Artist/Creator: Elizabeth Turner
Date: 02/18/2026
Medium/Materials: A print of "Renaissance" by Albert Racinet (1888), Sharpie, and embroidery thread

Description: Anyone who knows me, even in passing, may see that I'm an artist trying to express myself within severe limitations. Only the very patient and intent people in my life get close enough to see that there is much more colour and complexity than I'm able to convey at this point in the journey. I invite the viewer to move closer to the mask and explore Racinet's painting inside.

Artist/Creator: Nathalie
Date: 02/18/2026
Medium/Materials: Tickets of different colours

Description: People around me see a social person with a social life. But in order to maintain a small social life, I need to prepare days in advance: being in bed most of the time before a social event, taking painkillers on the day of the event.

The rare social life that people see is so much lower compared to what it was when I didn’t have ME/FM. But my family/relatives see a person who can still accomplish things at a social level. Even if:

A ticket for a movie or concert: it’s a challenge because of the sound level and all the walking just to get to my seat, and staying seated for that long without lying down.

A nice meal in a restaurant has to be short. Most seats are not comfortable for me. Food can induce dysphasia for me.

A flight ticket: Even though I am on disability and have limited finances, I would need to book a more comfortable seat on a plane. The proximity of others and the cramped body seated for hours at the same place would trigger a major flare-up for days to come.

A bus/subway/train ticket: Creates a lot of pain and headaches waiting for that transportation. Therefore, it gave me PEM (Post-Exertion Malaise).

A ticket for a library: it takes me longer to read a book, to process the words. The mask represents the anger that is often on display when I am out in public. I don’t like to go out when I am in pain, but the fact is, I am always in pain, and I do have to go outside the house. When I am outside my house, I am not a nice man. I am resentful of the pain that hampers my ability to enjoy life outside a bed. The thought that I am hiding any pain is a joke. While I might not show pain, the anger that I show is still from my pain.

Artist/Creator: Chantel B.
Date: 02/18/2026
Medium/Materials: Repurposed pencils (once tools of intellect and productivity, now transformed into mobility aids; a shift from cognitive labour to physical instability.) Gloved hand (representing a body that struggles to maintain equilibrium due to temperature dysregulation and circulatory instability; It also reflects my near-constant need for external support, as my head often feels unbearably heavy and light with dizziness, requiring steadiness that my body cannot reliably provide.) Earplugs (In response to a hypersensitized nervous system, everyday sounds have become intrusive, amplified, and at times painful. What was once background noise now demands protection, as I navigate the world with hyperacusis.) Eye mask (shielding against sensory overload; a barrier between self and environment Eggshell white surface: the loss of vitality; fragility, depletion, and the quiet erasure of my former health.)

Description: Most of my illness is invisible. The pain. The fatigue. The sensory overwhelm. These symptoms shape every moment of my life—yet remain largely unseen. That is…until I use my tools. The moment I put in earplugs, wear sunglasses indoors, pull on heated mitts, or rely on walking poles or other stability supports, something shifts. I become visible. But not fully. People don’t see the complexity of my condition—they see the aids. The accommodations. The difference.

My tools become a kind of cloak of visibility. They reveal that something is wrong, while simultaneously obscuring the depth of what I live with. They draw attention—but not always understanding. These objects are not limitations. They are adaptations. They are how I move through a world that was not built for bodies like mine. And yet— they are often the first thing people see, and sometimes the only thing they remember.

Artist/Creator: Ryan K.
Date: 02/18/2026
Medium/Materials: papier-mâché mask, screws and nails, sandpaper, rope, and paint.

Description: This mask represents the anger I often show in public. I don’t like to go out when I am in pain, but the fact is, I am always in pain, and I do have to go outside the house. When I am outside my house, I am not a nice man. I am resentful of the pain that hampers my ability to enjoy life outside a bed. The thought that I am hiding any pain is a joke. While I might not show pain, the anger that I show is still from my pain.

Artist/Creator: Jaz S.
Date: 02/18/2026
Medium/Materials: Oil pastels

Description: This chronic illness has changed the way I’m able to communicate with others. Or rather, it has shifted the way I am able to express myself. Like in the mask, my mind feels crushed, there’s a pressure, a fog, a disconnect; people don’t see this, of course, but they experience the halting, fumbling for words, the slump in my posture, the excessive leaning I’ve come to use to try and keep the wooziness at bay. I come across as weak and unsteady. They may or may not perceive my undying exhaustion, but I always make sure to remind people of it, as if painting excessive eye bags on my face, because I’m constantly scared that the people around me are judging me for sitting watching TV when there are chores to be done, or that they feel perplexed by my lack of doing things for myself. I think people on the outside can find me pitiable but also frustrating. As much as I depicted an intensity here, oil pastels are smudgeable, malleable, they can shift just like my symptoms can day to day. It’s a mess, it’s confusing, and it can also be totally invisible, ever fluctuating, ever confusing for those outside of it.

Artist/Creator: Breanne
Date: 02/18/2026
Medium/Materials: Fabric, zipper, glue, paint, pen, coloured sand

Description: Others see my white, pale face and may observe breathing issues. A “brain brake” to conserve energy limits what I say, or stops me altogether.

A thick brain fog manifests as difficulties with memory, word-finding, paying attention, etc. Episodes of intense pain are obvious in behaviours such as limping, wincing, squirting, gasping and rubbing. Discolouration and glue damage from the mouth to the eyes represent skin issues that are a result of an overactive immune system.

Artist/Creator: Ryan K.
Date: 03/04/2026
Medium/Materials: papier-mâché mask, wood dowels, paint cap, tulle, styrofoam ball, and paint

Description: I often talk about one of the hardest things for me to deal with is the loneliness that comes with this illness. This loneliness can make it feel like I am living in a prison, often in solitary confinement. Every time I  move or try to do something, there is either intense pain or full-body exhaustion. As a very creative person, I find my ability to imagine things has taken a dark turn. My mind’s eye has been focused on reliving a lot of my guilt, regrets, and shame from my past.

Artist/Creator: Breanne
Date: 03/04/2026
Medium/Materials: TwiCotton balls, nails, string, crib pegs, glue

Description: My tangled and wandering thoughts travel through a thick brain fog where I lose track of them. Intense headaches may be crushing or literally feel like spikes through my skull. Difficulties expressing myself due to cognitive challenges and lack of energy can truly feel as if I am trapped in a prison within my own head.

Artist/Creator: Nathalie
Date: 03/04/2026
Medium/Materials: Twine, bandages

Description: The inside of the previous social person is me spiralling down over and over in between those social events, but also on a daily basis, just to do basic things that neurotypical persons would find normal: showering, dressing up, going to medical appointments. All of those ”normal activities” are creating more and more health challenges for me.

The spirals are also related to all the work/colleague relationships that are lost because of being on disability. Even some friends are becoming distant because I need to cancel planned social outings, not feeling well enough to go out. Friends and I never knew whether it would be a manageable day. The friends are trying to understand my medical conditions, but get frustrated as well with me for not being reliable for outings, therefore, with them as well.

Artist/Creator: Elizabeth Turner.
Date: 03/04/2026
Medium/Materials: A print of "Renaissance" by Albert Racinet (1888), Sharpie, Elmer's glue

Description: This represents the complex jumble of thoughts and feelings I must manage while experiencing cognitive dysfunction, exacerbated by physical pain. In my case, my worst pain comes from migraines-- hence the one-sided smash.

Artist/Creator: Chantel B.
Date: 03/04/2026
Medium/Materials: Swords (representing the searing chest pain that marked the onset of my Long Covid journey; sharp, penetrating, and persistent.) Chains & weight (the constant burden of illness; an ever-present drag on energy, movement, and autonomy.)

AI-generated images (from photos of me in pain and at peace)

Description: My illness moves in tides. At its worst, it is a storm — violent, disorienting, and consuming. At other times, it is a weight — constant, dragging, inescapable. And somewhere beneath it all — there is a quiet I have had to learn to reach.

The Storm: The top third of this mask captures the chaos. A body in distress - heart pounding, short of breath, senses overwhelmed as though I am drowning in my own physiology.

Long Covid / ME/CFS floods my system with symptoms: fatigue, pain, nausea, hyperacusis, dizziness, instability, brain fog, tachycardia, and neurological dysregulation that touches nearly every system. These waves can rise suddenly and without warning.

On my worst days, I exist in survival mode, my capacity collapsing without notice. My movements slow, distorted. My body becomes heavy, uncoordinated, unfamiliar. The grayscale reflects this space of uncertainty—living in the in-between, never knowing when the next wave will hit, or how long I will remain under, or when, if ever, I’ll get better.

The Undertow: The middle section holds the burden. Post-exertional malaise (PEM) is the undertow—invisible, but powerful enough to pull me under for days. It is not just fatigue. It is a full-body flu-like depletion—cognitively, emotionally, physically It feels as though I am dragging a weight through water—every action resisted, every movement costly. This weight is constant, even when the storm passes.

And yet, because my illness is episodic, this suffering is not always visible, not always believed.

The Deep: At the base, something shifts. I have learned—slowly, painfully—that I cannot fight the chaos and the weight. I survive by yielding. By pacing. By resting deeply. By accepting the limits this illness has imposed. I am not who I was before.
But in surrendering to this reality, I have found a different kind of existence—quieter, slower, calmer. Like a mermaid beneath the surface, I learn to exist in the depths—waiting for the storm above to pass.

Artist/Creator: Jaz S.
Date: 03/04/2026
Medium/Materials: Dust, cat hair, scraping, hot glue, makeup (blush/eyeshadow), hair spray, my own hair, cotton balls 

Description: My general experience of M.E. is an unending feeling of exhaustion and brain fog. There’s such a loss of cohesion, of sense-making, of parts of reality. There are dull aches that grow in severity the way an unaffected person’s body would react to a full on gym workout, after a day where you let yourself walk between your room and the living room “too many times” or put some stuff away on shelves that you don’t regularly do, or maybe you pushed past sleepiness because you got excited about something you were working on or watching. 

I filled the mask with distressed cotton balls, dust from the floors and cat hair. These represent the way my cognition feels impacted: the brain fog. It feels like your head is clogged, like things aren’t connecting or firing properly. I pulled some of it down over the “eyes”, not because my vision is impacted, but my perspective and experience of the world is impacted. If I didn’t have to send these masks in the mail, I would have filled the mask with rocks and/or cement.

There is dust and debris in the mouth area to signify difficulty getting speech to be coherent. The red around the edges is to represent dull aches and pains, and the scratching into the mask and tears are to show the way it feels as though you are losing yourself and what you want or what you previously had: this sort of decay/erosion 

Artist/Creator: Elizabeth Turner
Date: 03/18/2026
Medium/Materials: Tissue paper, glue, Sharpie, and an illustration by Pauline Baynes from the book The Chronicles of Narnia 

Description: To respond to the question of how I see myself as a person with my physical body, my tenacity and resilience immediately come to mind for me. I may appear to move gingerly and ask for a lot of help, but continuing my life —to the extent that I'm able —requires daily discipline and strength that I never could have dreamed of when I was healthier. Every task is monumental, and the basics of daily life are now my proud accomplishments.

Artist/Creator: Chantel B.
Date: 03/18/2026
Medium/Materials: Printed icons (simplified symbols of complex, failing systems; an attempt to make the invisible legible.) Stitching (ongoing efforts to hold myself together: medications, therapies, pacing, and protective strategies.) Burnt, fractured mask (the cumulative toll of chronic dysfunction; a body pushed beyond its limits, repeatedly.) 

Description: My body no longer operates automatically due to dysfunction of my autonomic (think “automatic”) nervous system, a condition called dysautonomia. Dysautonomia is a failure of my body’s autopilot—basic functions like heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and temperature no longer regulate smoothly, but instead surge, crash, and misfire. With dysautonomia, my body struggles to maintain stability, leaving me constantly trying to keep myself upright, steady, and functioning.

At the centre of this mask are two failures: broken dials; my nervous system can no longer maintain the delicate balance of the systems it governs. Broken battery: my body struggles to sustain energy; no matter how much I rest, I never fully recharge. Together, they form a body stuck in dysfunction—misfiring, underpowered, and unpredictable. When I exceed my limits - or sometimes simply meet the demands of daily life - my already limited energy reserves collapse. It feels like operating on a leaking battery—while the control panel flickers and fails.

Standing, thinking, moving, processing—everything draws from a system that cannot keep up. Crazy that all this dysfunction was triggered by a virus that for many slows them down for a week, while others - including many ME/CFS sufferers - reshapes a lifetime.

Symptom Landscape (icons moving clockwise across the mask)

→ Wired but tired: a nervous system in overdrive; buzzing, strained, unable to settle

→ Dizziness/imbalance: unstable blood flow leaves me dependent on external support

→ Temperature dysregulation: extremes of cold, burning, and feverish states, I cannot control

→ Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS): a heart that races wildly, turning simple tasks into exertion. Making me reliant on meds, aggressive hydration & salt intake, compression garments. Walking poles to help with how draining a wildly beating heart can be.  

→ Gastrointestinal dysfunction: a nervous system so stuck in fight or flight mode, that it deprioritizes digestion and leaves me with nausea, indigestion, and little appetite 

→ Pain: layered and constant: neurological (muscles screaming from poor oxygenation), fascial (fibromyalgia flare-ups for no reason), and post-exertional (full-body flu-like malaise)

→ Hyperacusis & tinnitus: everyday sounds become overwhelming, intrusive, sometimes crippling - a real sonic hell

→ Brain fog: the unsettling loss of access to my own formerly bright mind; memory falters, focus slips, and even simple tasks feel mentally out of reach

→ Air Hunger: breath that feels irregular, restricted, and so insufficient that I suddenly need to gasp for air

Each icon represents a system that should function quietly in the background—
 but now demands attention, energy, and endurance.

Artist/Creator: Ryan K.
Date: 03/18/2026
Medium/Materials: papier mache mask, hot glue gun, and paint

Description: All the symptoms and side effects that ME/CFS has are an exhausting list. First of all, you need doctors to actually believe how much pain you are in and the fatigue that comes from the smallest exertion.

Then come all the mental health challenges that are added to the physical ones. The physical rollercoaster of good days and bad days challenges how you think about reality when your body is unable to provide accurate feedback. You become afraid that you are going to hurt yourself worse. In fact, the usual path to recovery is graded exercise therapy. You start with very small exercises and gradually build up your abilities. But for people with ME/CFS, this is the worst for us as it slowly decreases our limits instead of increasing our abilities.

And you feel broken.

Artist/Creator: Jaz S.
Date: 03/18/2026
Medium/Materials: Paper mache (tissue paper and wheat paste) and residue from makeup brush used

Description: There is a crushed-ness to my presence now, a gravity pressing down that makes it hard to think, to care, to keep going. There is a blankness blurring the lines between personhood and illness/disability. I’m no longer “all-here”, I literally can’t be. I guess I would say the white on white paper mache is a representation of the feeling of perpetual yet oscillating blankness of my mind, and of the disconnection I have from reality due to my illness and the way it also interacts with my neurodivergence, etc. There is a fragility and messiness to it. 

rtist/Creator: Nathalie
Date: 03/18/2026
Medium/Materials: beads, glue 

Description: My body is fighting like a warrior to maintain my current lower level of health (challenging, like a warrior going to a battle); never knowing the result of the battle.

I still see myself as beautiful, but with a warrior mask. My physical body needs the warrior mask to move through my physical and emotional battles.
Many battles are linked to having so many medical appointments with uncertain or challenging results: lab work to be done every three months, GP, kinesiologist, dietitian, physiotherapist, radiologist, optometrist, ophthalmologist, gastroenterologist, hematologist, …

Artist/Creator: Breanne
Date: 03/18/2026
Medium/Materials: lace ribbon, pearls on elestic string, glitter, glue, paint, thread, coffee 

Description: Occasionally, I see my old, pre-illness self, whom others affirmed as positive, happy, bubbly, pretty, engaged, and cheerful.Funny and quick-witted, thoughtful, kind and helpful. More often, I sense I am invisible, slow-moving and thinking, misinterpreted and not understood. Unimportant and not contributing, more selfish than selfless. Less friendly and patient, more isolated and reserved.

Note: the intentional literal interpretation of symptoms/expressions of my experience with ME: thinning, greying hair, very dark circles like bruises under my eyes, red, bloodshot/sore and dry eyes and brown “liver/age” spots all over my body.

Artist/Creator: Breanne
Date: 04/01/2026
Medium/Materials: pmsgszine, glue, paperclips, lighter, plastic wrap

Description: I love to learn, but am unable to retain knowledge or read from a screen. I am passionate about fitness and nutrition, but unable to exercise or afford expensive food.

I love animals, but can’t care for a pet. I highly value time in nature and mostly experience it through a window. It is important for me to be there for family and friends, but I feel like a ghost. My organizational skills (paperclips) are very necessary. I maintain hope for the future and find moments of joy, mostly due to my meditation and mindfulness practices.

Artist/Creator: Jaz S.
Date: 04/01/2026
Medium/Materials: Pencil, eyeshadows, coloured pencil crayon

Description: There is so much to my identity, even though I often can’t leave the house anymore. But I am lucky, I am not so severe (my ME) that I can’t do cognitive things anymore. So I am endlessly (albeit haltingly and slowly) creating. I don’t know how I’d survive this illness without that. But I also want to acknowledge/insist that identity isn’t founded on what we do (even though our capitalist society tells us so), what we do/can’t do isn’t who we are. Existence is valid; people who cannot do things are worthy of care and compassion, and things beyond basic survival and low-ball offers of assisted suicide. 

The complexities added to my ability to create and write interrupt my processes endlessly, and I don’t think I am capable of engaging with my arts practice the same way I previously did, however I am still dedicated to what I am able to produce/come up with.

Drag was a big part of my identity before I became more severe with this illness. I don’t really do it anymore except for on rare occasions, but I used makeup to do pride flag colours on this mask in reference to this. Makeup is also performance; it’s impermanent, it’s changeable/mutable. (The colours on either side under the rainbows are for the non-binary and trans flags, both part of my identity as well) 

Artist/Creator: Chantel B.
Title: Shadow of my former self
Date: 04/01/2026

Medium/Materials: Charcoal: the fading silhouette of my former self; the weight and obscurity of brain fog
Watercolours & markers: the emergence of creativity, curiosity, and emotional expression
Neuroplasticity imagery: the ongoing rewiring of my brain and nervous system

Description: I see a woman moving through life at a fraction of the speed and capacity she once held. There was a time when I did it all—career, motherhood, a full social life, constant motion. Yes, I was burning the candle at both ends, but I could. My days were measured in minutes and hours, my output in pages reviewed, meetings, decisions, and momentum.

Now, time has stretched. What once fit into a day now spans weeks. My to-do list is no longer a plan—it is a negotiation. Tasks often require a quiet permission slip: not today… Maybe tomorrow. Rest and pacing are no longer choices—they are the structure that holds my life together.

I once held complexity with ease. Dozens of pages of dense information—absorbed, analyzed, connected. I could see patterns, gaps, and meaning. I could respond quickly, think deeply, and hold multiple threads at once.

Now, that clarity flickers. My cognition is tethered to a dysregulated nervous system. When my system falters, so does my mind. Thoughts slow. Memory slips. Focus dissolves.

Under strain, I freeze—like a deer in headlights. Unable to process. To decide. To respond. Light overwhelms. Sound pierces. The world, at times, becomes too much to take in. There is grief here. A quiet, persistent awareness that parts of my former capacity have thinned— as if they are leaching away, leaving behind a shadow of who I once was. And yet…something else is emerging. With the quieting of what once dominated, another part of me is expanding. Creativity. Curiosity. Presence.

I am learning to live differently. To experience moments instead of rushing through them. To find capacity not in pushing harder, but in respecting limits. Through rest and pacing, I am rebuilding—gently, imperfectly. Through art, gardening, journaling, and connection, I am rediscovering joy. Practices that once felt optional are now essential: Yoga. Breathwork. Meditation. Neurostimulation. Therapy, including EMDR.

I am learning the language of my nervous system—through neuroplasticity, somatic practices, the polyvagal theory, and pain and sound reprocessing therapy. Neurons that fire together, wire together!

I am rewiring. Not back to who I was — but toward someone new. A slower, more present, creative, evolving self. I like who I am becoming. I am also questioning what we value. We so often ask: What do you do? As though worth is measured by productivity. But what of those  whose bodies no longer allow that?

What if we asked instead: What interests you? What brings you joy?

rtist/Creator: Ryan Kirkness
Date: 04/01/2026
Medium/Materials: papier mache mask, candle and paint

Description: It has been well over a decade since I have been able to work. Unable to work full-time, part-time or even casual work. When I first stopped working full-time, I thought I could still work part-time hours over a seven-day workweek with my own marketing company. But even that was too difficult for me. While I hoped I would still be able to work in some form or another. Still to this day, when I would have a good day, there are flickers of moments where you think, “Maybe I am getting better?” Of course, those are just fleeting moments that screw with your mind. After this happens for months and years, I no longer have a spark.

Without a spark, you slowly start to lose your passion for anything. Your depression starts getting worse, and the cycle of despair is almost always on your mind. Soon, you will no longer be looking for your joy or even a little bit of happiness.

Artist/Creator: Elizabeth Turner
Date: 04/01/2026
Medium/Materials: Sharpie, photograph.

Description: I see the person inside me as the person I have always been. One of the core parts of me is the auntie/big sis/mama part. The thought bubble in my mask shows me holding a photo of Little Me, who is also caring for her dolly. I am limited in how I move about the world now, and much of my nurturing energy must go to myself just to get through the day, but I am still uniquely here in the world and hope to find ways to spread kindness and care.

Artist/Creator: Nathalie
Date: 04/01/2026
Medium/Materials: popsicle sticks, multicoloured elastic bands

Description: I define myself as a ME/CFS/FM person with multilayers of insecurities, uncertainties, and vulnerability.

How can I ensure my doctor understands the full scope of my symptoms? And how can the healthcare system support me when home care is constrained by rules and limited resources?

How can I ensure my doctor understands the full scope of my symptoms? And how can the healthcare system support me when home care is constrained by rules and limited resources?

The intertwined, twisted colored elastic bands reflect this complexity—the constant tension and overlap of symptoms, the varying levels of fatigue, and the challenge of making the invisible visible to others. They hold the weight of what is difficult to explain: the unpredictability of each day… and everything that comes with it

Artist/Creator: Elizabeth Turner
Date: 04/15/2026
Medium/Materials: Floral applique, glue

Description: I think people imagine me recovering in the future. Or at least finding ways to thrive, understanding that I might continue to be very limited. The mask's distortion represents my limitations.

Artist/Creator: Chantel B.
Date: 04/15/2026
Medium/Materials: Cut napkins: fragmented “records,” repeating and unraveling

Eggshell white ink: fragility and the illusion of wholeness

Masquerade mask: the concealment of illness severity

Written questions and comments: the external confusion surrounding invisible disability

Description: How do others see me? A question that echoes beneath every interaction. I sense their confusion. I hear it in passing comments: “Still not better?”
 “But you look so good…”

And in the quieter, unspoken questions: How could a virus do this? When will she recover? She seems fine… doesn’t she?

To them, I am a broken record—repeating the same refrain: I’m exhausted. I’m unwell. But what they hear does not match what they see.

Because my conditions are largely invisible, and they are:

→ Episodic: I am often seen only in moments when I’ve pushed beyond my limits to be present

→ Variable: I have learned to mask pain, fatigue, and neurological symptoms when they are not quite overwhelming

→ Medically complex: without clear, visible markers, my illness is difficult to grasp from the outside·

So, I smile. I connect. I appear “well.”
And the record keeps spinning.

What is unseen is the cost—the crashes, confinement, loss of function, and careful rationing of energy.

My hope is that increased awareness will shift perception toward greater understanding of Long Covid and ME/CFS, and the profound limitations they impose.

These are neuro-immune conditions marked by systemic dysfunction—affecting energy production, the autonomic nervous system, and cognitive function—often resulting in debilitating fatigue, post-exertional malaise, and brain fog.

Artist/Creator: Ryan Kirkness
Date: 04/15/2026
Medium/Materials: papier mache mask and paint

Description: For as much as I think I am hiding my pain or fatigue, there are symptoms and signs written on my face. When having chest pains that feel like a heart attack, you can not control your facial muscles when it happens. My post-exertional malaise makes me sweat like I’m sunbathing on a beach for hours. But one of the most obvious and most frustrating symptoms is the cognitive function. I stumble around for common words to describe things. My brow furrows as I look for the word that I know, but I can no longer find it.

Artist/Creator: Jaz S.
Date: 04/15/2026
Medium/Materials: Water colour pencils, light paper mache with tissue paper, water, pen

Description: My life looks leisurely, almost pleasant. I look no different on the outside than I used to, just maybe less put together, rarely in nice outfits, with dishevelled hair, but overall the same person. And I come with a mobility aid more often than not. I don’t think my illness is really ‘seen’ on the outside; it’s more something that is told to you. It’s explained, not so much witnessed. It’s confusing for people, and I think it's easy to forget about. So there’s an expression of worry on my mask, and words looping the border of “explanations/divulgence of illness” but otherwise it is aesthetically more or less pleasing, I don’t think (the mask is) uncomfortable to look at, except maybe the paper mache eyelids because I do think people can see that I’m tired most of the time (though they don’t understand that I can’t “fix it”).

I used watercolour pencil and a bit of dry pastel to imitate facial contours. I was thinking about maps where terrain is indicated with radiating lines and different colours, as well as about drag makeup contouring. 

The words around the outside are more of what I say to people, how I respond to confusion. I think people mostly just see me as a regular person who maybe has a disability (if I’m using a mobility aid), but they don’t so much see or understand what is going on with me. 

Artist/Creator: Nathalie
Date: 04/15/2026
Medium/Materials: Synthetic roses, markers, glue

Description: I am seen as a talented person with a very creative mind toward the arts.

Like Frida Kahlo, who was a talented Mexican artist who suffered all her life with severe pain after surviving a devastating accident in her youth.

My family and I see me as a “Frida Kahlo person” when people look at me: looking fine and very artistic. But, also very, very limited with my newer, weaker physical abilities.

Bringing colour to my life and the lives of others: the way I dress, my artworks to show and share with others, whatever I can still do, and the help and support I give others to share my talents.

Artist/Creator: Nathalie
Date: 04/29/2026
Medium/Materials: Magazine images/word 

Description: Some people can feel sad for me but also recognize and admire my determination to keep going, to grow, to become a better human being while navigating daily medical challenges. I’m going slow like a turtle ( no choice), but I am still going. They see and respect my work to help/support my community of ME/CFS fellows.

Artist/Creator: Elizabeth Turner
Date: 04/29/2026
Medium/Materials: Bamboo embroidery hoops, glue

Description: To answer how I see my future, I can only say that there are many possibilities. I could become completely bedridden and tube-fed; I could begin a new career; I could slowly achieve goals deep in my mind from my healthier life. The circles represent endless possibilities; the white/bamboo muted colour scheme represents the unknown.

Artist/Creator: Jaz S.
Date: 04/29/2026
Medium/Materials: Markers 

Description: When people know me and care for me, I think they see me as a fellow human, an artist/creator, a thinker. I have been told I have vibrant energy and that I have a friendly and outgoing disposition. The people who really know me see and understand (to an extent) my disabilities in addition to my personality and who I am outside of illness; it’s very important that it is both parts. People who can’t conceive of my identity intertwined with how chronic illness, mental health, and neurodivergence impact me, I would not consider to be very close. It is not fun to pretend that I am not impacted every moment of every day by these things, and so it is not fun when others pretend that I am not. But the things that make me me are permanent, like marker, I will always be a creative, queer, story-loving weirdo.

This mask I feel the most uncomfortable sharing because it feels childish in aesthetic, and as an artist, it’s uncomfortable to put something on display that is so not feeling like an “art-piece” and shows drawings that aren’t of my “normal-calibre”. But I tried to just do what I felt able to do in the time we had, and with the energy and mental capacity I had, which is a HUGE part of living with this illness. Things take longer, things that you always have done/have experience with can take more energy and more… (ugh. At this moment writing this, I’m losing the thread of what I’m trying to say, I know what I want to convey in the sense that I’m Feeling it right now, but I don’t think I am explaining it in words well/in the way that I really mean) 

Artist/Creator: Chantel B.
Date: 04/29/2026
Medium/Materials: Photograph: a shared moment of love and connection with my son at Halloween
Stitched felt heart: representing my family—mending what feels broken
Moss: the slowed pace of my life; grounded, quiet, enduring
Flowers: beauty, growth, and the emergence of new passions in art and gardening

Description: My family and friends - my core support system - see it all.

They witness the lows. The unpredictability. The way this illness reshapes my days without warning.

I feel their sadness, their fear, their confusion—loving someone whose capacity can change in an instant.

They see how much it takes for me to move through even the basics of daily life the careful pacing, the enforced rest, the reliance on supports just to meet the needs of our home.

And yet, what they reflect back to me is not loss. It is love. Unconditional, steady, and adapting alongside me.

They embrace who I am now — the ever-lovable “Momo Flash”, a nod to Zootopia’s Flash Slothmore. I’ve made peace with life at sloth speed - I’ve adopted sloths as my spirit animal. This mask holds a happy moment of my son and me this past Halloween 

How lucky am I to have my son want to twin with me as sloths!?!

That night, I tried. I planned, paced, and prepared — hoping to trick-or-treat around the block with my children. But my body had other plans. Too unsteady. Too depleted. Systems are shutting down under the weight of sensory overwhelm from all the excitement. 

And still—there was joy. Without being asked, my children adapted. They saw what I needed before I could say it.  They created a space for me to rest — supporting my head, adjusting the plan. They hid their disappointment. They chose connection.

And from that place, we found something unexpected: The simple magic of greeting my own children yelling Trick or Treat at our door! My family too grieves what has changed. And yet, they also tell me this: They love that I am home. Always present. Ready to greet them—often from bed, but fully with them. When I spend time with my children now, they feel my presence in a way they didn’t before. No multitasking. No rushing. I can’t.  Just being.

Yes, they tease me — about moving like moss, like a sloth. But they also see its beauty. In the slow tending of our plants and our needs. In the quiet rhythms of our home.

This is not the life I planned. But within it, there is love. There is adaptation. There is meaning. And there is a slower, more fragile version of me who is still worthy of being seen and loved.

Artist/Creator: Ryan Kirkness
Date: 04/29/2026
Medium/Materials: papier-mache mask, styroform balls, dowels, cardboard, paint

Description: When people get to know me and are able to look past the pain, they will find I am a loving, caring person. I have a lot of lived experiences and always have an interesting story to tell. I like to laugh and tell jokes, but I can not remember as many as I used to. I have found that my marketing knowledge is very similar to many therapies that are used for pain and/or chronic illness.

It took me years to start to understand what was happening to me. It took a couple more years to get my doctor to agree with me. And if your major symptom, pain, is something that doctors often see as subjective and never as bad as the patient believes.

I don’t want others to spend years trying to understand what they are going through. I want to help others who are suffering unnecessarily, and the general public to better understand how debilitating ME/CFS is!