Deleterious

Deleterious… My BRCA test results letter was my induction into the world of the “worried well”. I was not ill, but was suddenly living in the world of the infinitesimally small – my own DNA cast a shadow over everything I was and knew. But years have passed, and I’ve embraced the person I am now.

Deleterious is an arrangement of elements I collected or made during a particularly stressful time. The results letter I’d read a hundred times, eyes lingering (and hands stitching) over each word as I grappled with what having a harmful genetic mutation meant. (What it means.) A photograph @majadaniels took of me that couldn’t convey my new reality – then cut, woven, remade. Tiny, sweet images of my parents when they were younger, oblivious to the mutation that passes along family lines.

I feel lucky to have had writing and creativity to help me navigate that sometimes dark path. I was a patient, yes, and it was a difficult journey. But I was also an artist, and there were moments when I could wrap up my experience and hold it up to the sky. I would watch how the light hit and shaped its contours. How it passed through its interior. How everything would change depending on my perspective.