Spiral Time / Liminal Time / In These Trying Times

we're in a difficult moment and could really use your help (plus a poll!)

I don’t usually observe the rituals of end-of-year-reflections / New Year resolutions, but this moment seems to demand it.

For those of you who hate suspense, I’ll cut right to the chase. My partner Joel was recently laid off, along with his entire department, with five weeks’ notice and no severance. Two days later he was diagnosed with kidney cancer.

I’m not gonna lie: we need your help.

This is quite a way to end a year that began with such promise, and has turned out to be one full of community, collaboration, new friends and old, and tremendous personal and professional growth.

Last year at about this time, we were visiting Joel’s mother, an octogenarian who runs circles around me with her energy. I had just had my second pacemaker surgery (after a heart failure diagnosis a little over two years ago) to replace a lead that had perforated my heart wall and was causing me all manner of distress. My mother-in-law showered us with gifts, rest, and amazing food. Somehow during that visit I felt like a switch had been flipped, and suddenly I had my energy back. I chalked it up to being taken such good care of, which was no doubt part of the equation, but later that winter we learned that I am what cardiologists call a “super responder,” meaning my pacemaker, now that it was working correctly, has increased my heart function almost back to the lower end of the normal range.

At about the same time, a series of collaborations basically fell in my lap: an invitation from the Glazgow Zine Library to run my four main workshops, then an invitation from KR Moorhead to collaborate with her and Meg Max on a brand new course called Neuroqueering Your Creative Practice, which led to a wonderful friendship with both KR and Meg, as well as another brand-new course starting later this month, Coming Home to Ourselves: A Course for Neurodivergent Creatives, co-taught by Meg and me.

my beloved on our camping trip this fall

DDS (Divergent Design Studios, my online community for neurodivergent creatives), continues to thrive and feel like sacred ground. This newsletter continues to grow and seems to be well-received and valued. I am working on my novel again, and recently discovered that I am much further along than I thought (45k words vs the 30k I thought I had written!) We started traveling in our converted mini-camper van (which also serves as our only vehicle) and had visions of traveling more this year to visit friends all over the country. Joel had just been given an extra week of vacation, a cruel trick to announce just weeks before the layoffs, and I was making a little bit of money for the first time in a very long time. It seemed we would no longer need to live paycheck to paycheck, and could possibly even save a little bit.

Then the rug was pulled out from under us.

Because health insurance is tied to employment in the United States, our insurance will lapse at the end of January (two days after Joel is scheduled to have a kidney removed), and we will need to scramble to figure something else out. Joel will be eligible for unemployment, but that is about a quarter of his current wages, and we expect to run through our fairly meager savings quickly. Joel’s recovery will be three to six weeks, and it makes no sense at all for him to begin a new job before then, even if he is able to find something at age 62.

I am painfully aware that our situation is nothing special, and that many many people are also struggling to pay the bills and look after their health. But my friend Meg tells me that people assume folks like me with fairly large followings are also doing well financially, but that is decidedly not the case, so I thought I should let you know. If you are someone who has a little bit of disposable income, we could really use your help.

The thing about Spiral Time is that when you come full circle, you’re NOT right back in the same place. And even though difficult times will inevitably come back around, as they have for us, it’s possible that you might be better equipped to face them. That is certainly where we are right now. We received the double whammy news of lay-off and cancer in the week leading up to our annual Santa Lucia Day celebration with my kids (my solution to the annual drama of splitting the holidays post-divorce). We barely noticed the solstice or Christmas, other than to have dinner with our dear friends Jesse Meadows and their partner Gray, which was so much fun! We’ve been in a sort of liminal space during this holiday season, with oncologist appointments and various procedures, trying to acclimate to this new normal. Even so, there have been many many lovely moments. We have so many good friends and are surrounded by love and community. We really are incredibly happy and content right now in our lives, except for, you know, the cancer and the no job/no insurance thing.

Now it’s New Year’s Eve, and it feels like this liminal moment is ending and spitting me back out into the spiral of time that the gregorian calendar calls 2025. I’m better equipped than ever to face difficult times, and for the most part I feel calm and hopeful. We are not quite ready to set up a GoFundMe, though we may get there.

Instead, I would really love to earn a modest living, and be able to support my family, with my own work. I have largely given away my work for free since I started making content about neurodivergence—I believe so deeply in accessibility, including especially financial accessibility. I have been poor before, and I know how stressful and overwhelming it is to live with financial precarity.

But now I find myself back in that spot, and I am hoping that those of you who have found value in my work over the years might be willing to begin paying me a living wage. I am trying very hard not to feel humiliated asking for your help—I absolutely believe there is no shame in needing help, and no shame in asking for it—but it’s a bit different when I am in the position of having to ask. I’d love to think of it less as a market transaction, and more as a form of mutual aid: I have given you my work freely when I was able to, and now I need financial support from those of you who have the means.

The best ways you can help us right now are:

~ Become a paid subscriber to this Newsletter. It’s only $6 a month, and $60 a year (which would by far be best for us).

~ If $6 a month is too much, I do still have an active (though extremely small) Patreon where you can support me for as little as $1 a month (or more of course!).

~ If you can’t offer recurring support, please consider a one-time donation via PayPal: marta@martarose.com or Venmo: @Marta-Rose-13 (last 4 letters of phone = 8754).

~ Join me and Meg for Coming Home to Ourselves: A Course for Neurodivergent Creatives. We are so excited for this course, which begins in about three weeks. We still have spots in both the Tuesday afternoon EST and Thursday evening EST classes, and filling those up would be such a boon right now.

~ Be on the lookout for more courses I’m hoping to offer this year—hopefully at a lower price point to make them more affordable to more people.

~ Join the waiting list for our next iteration of Neuroqueering Your Creative Practice coming this spring (the course description at the link has not yet been updated). This 12-week course was such a wild success; we were absolutely blown away by the level of engagement and the warm community of neuroqueerdos that developed, and we’re so eager to do it again! If you join the interest list, you will be eligible for early bird discounts.

~ Join DDS (Divergent Design Studios, my online community for neurodivergent creatives). We offer a free 7 day trial, and no one will be turned away if you can’t pay (if you need a free link, email me at marta@martarose.com). We charge a small monthly fee on a sliding scale in order to pay me and other folks who host regular events each week.

~ Tell me what would most interest you in upcoming courses (pick your one overwhelming favorite, but if you are interested in others, please leave a comment below!):