SUPPORT

Hello, kind readers! I’m glad you’ve found me!

If you’ve benefited from my writing in any way over the years – if my words have inspired you, helped you feel less alone, or sparked some weird feeling within you; if you’ve felt encouraged, or curious, or comforted (or challenged!) – please consider compensating me by offering a donation of any amount. Whether you’ve been reading my writing for years, or just stumbled into me this afternoon, I invite you to help me sustain the process! Even $5 or $10 makes my life significantly more liveable. Your cash-gifts enable me to access basic needs, like healthy food and other methods of healing and care (um, & maybe one day, a wifi connection at home? We’ll see!), and provide me with the ability to keep doing the work that I must do, that I know is meaningful, worthwhile, necessary.

Please click on the button above to offer any amount you wish! Or, click the little heart-mug below to buy me a coffee! It’s a quick little $2 donation! It’s like we’re having a coffee-date in an affordable, accessible venue! How strange & rare & wonderful!

Support comes in many forms, as I’ve been writing about for a long time, but as somebody who grew up in poverty, continues to survive well below the poverty line, and is disabled & crazy, I, like you, need money to live, to create, to grow, & to heal. My gifts, skills, creativity, ideas, & magic-making are often not valued in our culture – in fact, they are sometimes actively discouraged and invalidated – but I know they are real & valid & life-transforming.

Some of my current diagnoses are borderline personality disorder, complex-(p)TSD, and fibromyalgia. I’m also a recovering alcoholic with almost 6 years sober, a cane-user, a high school dropout, and a non-binary amethyst-femme. And I’ve been on social assistance for a whole damned decade now. These are just a few of the experiences that make navigating the world difficult, frustrating, and complex. But if I were given the option never to have experienced these disabilities, I’d say no. I continue to be grateful and astounded at all that I am learning and exploring from these spaces.

I’ve been writing about madness, survival, and magic for a long time! I’ve been writing deeply personal and vulnerable zines for fifteen years (I’ve printed about 55 zines total!), I’ve published two books, and I’m working on three more. I write about mental health & illnesses; writing & creativity; friendship; recovery with trauma & chronic pain; magic & witchcraft & Tarot; reclaiming borderline and politicizing recovery; self-care, support & $upport; surviving poverty; and embracing weirdnesses.

And I’ve lost count of how many wonderful people all over the place have told me that my words have convinced them not to kill themselves. Writing is so crucial to my survival, but I still struggle to stay alive, to make magic, to create meaning and wonder in my days, and to share some of that with you.

Your donations will ensure that I can continue the work (& healing & magic) that I have mysteriously arrived on this strange planet to do.

To read more of my writing, or to have your Tarot read, please go to schoolformaps.etsy.com! You can also follow me on Twitter, @MarandaDearest! I also have an Amazon Wishlist!

I greatly appreciate your kindness, your generosity, your sharing, and your support! Thank you! With gratitude & weirdo vibes!

Maranda Elizabeth illustrated as The Hermit, made of amethyst, surrounded by pill bottles, rose quartz, and spirit quartz.