Emotional Healing by Breaking Open the Truth: Zine Making as Shared Authenticity
Channel: Laura-Marie Strawberry Nopales
Date: 2022-09-10

Laura-Marie has made the autobiographical radical mental health zine functionally ill for 15 years, when she was first diagnosed bipolar 1 with psychotic features.  Making this zine has helped her find unconditional self-love, community, and deep emotional healing.  She explains how functionally ill began, details of physical production and sharing, how zine creation has helped her make sense of her experiences and heal, and how her zines have affected other people.  

Functionally ill shares her process through diagnosis, rediagnosis, disability, disability justice, navigating mainstream medicine including medication, power imbalances in medical contexts, and creating wellness plans.  Topics are trauma, therapy, sexuality, self-care, community care, and autism's complexifying role.  She talks about privacy, vulnerability, learning about being a valid person, death cliches, mutual strengthening through zines, and defining success for ourselves.

Many related zines made by Laura-Marie such as How Not to Domestic Violence Anyone, Resisting Capitalism for Fun, Love Is a Skill We Can Strengthen, Sexuality as Hidden, A Special Treehouse for Fat People, and Trike Diaries have spun off from functionally ill.  

The truth about mental health isn't something you'll hear from a doctor or drug company or liability statement of a clinic; it's something you'll hear from the actual person considered crazy.  Laura-Marie's transformation from scared self-loathing in the first issue, to stable, clear, and unconditionally self-loving can serve as an example to anyone with mental health struggles who needs similar emotional healing.  This community nestled, disability justice self-love stance repeated individually can contribute to a shared emotional healing of culture.

bio: 
Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales is a queer traveler. She enjoys ecstatic dance, art making, learning, ritual, and prayer. She’s been making zines for 32 years.  She enjoys fat liberation, singing, plant life, guttermancy, and lives at the intersection of disability and sex. Pleasure is her favorite way of experiencing God. Laura-Marie is a lifelong hearer of voices and experiences extreme states. She has sensory sensitivities and social differences. She’s working toward a world of deep respect, where emotional skills help form justice, and love is more important than money.

This is my presentation about my radical mental health zine functionally ill.  It was for the September 2022 conference in England called Zines ASSEMBLE.