“Marie”

Abstract

I met “Marie” at a meeting of WHEEL and interviewed her on three separate occasions between 2006 and 2008. Though Marie had struggled most of her life with fibromyalgia, she could easily have been mistaken for someone in good health. There was something distinctly maternal about Marie. Concerned with my continual rummaging around for random notes—not to mention my ongoing struggles to operate the voice recorder—during our first meeting, she came to our second meeting a week later bearing a file folder to help me better organize myself. She also brought along a manila folder filled with notes and citations that reflected her ongoing independent inquiry into the links between stress, trauma, and cognition. By our third meeting, Marie had moved into an apartment and brought along a portfolio of her work that included a mix of charcoal sketches and intricately rendered naturescapes in vibrant watercolors that provided evidence of her evolving voice as an artist.