Because, like it or not, your story… is my story. And my story… is your story. I just don’t have the strength to take care of my story anymore. I don’t want my story defined by anger. All I can ask is just please help me take care of my story.
– Hannah Gadsby
Nanette (2018)
Inspired by my love of storytelling, art, and playful comedy, I’ve begun a project called Stories Hold Our Cure.
My initial idea was to have folks of the LGBTQIA+ community submit their stories and create an art piece using parts of their stories along with an accompanying booklet of their writings in a unique literary collection.
After only receiving one submission on a very tight deadline, I shifted the concept to focus on that one person’s story (with consent) while also including a sunflower with the petals cut from a transcript as an ode to my inspiration, Hannah Gadsby’s 2018 standup special called Nanette. I cut out the petals randomly but incorporated the ones that I thought spoke to the subject of the piece, Caitlin.
In Nanette, Gadsby speaks on tough subjects like depression, rape, hatred toward gay people, violence, etc. But she also discusses the need to share these stories as a form of medicine, to teach the world that our experiences may be unique to us but they are also uniquely human.
Below is the first piece in this series:
Stories Hold Our Cure – Caitlin’s Story
