PlanetThrive.com’s newest guest blog post is by Julie Laffin, a Chicago-based performance artist who writes of her struggles with severe chemical sensitivity and advanced neurological lyme disease. Her chemical sensitivity was exacerbated several years ago when she attempted to wash many old mothball-saturated Army blankets in preparation for a performance piece, not realizing that mothballs are essentially pesticide. She has been unable to work since then due to her symptoms and now struggles to reinvent her identity as an artist…read her blog post
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Earthwalker is the username that PT founder Julie Genser created for her online interactions so many years ago when first creating Planet Thrive.
Julie's (Earthwalker's) life was derailed over twenty years ago when she had a very large organic mercury exposure after she naively used a mouth thermometer to measure the temperature of just-boiled milk while making her very first pizza at home. The mercury instantly expanded into a gas form and exploded out the back of the thermometer right into her face. Unaware that mercury was the third most neurotoxic element on Earth, Julie had no idea she had just received a very high dose of a poisonous substance.
A series of subsequent toxic exposures over the next few years -- to smoke from two fires (including 9/11), toxic mold, lyme disease, and chemical injuries -- caused catastrophic damage to her health. While figuring out how to survive day-to-day, and often minute-to-minute, she created Planet Thrive to help others avoid some of the misdiagnoses and struggles she had experienced.
She has clawed her way over many health mountains to get to where she is today. She is excited to bring the latest iteration of Planet Thrive to the chronic illness community.
In 2019, Julie published her very first cookbook e-book called Low Lectin Lunches (+ Dinners, Too!) after discovering how a low lectin, gluten free diet was helping manage her chronic fascia/muscle pain.
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Thanks for sharing the awesome piece by Julie!
I, too, was an artist when MCS happened to me, although thankfully I am still able to be part of an art therapy group; I lead women’s expressive arts groups when my energy allows and a safe space is available to me (my chiropractor wants me to start one in her office, and some local coffee houses/health-food stores have non-toxic spaces).
I am just learning about blogging, but I do have a lengthy article I wrote a few years back for a local newspaper about my life with MCS. Would you like me to forward you a copy? You’re welcome to reprint it, if you think it would be of interest…? (I have been a journalist for many years, and still write stories when possible.)
Bless you for all the wonderful contributions you make!
Kirby
Dear Earthwalker,
Thanks for the welcome. I decided to reply here, so that anyone who wished to access my article would have the link…
If you go to My Life in the Black Hole by Kirby Fairfax, which was published in San Diego City Beat in 2003, it should come up; i just checked and it’s still there…
Blessings, and feel free to pass this on if you feel it would be of use/interest to anyone!
Hi Kirby, can you provide a link? I did a Google search but nothing came up. Thanks so much! Julie