper and drew diagrams — my womb, the thickened lining, how the hyperplasia worked without atypia. She explained everything slowly, like a teacher who truly wants her student to understand. Then she brought up an example of Mirena, the IUD.

She coaxed me, kindly. “For your health. For your safety. For your freedom from this pain.” She gave me the slip to collect it from the pharmacy. Told me to drink water and empty my bladder.

“Relax before the procedure,” she said. And I did. I walked to a shop at the other end of the hospital and got myself a box of chocolate milk. Nothing a chocolate wouldn't solved.

Half an hour later, I returned, holding my phone nervously. “Do you mind if I watch cat videos while you insert it?” I asked.

She laughed. “Of course. Whatever helps.” And so I lay there, watching a British Shorthair tumble off a sofa as she did what the previous specialist had done but differently. Gently. Respectfully.

The IUD was inserted before I even realized it had begun. No cries. No clenched fists. No tailbone agony. Just the hum of the air-conditioner and the faint meow of a kitten on my phone screen. She trimmed the strings and showed me where she placed it. She even joked: “Bring the Mirena box home as a souvenir.”

Before I left, she handed me medication in case the bleeding overflowed past three weeks. “It’s rare,” she said, “but it happens.”

And just like that, I became a bionic woman. A woman with a womb lined with a device, stitched with hope. A woman finally seen.

I searched for others like me. Surely, in a country of 30 million, I wasn’t the only woman with endometrial hyperplasia without atypia. But there was nothing. No Malaysian support group. No Telegram chat, no Facebook forum, no quiet corner of the internet where women spoke in code about cramps and clots and confusion.

It was as if we didn’t exist.

In the West, I found bits and pieces, Reddit threads, short articles, scattered mentions in

women's health pages. But even there, the “without atypia” variant was treated like a footnote. As if the lack of cancer made the suffering less worthy of attention.

In Malaysia, there was silence. No one talks about the uterus unless it's bleeding excessively, birthing a child, or becoming a tumour. There is no language for the in-between. No community for women whose pain is chronic but not deadly, whose bleeding is persistent but not alarming enough. And so for years I was my own specialist. I tracked every cycle. I read medical journals on the weekend, translating terms into emotions I could explain to my husband. I memorized the difference between simple and complex hyperplasia, between atypia and not.

I know more about my condition now. I smile politely when anyone says, “Oh, it’s not cancer, so you’re lucky.” But what is luck, when your body is misunderstood, mismanaged, and unheard?

Now, I run again. Not to escape pain, but to carry it differently. My legs move slower, but each step is steady. I brisk walk and run, not for medals or districts or a place on the podium, but because this body still chooses motion over silence. I run because somewhere, another girl is curled up in her school’s sick bay, told she’s just being dramatic. I run because there are still no support groups, still no Bahasa Melayu word for hyperplasia that doesn’t sound like a foreign diagnosis dropped in a local mouth. I run because I have a story and now, a name for what I carry.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

Atiqah Ghazali-alKashif is a Malaysian writer, marketer and educator whose work explores womanhood, culture, and identity. She writes across borders and languages, drawing from a life shared between Southeast Asia and the SWANA.

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Hey there! We took a little (unplanned) mental health break from our newsletter series but are back and ready to shine on with some extra treats for you this July!

Want to submit your own fiction or creative-non fiction piece? We pay $50CAD for each accepted piece. Read the guidelines here and head here to submit! And if you want to support the longevity of this project, upgrade to a paid subscription today!

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Today, we’re here with a new original written piece by cherry kaufman, From after death. cherry made her Sick Stories debut with “dizzy” in our Postcard Poetry collection, and we’re delighted to be featuring them again, this time with a speculative letter reflecting on all the things which have killed her slowly and steadily.

Please be aware of the following content warnings: death, mentions of physical and emotional abuse, including sexual assault.

From after death

To whom it might concern:

I'm able to write this note because I am dead - finally with some space to "breathe." It doesn't feel too much different this time; I've died and been broken apart so many times already in this particular body that maybe I'm just used to it.

I want to be clear that this is not a suicide note, nor should it be any cause for concern. Other peoples’ concerns and wishes that I stay alive was usually more about them than me. (I've also found that sharing suicidal thoughts usually pushed people farther away from me, and from understanding, anyway.)

I relish in the peacefulness now, life in the body I had never allowed me that.

If anything, let this note be informative. Let it allow you to reflect and figure out what could've saved me sooner and kept me alive.

I'm dead because it was too hard to stay alive. There was too much work for me to do to stay alive and be relatively well. Disability ruled my existence. Being touched and handled all day every day, while having to facilitate and be grateful for all that touching, all that sharing of personal space and body. It was too hard. The shame that burned on days I wasn't feeling my best and couldn't perform patience was scalding. On top of (and underneath) this, there was the actual burning physical pain of my existence, the frustration and trauma of lost ability and no mobility, as well as the complex choreography of appearing to not be in any pain at all. It was too many pains with nowhere to go, and I imploded.

I couldn't hold myself together.

I am dead because my heart and spirit broke too much and too far. Raped in the body that couldn't move or fight. Forced to watch it happen more than twice at the hands of someone who spoke of loving me but only ever manipulated my love. I tried to heal from it all, but the deficit was real; the tally of violations and betrayals grew steadily until the (my) end. He wasn't the only one who saw my disabled body as an invitation to abuse and invade me with ease. My heart couldn't take the weight of it all.

I'm dead because my energy short-circuited when I truly understood that I was living in a different reality than so many people. People I called friends and family were living in a world where pandemic was not a reality, where genocide was not a reality. It felt like a world committed to lies. I tried for a long time to understand and navigate such disparate existences, but the whole computer eventually just gave out.

Fried from trying.

I died when I realized that the only ones left taking care of me - actually taking real true care of all of me - were the ones who truly loved me and were in a practice of loving me after knowing, understanding and respecting me as a being. People who were willing to commit to being in vulnerable, intimate, and committed relationship with me. When the burden of what I needed to do (and had been doing) to maintain this hit me, it hit me too hard. I would have had to continue to trust more and more people, allow them into my life and body and bed to give them the opportunity to love me enough to do what I need. I would have had to continue to be touched and handled all day. And I would have had to continue to make sure that I was lovable, knowable, & desirable enough for people to want to provide care to me for the rest of my life.

It would have been too heavy. I could not do it.

Of course, I can see the bittersweet beauty in my care-reality. Even though it was far from easy, I was lucky to be taken care of by the people who actually knew how to love me truly and deeply. What a fucking privilege honestly, to be loved while cared for.

One of the things that broke my heart and spirit a bit too far was the embodied understanding that this exact kind of love/care is not and will never be guaranteed to all of my beloved disabled siblings in the world. The burden of knowing that so many people don't think of us as human and can't prioritize our survival was too much. It crushed me.

With my last breaths, I pledged solidarity to Palestine, may the land and the people be free, allowed to live. I told my mother that I want her to heal from her unspeakable trauma. I said a prayer and a plea for the complete abolition of prisons, of all types of policing, and of privatized care. May capitalism crumble and may indigenous people steward the lands. I wanted better for us all. I wanted life to feel possible, for us to stop leaving each other for dead.

I look forward to decomposing. The smell of rich dirt had always seduced me. Nightmares over, sleep possible. I hope that things can change, I hope people keep fighting. I hope people stop leaving our beloved disabled people to die over and over again.

Sincerely, and with love...

cherry kaufman is a queer, multiply disabled, white, anti-zionist Jewish artist, organizer and kitchen witch. She is the creator of www.disabledparts.com, a website exploring disabled sexuality and relationships. She is a certified sexuality educator, and prioritizes creating spaces for other disabled survivors to connect with their healing and embodiment. Cooking, ritual and poetry are her current avenues of connection and creativity.

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Hey there! We’re back with our newsletter story series!

Want to submit your own fiction or creative-non fiction piece? We pay $50CAD for each accepted piece. Read the guidelines here and head here to submit! And if you want to support the longevity of this project, upgrade to a paid subscription today!

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Today, with 2SLGBTQ+ Pride around the corner, and disability Pride following, we’re excited to be sharing SICK4SICK.

SICK4SICK explores how, as sick folks, we can learn a lot from the ways our bodies tell us to slow down, to listen to what we want and need, and to re-imagine what feels good!

Sarena shared: This piece is for disabled folks who might want to (re)consider the joys and abundant lessons within crip sex. Not to diminish what might make crip sex difficult, but I think working *with* our disabilities during/before/after sex can lead to very pleasureable and self-accepting results in and out of the bedroom.

Please be aware of the following content warnings: this piece, as you may have already gathered, explores explicit and intimate content.

SICK4SICK

Hear me out: sick people are sexyhot and have excellent sex, especially with each other. I come to this conclusion only after puzzling through this myself for my whole sick mad life, after having plenty of unenthusiastic unfulfilling sex, before consistently having the best sex of my life with other sick, mad, and chronically ill folks.

For a while after my latest diagnosis, I felt like I couldn’t make a single decision or life shift, including something as simple-not-simple as sex, without exacerbating my symptoms. Now that I’m coming out of this specific flare, I’m looking around at all the disabled people around me, especially queer crip folk, and remembering that we are hot!! We are hot with and through and even because of our ailments, and the care we show ourselves and one another. Crip desire contains whole constellations.

Only after coming into myself as a sick mad person did I start having really good sex. But I was sick before I knew I was sick. I just did not have the words to explain what was happening or have any clue what access intimacy* was, or how it could support me.

Back then I'd have panic attacks on the regular, more often than not going through life dissociated from my body. It was a coping mechanism to get through my chronic pain and bouts of mental illness. Sex–good sex, to me at least–is a deeply embodied practice. So having it while feeling as if I was floating outside of my body made for a lot of regrettable and unenthusiastic encounters in my early 20s. And if sex is deeply embodied, who better to have really good sex than disabled, sick, and mad people who are constantly contending with being alive?

Sickness, for me, represents life outside of the capitalist, white supremacist machine. Same goes for my queerness. These identities all have tendencies to bend, expand, and/or shrink normative notions of time. Think U-Haul lesbians and crip time, for example. Both concepts play with time in such interesting and specific ways, in a similar way that a good fuck can play with our experiences of time.

In my experience, disabled folks know pain and so our capacities for pleasure feel that much more expansive. Consent is an ongoing conversation between ourselves, our bodies, and each other, making for many check-ins and adjustments as needed until folks are feeling their best. Moreover, when we take breaks during sex to tend to our bodies, to work out a muscle spasm, to take a hit from our inhaler, etc. we are showing up for our whole selves, and that’s hot. And lastly, by necessity, sick folks are creative thinkers and innovators both in and outside of the bedroom. Lately I’ve been thinking about sex toys as accessibility tools, because that’s what they are! And they’re a tool plenty of non-disabled folks use, too, so they come in a range of prices and are readily available online.

To illustrate these points I’ll call upon this gorgeous poem by torrin a. greathouse, which inspired the name of this piece and a workshop I run on disabled love poems for disabled loverboys of all genders. Without further ado, here is greathouse’s Sick4Sick:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

I think my lover’s cane is sexy. The way they walk
like a rainstorm stumbles slow across the landscape.
How, with fingers laced together, our boots & canes
click in time—unsteady rhythm of a metronome’s limp
wrist. All sway & swish, first person I ever saw walk with
a lisp. Call this our love language of unspokens:
We share so many symptoms, the first time we thought
to hyphenate our names was, playfully, to christen
ourselves a new disorder. We trade tips on medication,
on how to weather what prescriptions make you sick
to [maybe] make you well. We make toasts with
acetaminophen bought in bulk. Kiss in the airport
terminal through surgical masks. Rub the knots from
each others’ backs. We dangle FALL RISK bracelets
from our walls & call it decoration. We visit another
ER & call it a date. When we are sick, again, for months
—with a common illness that will not leave—it is not
the doctors who care for us. We make do ourselves.
At night, long after the sky has darkened-in—something
like a three-day-bruise, littered with satellites I keep
mistaking for stars—our bodies are fever-sweat stitched.
A chimera. Shadow-puppet of our lust. Bones bowed into
a new beast [with two backs, six legs of metal & flesh &
carbon fiber]. Beside my love, I find I can’t remember
any prayers so I whisper the names of our medications
like the names of saints. Orange bottles scattered around
the mattress like unlit candles in the dark.

I felt moved to share this piece for how it reframes common disabled experiences from mundane happenings to something holy and larger than life. I now invite you to re-read this piece and consider the following questions for yourself, to encourage deeper thinking about these topics:

• Write or draw or leave a voice note for yourself about your relationship to sex and/or disability. What does it feel like? What does it look like? Does it have a sound? A taste? Go through as many senses as you please to explore these facets of life.

• How does your health play into your ways of engaging with sex? If at all?

Thank you for humoring me with these guided questions. Behind the lightheartedness of my tone with this topic is something heavy. For far too long I believed the lie that I was too sick for pleasure, that I must fit into the burdensome pitiful disabled trope, that I did not deserve to feel good. But since finding words which worked for me about my specific mix of chronic illnesses (sick, mad, bipolar, etc.), alongside words for my queerness (lesbian, demisexual), I’ve been able to access incredible sex, and I hope the same for you, if this is what you want out of life!

*access intimacy is a term coined by disability activist and writer Mia Mingus to get at the relationship building magic which can happen between sick folks and non-sick folks alike when we center, anticipate, and respond to one another’s access needs and co-create spaces that are more accessible for one another. More info can be found here on Mia’s blog.

Sarena Brown (they/them) is the founder of frequent crier club, a shape-shifting disabled art-based community space. They are also a sick and Mad multimedia artist. They are likely crying. You can find Sarena’s work in Grist Journal, Night Coffee, on social media (@frequentcrierclub) or at crierclub.com.

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Hey there! We’re here with our fourth story in our newsletter - and this time our first creative non-fiction essay of the series!

Want to submit your own fiction or creative-non fiction piece? We pay $50CAD for each accepted piece. Read the guidelines here and head here to submit! And if you want to support the longevity of this project, upgrade to a paid subscription today!

Subscribe now

Today, we’re exceptionally grateful to be sharing Dreaming of Pelicans.

Dreaming of Pelicans is a creative non-fiction piece in which Susana Arrieta shares the experience of being detained by ICE at the Miami airport and transferred to a detention centre for a month in the fall of 2010.

Many of us have watched helplessly in recent months as world powers, and particularly the new US administration, weaponize immigration as a political tool. Stories like this remind us that speaking up and sharing our stories helps us reclaim power. Writing is political and and we must never forget that.

Please be aware of the following content warnings: this story centres on a personal carceral experience, and there are mentions of violence/death.

Dreaming of Pelicans

During the Summer of 2010, millions around the world were following the story of the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped at a copper-gold mine underneath the Atacama Desert.

Their nightmare began as I packed my life’s essentials to leave Venezuela for the third and last time. Two months later, while eating a chocolate pudding cup, I watched from an old TV how the miners, one by one, were returned to the surface. To this day I am sure that I could not have made it through the next few weeks without constantly reminding myself that freedom is attainable even under the most excruciating circumstances; that freedom is attainable even when you are hopelessly trapped 700 meters underground. If they are free, so am I. If they survived, so will I.

I dried my tears with the back of my hand and gave the airport guard the empty pudding cup. He turned the TV off and directed me to a windowless office that had nothing in it but an old reclining chair.

“This is where you’ll sleep for tonight, we’ll transfer you tomorrow, meanwhile there’ll be an officer outside your door.”

There were no blankets, no pillows, no release… but I was supposed to be grateful that I was given a place to sleep whereas the men who were in my situation spent the night overcrowded, on hard plastic chairs, surrounded by policemen and their loaded guns that more often than not were pointed at them.

There were no dreams for me the night that ICE decided to take away my liberty at the Miami Airport. My body wanted to run but my mind was blank. This is what deprivation felt like. As soon as morning came there was a brief knock, I blinked and two Latino policemen were before me. They spoke Spanish and told me “No te vamos a esposar, camina con nosotros.” They expected me to be grateful because of my unchained wrists.

But how could I be grateful when my life was pending by a thread controlled by strangers as I sat in the back of a police car? They asked me - “How come you do not want to go back to Venezuela?”

My tears - which had stopped the night before, resumed. I said “There is no future and no life for me there” and they seemed puzzled.

They did not understand when I spoke of dictatorship, they shrugged when I spoke of violence - they were cops, after all. It is violence and not peace that pays their bills, so I left the rest to silence. I did not tell them about my friend Fania and the six gunshots that extinguished her life during a peaceful protest at our Alma Mater. I did not tell them how I felt when her killer was gunned down years later. I did not tell them about sweet Augusto, who died during a violent kidnapping, or Miguel who was killed during a robbery gone wrong. I did not tell them about countless other lost loved ones because I hadn’t had the space to mourn my dead. I did not tell them how it could have been me, I did not tell them anything else because now it was me, in the back of a police car, prey of the system. Where does strength come from? I had so much of it back then.

They drove me to a detention centre near Pompano Beach. It is a contractor-led prison. It is an atrocity. It is inhumane. And in the USA, it is perfectly legal. They dropped me off at a small office. I was asked many health-related questions, and by now it was obvious that telling the truth would not be helpful, so I kept my brief answers neutral. I forced myself to smile for my mugshot because I wanted a beautiful one, like David Bowie’s. In case of fame, break a smile.

An office worker opened my suitcases and began a painful inventory of every item I had brought with me. His gloved hands touched all of my most cherished possessions. He wrote down my river pearls and 14K gold necklace as white beads, yellow beads. I told him that his notation was wrong, that those items were pearls and gold. He refused to make the change, my eyes burnt him. He failed to understand the name of the item I called a fur stole so he wrote down “scarf”. He failed to show humanity while going through the lovingly curated contents of the suitcases I had brought to restart my life in Canada.

I must surrender everything to them, they said, including what I was wearing. Before giving me three pairs of underwear and two blue jumpsuits, a nurse put a led apron vest on me to take x-rays - “just to make sure you do not have tuberculosis”, she said. Every single event was a new humiliation. Once I got dressed, a policewoman took me to my cell.

For the first time since my detention at the Miami Airport - where American authorities did not allow me to board my flight to Toronto - I was truly scared. Everything up to this point: the angry TSA agent, the multi-hour police interrogation, my night in a reclining chair as a guard stood outside the door, the ride in the police car, an ignoramus taking all of my belongings, none of that had been as scary as the second the policewoman had me enter the women’s section and locked the door behind me.

My cell had three bunk beds and a bathroom. The thin plastic mattresses had a label stating “patent pending”, the bedsheets were paper thin - to prevent us from hanging ourselves, explained a fellow inmate. The windows were blocked, not a sliver of light could enter. The entire building was like this, and we were only able to see the sun if we opted to attend a 15-minute recess at the high-security courtyard. A Scottish sailor who overextended her welcome in American waters often made impromptu meditations during recess, which for three to four minutes she’d take any of us willing to close our eyes and breathe to Cabo.

Outside, outside the world went on. News came every now and then, between reality shows and prayer time. By now, every single Chilean miner had been rescued, there were cheers when that news came. A few weeks later, an Argentinian woman ran happily down the hall to let us all know “Néstor Kirchner is dead! That bastard is dead!” I understood her elation a mere three years later, once Hugo Chavez ceased to exist.

Outside, my friend Eliana hated talking on the phone, but she figured out how to deposit money for my phone bill and sent me extra money for the prison’s commissariat once I told her how truly disgusting prison food was.

In Venezuela, most of the blood vessels in my dad’s eyes exploded with stress. In Canada, a big shiny banner welcoming me home collected dust. I used some of the money Eliana sent me to buy, aside from food, a sketchbook and some pencils. Some women saw me drawing and asked for their caricatures, I drew them beautifully, “I’ll tape it on the wall!” One of them screamed joyously. Word spread that I am a writer and every morning there was a line outside my cell, and thanks to those morning visitors I spent many days occupied writing and editing their love letters.

Most of the women detained - many of them for years - had committed no crime other than hoping to find a better life in a country where they weren’t born. Yes, there was this sweet older woman who had committed murder and was now patiently teaching me how to crochet under heavy police scrutiny. And yes, there was an arsonist who loved fashion in the bunk bed opposite mine who would take my turn whenever I had to clean the bathroom. “You are just terrible at this,” she’d say, leaving unsaid that she knew I had never done house chores. A Mongolian woman taught me, with kindness and many signs, how to operate the washing and dryer machines. Carceral kindness is like no other. Crime or no crime, no one deserved to be there.

Our meals were served by inmates who’d get cents in their commissariat accounts for each shift. Most of the social time was spent in the recreation room where dozens of women watched the Kardashians in awe at the type of world which we were being actively denied. Aside from an inmate-run beauty salon I never went to, we also had access to the library. Upon my first visit, I found the memoirs of Isabel Garcia Lorca and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale stacked together inside a recycling bin.

“Ma’am, am I able to take these two?” The policewoman lifted her head, glanced at me, and said “Of course baby girl, and you can take them home with you once you leave if you want to, these were going to the garbage anyway.” Thirteen years later, I will be speaking at the Toronto International Festival of Authors with Margaret Atwood seated in the audience, listening to what I had to say. Please tell me this is not a simulation.

In spite of her disdain for phones, I called Eliana often. She had been trying her best to get me released. She got the name of a lawyer and gave my parents thousands of dollars to help pay for the legal fees. The day I met my lawyer - a real-life Barbie if I ever saw one - she confessed how humiliating it was to enter the detention centre.

“They made me change my dress, I had to change in my car! It was disturbing.” She was distressed. It was her first case in a detention centre and she did not hold back telling me all of the irregularities about my case, most of which I already knew. It felt validating. The main judge was about to go on a lengthy vacation. My lawyer worked some Barbie magic and he agreed to hear my case. I sat in a room that looked like a court but instead of people, it had three big TV screens and a camera - so they’d see me and I’d see them. My heart grew wings once the judge - in an overtly dramatic gesture - tore up the papers that had kept me imprisoned.

The following morning they told me to pack my things - and to wear my clothes. Recess had started already so I did not get to say any individual goodbyes, but the memory of the courtyard erupting with applause when they saw me walking away from the building brings tears to my eyes even fifteen years later. The love I felt in that moment was so big and so pure, the caged birds happily singing for the one that was set free. I am still not healed from that month but I am free.

During Spring of 2025, millions around the world were following the story of the 238 Venezuelans who were detained by the US government and transferred to CECOT in El Salvador. Their photographs are shocking, young men with shaved heads, overcrowded and shackled, over 90% of them - just like me - had no previous criminal record in the USA. Many of them were detained and transferred to one of the most inhumane prisons of the West simply because of their nationality, tattoos, and sartorial choices. I now obsessively look at my tattoos wondering, which one will incriminate me in this dystopia? Will it be Twin Peaks? Will it be Aladdin Sane’s lighting bolt or the end of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy that’ll get me? Silently I pray to no one: If I am free, so will they be. If I survived, so will they.

Susana Arrieta is an invisibly disabled Latine artist and poet. Susana thrives with the warmth of colour, and dreams of worlds that are kinder to all. Susana’s creative non-fiction and poetry honours memories and ancestors, aiming to thread past, present, and future in caring circles.

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Everytime I sit down to write one of these newsletters I have a glimmer of hope that next month there will be more hopeful things to report on and celebrate, but so far that is not the theme for 2025. I often don’t know how to focus my attention on fighting for so many things I believe in, which is also the very tactic and aim of faschist regimes.

However, Spring is arriving and as the trees push out their buds, I give thanks that nature is still putting on its seasonal displays of beauty, and offering reminders that we’re in constant change, no matter how stagnant or stuck we feel.

At Sick Stories, we’ve had a busy season too. March saw us launch our zine “My Body, My Story” from our 2024 program, and host our first ever book swap at the Danforth and Coxwell public library! We also ran our first stand-alone workshop of the year “Frolic of The Sunflowers” a lovely, intimate gathering exploring movement in and through stories.

But we’re not here to just talk about the past. Over the next month we’re popping up at several markets across the city, as well planning some more workshops for you for late May. Want to say hi? Come find us here:

• April 19 - Paperjam at the Tranzac.

• April 20 - Queer Mingle Flea Market at the 519

• April 26 - Sarang Kitchen’s Pawsitive Connections Market, 774 Danforth Ave

• April 27 to May 4 - Virtual exhibitor booth at the FOLD.

• May 13 - Hard Feelings drop-in writing prompts.

And lastly, our newsletter submissions remain open. We will be reviewing April’s entries early next week to deliver to your inbox at the end of the month, and then looking to line up stories for May and June soon, too. There is an honorarium of $50 for every chosen story.

We have some more bookish news we’ve been slowly announcing too, which we’ll be sharing on our newsletter as soon as the spoons permit. Until then, a reminder:

Disabled lives are worthy. Protect trans kids. The first Pride was a riot. Black lives matter. No body is illegal.

In solidarity,
Sick Stories

PS - If you can pledge a monthly ($5CAD) or yearly ($50CAD) subscription via Substack, we will be able to increase the amount of Disabled writers we can support!

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Hey there! We’re back with our monthly newsletter stories - again a couple of days later than intended because March was a hectic month with a lot of prepping for things and personal happenings behind the scenes. We hope you enjoy this trio of poems we’re bringing you today. Want to submit your own hybrid form of creative-non fiction? We pay $50CAD to each accepted piece. Read the guidelines here and head here to submit! And if you want to support us and the writers we publish, consider upgrading to a paid subscription today!

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Today we’re thrilled to showcase a trio of poems by Parker Johnston. This trio of poetry attempts to capture the relationship with being observed Parker has as a disabled person through different poetic forms. Specifically the ways in which he feels he must perform to survive. Parker is a performer at heart, but disability can feel like a performance under threat of violence.

I cannot afford a new wheelchair: a performance

I am both a marionette and a puppeteer. I hold myself up, gripping strings with reddening fingers. I force my legs to move. Lug dead weight. My strings are cut. I collapse to the floor. My smile is painted. You can feel the cracks in it. Where the paint stays tacky over scars. I was never able to climb the monkey bars as a kid. Sweaty palms on rusty rods. I could not handle the strain of my own weight. More comfortable with feet planted firmly on the ground. I don’t have the luxury of choice anymore. I retie the fraying strings. I smile at the blinding lights. It’s time to perform. I tug my legs into place. I create the illusion I can hold myself up. If I speak loud enough, you won’t hear my joints creaking.

Rules for Being Disabled

1. Don’t be too happy. If you’re happy you must not really be disabled. Your life is a tragedy. Act like it.

2. Don’t be too sad. No one wants the mood brought down. The only thing more pitiful than a disabled person is a sad disabled person.

3. Don’t have good days. If you have good days then you must have been faking it the whole time. If they see you walking, they’ll never let you use a wheelchair again.

4. Don’t have bad days. You can’t be inconvenient. You can’t be a drain on resources. You’re an adult. Pull yourself up from your bootstraps.

5. Don’t ask for help. It’s hard to say no to you. Its embarrassing to not be able to do things on your own.

6. Don’t refuse help. They’re only trying to be kind. Their tax dollars pay for your wellness. You are owned by everyone.

7. Don’t be confident. Its uncomfortable when you make jokes about your disability. They don’t like being reminded. They don’t like the stickers on your crutches.

8. Don’t be shy. They can already see you. They can hear you click down the hall. They can hear when you fall. There’s no point in avoiding gazes.

9. Don’t be.

   ---

   My fear of being an unidentified body

   Oh dear, the skies miss him

   The fragile body in my basement

   The thing that longs for sun

   Skin so pale its translucent

   Flesh that doesn’t remember the kiss of warmth

   But that corpse will break down under heat

   It’s spent too long growing cold

   The ground may welcome him but it won’t give him back

   It will take soft skin

   And leave behind ivory bone

   Nature loves but isn’t kind

   She’s the mother that raises you to want to treat your children better

   She made too many rules

   Made a home so hard to live in

   He crawled towards any way to quench his thirst

   But it’s survival of the fittest

   Was that body a fool for wanting to thrive?

   Lucky us, simply observers

   It does not matter if the body deserved to die

Parker is an author, artist and activist, exploring his identity as a queer, trans, and disabled person through his work. He is currently studying English literature, theatre, and communications at the University of Ottawa.

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Hey there! With February being a shorter month, last week snuck up on us and we’re just getting our second newsletter story released today. Want to submit your own? We pay $50CAD to each accepted piece. Read the guidelines here and head here to submit! And if you want to support us and the writers we publish, consider upgrading to a paid subscription today!

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Today we’re thrilled to showcase Inkbound by Vari Hameed. Inkbound is a fantasy tale that showcases how family can be found in the most unlikely of places. Told from the perspective of an exiled dark mage, Zerel (Zeh-rel) is a cold, calculating sorcerer who finds himself imprisoned within an abandoned library—never expecting to have a cellmate. Somehow, the elven child he’s trapped with appears to be winning him over. As Zerel experiences this unforeseen companionship, the story highlights characters with both physical and learning disabilities, all while illuminating the theme of an unexpectedly sweet chosen family.

If you love this story and want a physical copy, it’s also available as one of our flash fiction zines - coming soon to our online store!

Inkbound

Zerel chokes on his breath as tangled, raven-black threads continue to suffocate him.

He fights desperately to pull them apart, the strain of the battle almost too much to bear. The struggle occupies his every thought. Nothing else could ever be as important.

“Baba!”

...Or so he once believed.

Sharp, golden eyes finally snap away from the rusty typewriter, bringing the relentless clicking of warm keys to a halt. The words that have been clashing and flipping against one another are suddenly not so challenging to face. No, they pale in comparison to the most concerning element about this prison:

The rather young inmate trapped alongside him.

Bolting towards Zerel at full speed, the child causes an uneven pitter-patter to echo off the walls of the grand library. One of his steps is featherlight, barely brushing against the creaky oak floor. The other lands with heavy, metallic thuds, as ancient gears click and whirr to aid his prosthetic’s movement.

“Easy now,” Zerel scolds gently.

Still, Mako runs towards the man with outstretched arms, clinging onto his leg with grabby, insistent hands. Zerel has come to understand that this physical contact is supposed to signify endearment, something along the lines of a hug.

“Baba!” The half-elf whines. “You promised to stay with me, Baba! You said you’d stay with me the whole night!” Though he pouts rather dramatically, his honey-brown eyes are still thick with sleep.

Zerel can only sigh as Mako climbs up his knees, taking place in his lap as if he belonged there. With the child’s metal limb, it’s never long until the right side of his own lower half goes numb, but Zerel has dealt with far worse than pins and needles.

“So I did,” he admits thoughtfully. “Though it seems I’ve made the mistake of believing you were settled down for the night.”

Perhaps being imprisoned in a long-forgotten library was a sign to pick up a book or two on parenting.

“Mm,” Mako hums tiredly, curious eyes glancing over the table. “Why d’you always stay up writing?” The boy points towards the worn-out paper nestled within the typewriter. It is half-filled, barely polished, and begging to have Zerel’s undivided attention. Unfortunately, it seems his priorities have been rearranged for the night.

And possibly for the rest of his life.

Mako gives Zerel an innocent blink, still expecting an answer. “‘Doesn’t it hurt your head sometimes?”

Glancing back towards the page, Zerel’s eyes trail over the dark ink, watching as the letters begin to twist and turn, blurring b’s into d’s and g’s into p’s. It ought to make him averse to the craft, yet the mage could never imagine existence without it.

"Where I come from,” he begins, “they say that ink is thicker than blood. It urges us to write our own destiny...” Zerel glides his hand over the written spells, which are unjustly labelled forbidden by the High Kingdom.

“The right words have the power to set us free,” he whispers faintly.

“...Us?” Mako repeats, voice tiny.

A silence falls between the two of them. Hesitantly, the elven boy sticks his pinky up towards the sky. His finger is bronze and delicate, only ever scarred by the occasional paper cut. Zerel can’t help but feel a bit amused by the childlike gesture. The child’s innocence was a spell in itself, constantly melting his icy demeanour.

Carefully, the man entwines his pale, calloused pinky with Mako’s own.

“Us,” Zerel promises, curling their fingers together.

Vari is an ad kid and narrative designer with a passion for collecting pins and an unwavering commitment to keeping their sparkle. They have a deep love for comic books, queer narratives, and exploring atypical and neurodivergent themes. With every story they craft, Vari aims to create an experience that feels like a warm cup of chamomile tea!

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Hi lovelies,

As the weight of the world seems increasingly heavy, the days dark and temperatures cold, it’s been a challenge to want to do anything but nest in bed and watch comfort shows.

There is so much moving through our nervous systems at the moment, and for all the “unprecedented times” of the last 20 years, all I’m craving is a step-by-step guide to existence when it feels like the world is constantly teetering on apocalypse.

Looking for workshop information? Scroll down, in the meantime, here’s some things that have been helping me this winter:

• Movement. Stretching, wriggling, improv dance, etc. Dance developed independently in all regions of the world. We can express and feel emotions without having the words for them. It can feel intimidating at first, but there is an instinct inside for how your body wants to move in ways that feel good and right for each of us. Give it a try if you can.

• Cooking. Being able to nourish myself and specifically setting time aside to be in the kitchen and away from screens means that the next time I find myself doom-scrolling I likely have some food in the fridge, too.

• Nature. While the world is cold and too slippery to be outside for long right now, I have a pothos plant cutting which is flourishing since it moved from a basement to a south-facing above-ground window. Whatever happens to us as a species, I know nature will find a way to keep going on this planet.

• Being in community. Asides from our own programming and community building ideas, we’re making efforts not to lose touch with loved ones. Winter is hard for a lot of us. Sharing a pot of soup or even sending a message about a book you’re reading can go a long way.

If you’re looking for other ways to connect, here’s what you can get involved with at Sick Stories over the next month

• Hard Feelings. We’re back at Hard Feelings 3:30-5pm tomorrow, Tuesday February 11th. Join for writing prompts and chill community vibes.

• Frolic of The Sunflowers. An online movement and storytelling gathering for queer & Disabled/chronically ill/Mad folks. There will be dancing and storytelling facilitated by Miggy Esteban and Sophie Lyons.

• Newsletter submission. Want your writing featured on our newsletter or know someone who would? Our rolling submissions are open, and the cut off for February is coming up on the 18th. We’ve also been able to increase the honorarium for chosen writers to $50CAD.

We’ve got more big announcements up our sleeves, and can’t wait to share them with you!

But for now, we signed off in solidarity,

Sick Stories

PS - If you can pledge a monthly ($5CAD) or yearly ($50CAD) subscription via Substack, we will be able to increase the amount of Disabled writers we can support!

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Hey there! Today’s the day we’re kicking off our newsletter series of writing by community members. Want to submit your own piece? Read the guidelines here and head here to submit!

This newsletter also marks the first we’re sending with subscriptions turned on. We considered and decided against paywalling original pieces published through this newsletter. While we could always do with more cash, we don’t want to restrict the stories that are being told. That being said, if you do want to support, we can ensure this series lasts into the future with our writers being fairly compensated.

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Our first piece, Victoria Is Alright, is inspired by writer Patricia Allison’s own experience of getting diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. It's self referential in a very abstracted sort of way. VIA borrows from Science Fiction sliding through her inspirations of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and other such crafters of words. You'll see what she means when you read it.

Victoria Is Alright

A completely fictional but based on real life story by Patricia Allison

It was chilly in the condo but it hadn’t occurred to her to turn up the heat. Victoria was distracted. She was cocooned in her favourite throw fully stretched out on the couch. Again. Still. But she was completely transfixed on her foot which was unceremoniously sticking out of the throw.

Her alarmingly unmoving foot.

Her brows drew together.

She willed it to move.

Move.

Nothing.

Her skull radiated with tension. She couldn’t take her eyes off-

“Did you even hear what I said?” Her wife called from the kitchen.

“No,” she clapped back, channelling her anger at her foot towards her wife.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Her wife trippedly rushed into the living room, quickly drying her hands on the dishcloth. “Are you ok? Is it something new?”

This was a fair question. Victoria had been a version of never endedly sick for weeks that rolled into months. Two. But two made it plural and that was long enough for what she had thought was a cold.

It had started innocently enough with her throat. And that had moved to her ears and then her nose and sinuses. Big infection. It had all seemed normal under the known and regular proceedings of illness but then it jumped to her eyes and both her globes turned pink. And gloppy. And swollen. Then that had started to recede but then it became a cough. And fatigue. And diarrhea. And she might have puked once but that was most likely out of frustration. But this. Her unmoving right foot was new. And alarming. And so unlike it. Her right foot was her favourite foot. A little bit on the large side, as both her feet were, but overall a wonderful-

“Vicky?” Her wife cut in, “I asked if you were alright.”

“I am in the sense that I am breathing and my heart appears to still be beating. With our new and lowered expectations on the term ‘alright’, then yes, I am alright. But at the same time ‘No’ I am not ‘alright’ in the sense that I am willing my right foot to point or to move and it is doing no such thing. My right foot isn’t moving, Iris.”

“What do you mean?” Iris asked. It came out as a whisper because panic was draining her voice from her body. Valid. This was alarming.

“I mean, look.” Victoria flipped her wrist as if ushering her foot to take a metaphorical red carpet. The fancy kind. With a step and repeat. Any foot would be privileged to walk on such a nice carpet. Metaphorical or otherwise.

Nothing.

Iris squinted at the foot. “Are you moving it?”

“I am trying!”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to understand. Does it feel ok? Can you feel this?” Iris gently grabbed the ball of her foot, pressing her thumb into the tissue.

“How about now?” Thomas asked as he worked deeper between the metatarsals.

Victoria’s eyes grew wide. She had meant to gasp when all of a sudden she was on a different couch in a strange living room within a wood cabin and there was a man, not Iris- her beautiful and kind wife- dedicatedly massaging her foot. However, the air had rushed out of her body so quickly it created a sound that resembled something more of a honk than a gasp.

“Oh, that’s the spot, eh?” Thomas continued, “Let me get the salve and we’ll see if that makes a difference.” He placed her foot down. Instantly Iris was brushing the hair back from her clammy forehead.

“Victoria. My love. You’re scaring the shit out of me. You look like an octopus that’s inked itself. I’ll go get you a-”

“No!” Victoria grabbed both of Iris’ wrists. “Don’t you dare go anywhere,” she commanded.

“I’m here. I’m here. I’m not leaving,” Iris instinctively crawled onto the couch and straddled Victoria, careful to hover over her and not crush her with the weight of her body. Victoria was too frail right now to sit on top of, and Iris knew that.

“Something very very bad is happening. Something not good,” Victoria tried to explain.

“Hey. I got you. I’m not going anywhere,” Iris soothed

But just as Victoria raised her chin to give a stiff nod in agreement she was back in the cabin. And she didn’t have Iris hovering over her, she was, herself, the one on top, curled up in his lap. She didn’t know why she knew his name was Thomas.

“My bug?” Thomas prodded.

Victoria stiffened. Further. If that was possible. She unconsciously held her breath. Frozen.

Thomas’ eye squinted and his breath started moving faster. “Vicky. Can you tell me the date?”

Victoria let her eyes dart around the cabin. She took in the socks she had knit. They were hung on the hook over the fire to dry. She knew how to knit? She took in her favourite blanket that was cocooning her body. Is this a quilt? How did she have a favourite quilt she had never seen before? Where was her throw?

Victoria slowly turned her head to take in the face of the man on whose lap she was curled up in. Eyes wide. Teeth dedicatedly grinding together. He smiled sweetly. Patiently. His grip on her relaxed a little. Not in a way to let go, but as a way to give space.

She sat. For probably too long.

He waited.

She eventually swallowed, shifting slightly to unlock a little of her frame and let oxygen back into her lungs. “Um. Can you tell me the date?”

“Ah,” was all he said. His eyes dropped. His smile receded.

They sat like that for a time. Just breathing, neither making a move. Her gaze found her right foot.

Traitor.

This was somehow its fault.

“My bug - sorry, Victoria. I’m afraid to say that it’s time that you get really good at the techniques of meditation and,” he absent-mindedly rubbed her back. It didn’t feel bad, “got really good at being in small spaces. I hear the head cage is something you can get used to. If you open your eyes you can glance down. You’ll notice you can get out. You could squirm out if you needed to. I promise.”

“The head cage?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure. It’s part of the M-R-I. You’re going to need one of those.” He was speaking faster and faster. “It’s a mongoose regulation contraption and loud, apparently. Or something. It will - you’re going to need it to-”

She recoiled from him suddenly, very aware of the fact that she was curled up in this man's lap, and why did he have her in a cabin, and oh god - she was panicking properly now.

“Shoot! I’m messing this up. I knew I had to be quick when it came-” He said shifting her off his lap and onto the couch. “It’s multiple scloris.” he continued. “What it-”

“Multiple Sclerosis?” Victoria cut in trying to simultaneously correct and clarify the term Thomas had just used.

“Don’t assume the worst,” Iris was quick to reply. “I’m sure it’s just another symptom of this forever illness. Your body just can’t catch up.” Iris rattled on, applying a cold compress to her head. For the second time that day, Victoria grabbed Iris’ wrist. A little too hard but she needed her to listen.

“No. Iris. I’m sorry.” She let go of Iris’ wrist. “It’s Multiple Sclerosis. Thomas told me.”

“Who’s Thomas?” Iris pulled back as if to see Victoria in a different light.

“This illness is my immune system that can’t catch up because it’s busy fighting itself. And I’m going to need an MRI but it’s not going to be like normal Multiple Sclerosis. This kind is undocumented.” And it was all coming back to her for the first time while having not happened yet and simultaneously having already happened. “And I will need to learn how to knit because the cabin is very cold. You can’t imagine how cold it can get. And Thomas is a nice man.”

“Jesus. Your fever is making you delirious.”

“No - not a fever,” Victoria choked out, “a premonition of the past. Future.”

“Yes,” Thomas winced. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” He paced the cabin a couple of times. “Let me start again. Iris and I, we take good care of you. We - oh. Not like that. It’s not like that. It’s just sometimes you’re there and sometimes here. You and I aren’t- but you can’t live in 1849 as a woman on your own and I wasn’t going to abandon you in the woods. Living here made the most sense and we’re companionable. It works for us. It’s a companionship. But, I want to make this very clear. If it’s the only thing I get out correctly. Victoria, you’re going to be alright.”

And she looked down at her right foot again.

Her unmoving foot. And she sat there, no longer hearing Thomas as he rattled on. Suddenly she was very aware of this new sensation that started in her foot. It was an unfeeling. She could feel her foot pulling her back to the now.

And it actually wasn’t her foot’s fault. Her right foot’s refusal to move just so happens to line up with her disease’s progression.

But it turned out her type of Multiple Sclerosis phased her in and out of time. And doctors didn’t believe her, so eventually she stopped trying to tell them. She found her own ways of coping. But that was often the way with doctors.

As more of her lost feeling in the now, she landed in the then. And she became less now than then in a way, but kinda rooted between now and then. She made it work.

Thomas was right because he knew before she did, but only because she lived things a bit out of time. She was alright.

Days turned into weeks, and months turned into years. Only two, but it just takes two to be plural. Iris took the news and adjusted to this new reality better than she did. A lesser woman would have abandoned her. Iris got carpentry tips from Thomas via questions passed through her when she remembered them but sometimes her memory was hazy.

There were good days. And there were hard days.

She was tired almost all the time because it’s hard to go between then and now.

She went into remission but then lost some more feeling anyway because that’s how neural pathways work.

But all things said and done, Victoria is alright, if your definition of alright is re-adjusted to accommodate these specific circumstances.

Patricia Allison is a multi-hyphenate creative living in Toronto, Canada. She holds an MFA in Dance where her focus was on Canonical Counter Discourse. She is a member of the Shakespeare in the Ruff Leadership collective and a co-leader of Generator.

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Welcome back,

As the holidays approach each year I find myself with an optimism and joy about a week or two full of rest and relaxation, but it often turns into sitting around feeling like I should be doing something else, or resting “better”.

2024 was a year of big ups and downs, with a lot of loss and celebration intertwined. It was a year I endlessly thought about community. How to find it, how to build it, how to keep it going, how to feel reassured it wasn’t all lost forever each time myself or a loved one had a flare-up or crisis. There was a lot I took on myself, a lot of juggling and ultimately a lot of dropping things, too. One of those things was publishing original writing through our Substack.

This year, we’re picking that ball back up again.

This call out is specifically for literary fiction, creative non-fiction, and journalistic-style reporting. We’re also open to pitches of Q&As with disability figures in the creative industries.

Our pay-out rate will increase with the number of paid subscriptions we receive to our newsletter hosted on Substack, but initially we are able to pay $10CAD per piece. We will only be taking one piece a month, so please send us the writing and thoughts you’ve been looking to find a caring home for.

We will collate all stories published over the course of the calendar year into an end-of-year paper zine with a thick cover, for sale through our pop-up store at markets, and who knows, maybe some wholesale opportunities. The first 12 subscribers to the newsletter whose subscriptions remains active as of December 2025, will receive a free copy of the collated zine.

So, what are we looking for?

For literary fiction, we want to see the badass indie protagonists of disability culture. Beloved and complex characters whose disability takes up all or next to nothing of the story, and we especially want to see those who experience multiple marginalizations.

For creative non-fiction, we’d love your personal analysis and critique of the medical industry, crip realities, and hybrid writing that deconstructs and plays with western ideas of what a narrative and reliable narration should look like.

For journalistic style reporting, we want your analytical and inquisitive take on world events and disability politics, including but in no way limited to: Disability Justice and Palestine, Disability and genocide, forgotten and hidden Disability histories, world governments forcing millions of Disabled into poverty and high-risk of abuse with inadequate benefits, tenderness and complexities of caregiving and receiving, etc.

For pitches, tell us: Who do you want to interview or write about? Why is this relevant right now? Why is this a good fit for Sick Stories? What prevents you from writing it without a green light?

General guidelines

Attention spans on the internet are short, but we think a good story is still worth reading. We’re looking for pieces 500-2000 words long. If it’s outside of these limits, it should be for reasons that are immediately obvious.

We’ll work with you for some medium-light edits, but please send pieces which feel finished. These are more likely to be accepted. The pieces will be sent out through our newsletter,

where free subscribers can read to a certain point, but only paid subscribers may be able to read the end.

Selected pieces should not have been published elsewhere, online or in print. That is, we are allowed to be the first publisher of your work, before the rights to publish revert to you. These publication rights extend to all formats and locations in which they might be available to Sick Stories readers.

Frankly, we don’t know what this project will look like by the end of the year, but we’re really excited for the journey, and invite you to submit for January’s consideration any time before January 18th. Submissions received after the 18th of the month will be considered for the following month (ie, if you submit January 21st, you’ll be considered for February, if you submit February 19th, you’ll be considered for March.) Going forward, we’ll post specific wish lists and mood boards for each month to help you figure out if a specific piece feels like the right fit.

To submit, head to this link. We’ll be back in your inbox this month with upcoming program offerings, more announcements, and the first published piece from this series.

In solidarity,

Sick Stories

PS - If you can pledge a monthly ($5CAD) or yearly ($50CAD) subscription via Substack, we will be able to increase the amount of Disabled writers we can support.

Subscribe now

Hey there,

This newsletter is coming amongst a period of a lot of change. For most of us, the clocks have recently gone back, the trees are losing the last of their leaves, evenings are darker and our brains are in conflict between naturally wanting to slow down and yet having so much to continue to do in order to survive.

I go through moments of wondering what stories can do when there are so many policy changes, political upheavals, and changes in the fabric of society needed to create a world that’s accessible and truly safe for all of us born and brought into the Disabled sphere. Where the lure of our screens feels so strong on days that feel like they could decide parts of our future.

The past year has included a lot of loss, both personally and globally. There’s a sense of us wanting to connect and not knowing how besides liking posts and offering to talk. I’ve been trying to make sense of grief over the last few months, as more and more has piled on. My way through processing has traditionally been writing, but I’ve never learned how to write about the tangle of emotions that come with compounded grief. Crip grief comes with added complexities too, increased isolation and no place for anger besides the world itself. Feeling the presence of a tender writing community in various spaces has helped me to remain present, to find and give words to those who are able and ready to receive them.

If this is you, we have some opportunities coming up:

Sick Stories x Hard Feelings (in person)

After taking a break last month, we’re back at Hard Feelings, 353 Church St, Toronto, on Tuesday, November 12th, 3-5pm for a journalling style writing session. There will be multiple prompts to choose from, space for discussion, questions, and sitting with ideas, whether they’re real or imaginary.

Sessions are $5 each and are open for sign-ups now.

Pilot programs (online)

We’re looking for participants for three new programs. We’ve grappled for some time with how to create equity, accessibility, and financial sustainability in a project like Sick Stories. For these pilot programs, in recognition that it’s the first time we’ll be running any of them, we’re offering them free of charge or a low fee, with the gratitude and hope of receiving feedback on things that worked and things that didn’t.

The three programs are:

Writers Circle - a small group meeting weekly for three weeks to give and receive feedback on pieces of fiction or non-fiction up to 2,500 words. This offering is free with your anonymous feedback at the end greatly appreciated. Running November 15th, 22nd, and 29th, 5:30-7pm Eastern Time. Sign-up here.

Story Train - a community building workshop where we create a character and their environment together and each write a portion of the story. It likely won’t make sense, but that’s the fun and messiness of play, first drafts, and collaborations. These sessions meet live one time, and either write the story immediately or over the course of the following week. Participation is more important here, so we’re asking for a $10 refundable deposit to sign up. Running November 16th, 10-11am Eastern Time (email completion) and 3-4:30pm Eastern Time (live writing). Sign-up here.

Interconnected - A more focused writing group structured around character development, collaboration, and play. You’ll leave the three-session series with three new, original stories and hopefully a fraction of the spoons typically required to create them. Running November 20th, 27th, and December 4th, 1-3pm Eastern Time. Sign-up here.

Other news

We’ve got more things up our sleeves which we’re not quite ready to announce, including calls for submissions, bigger roll-outs of merch, more workshops and virtual community spaces.

If you can pledge a monthly ($5CAD) or yearly ($50CAD) subscription via Substack, we will be able to increase the amount of Disabled writers we can support.

Subscribe now

Until next time xo