BASIC Studios

 

There are days when the world is loud in ways I can’t turn down. Trauma has a way of lingering in the background, uninvited, persistent, and exhausting. I am a survivor of assault, mental and emotional abuse, and I live with Schizoaffective disorder alongside Bipolar Type 1. But none of these things define me. What they do do, however, is shape the terrain I move through every day.

Writing became the place where I could exist without explanation. In writing, especially fantasy and science fiction, I didn’t have to justify my pain or sanitize it for others’ comfort. I could give it claws, crowns, gods, monsters; all language big enough to hold it. Myths don’t ask for tidiness. They ask for your creative truth.

What defines me is what I am: I am a mother, a student, and someone balancing chronic and mental illness alongside work and home life. While it seems like I don’t have the luxury to escape into my stories, I instead build them around me. Writing is not an escape from my responsibility. It’s how I stay grounded enough to carry it all.

 

There is a myth, older than memory, that speaks of Ariadne, abandoned on the shores of Naxos, her golden thread trailing behind her in the sand. She had saved the hero Theseus from the Minotaur, guided him through the Labyrinth, only to be left behind, alone, betrayed, and forgotten. 

But the myth doesn’t end there—it rarely does, though we’re often told it should. Ariadne is later found by Dionysus, god of wine, revelry, and madness, and in his arms, she doesn’t vanish. She transforms and becomes divine. 

This is not a story about gods, or monsters, or heroes.

This is a story about what comes after survival, the quiet, unglamorous labor of mending.

 

We Don’t Talk About the After

 

Surviving trauma is so often framed as the end of a journey: the climax of a novel, the last breath before the credits roll. But anyone who’s lived through it—assault, grief, systemic oppression, mental illness, chronic illness—knows that survival is not an ending. It’s a beginning made of pain and questions.

I know this because I’ve walked through it.

I am a survivor. I am a mother. I live with chronic illness, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type one, and anxiety. I juggle college, my illnesses, caretaking, and the ever-rattling drawer of memory where trauma waits to spill out.

Some days I feel like Sisyphus, pushing my boulder uphill. Some days, I feel like Cassandra, cursed to speak truths that go unheard and unbelieved.

But most days? Most days, I feel like Ariadne. Thread in hand, alone but still weaving.

 

The Myths We Are Given

 

We are raised on tidy endings, narratives that reward resilience with resolution. Abuse survivors are expected to either be broken or brilliant. Mentally ill people are either tragic or inspirational. Mothers are supposed to sacrifice. Students are supposed to hustle. We are not told how to live when we are all of these things at once.

We are not told how to survive without being a spectacle.

We are not taught how to rest without guilt.

We are not told how to exist without feeling the need to be fixed.

The gods of old were cruel, capricious, and beautiful. But even they knew that chaos gives birth to change, that suffering doesn’t have to be justified to be acknowledged.

So what if we softened our own mythologies?

What if we told stories where surviving was the point, not the path to perfection, but the end in itself?

 

Myths and Mischief: Reclaiming the Narrative

 

When I joined Myths and Mischief and became head of the blog, I did so not just to explore lore, but to unearth the emotional truths hidden in those ancient bones. Myth, to me, is not escapism. It’s recognition. It’s the whispered voice that says: “You are not alone. Others have walked through fire. Others have built lives from ruin.”

So, when I write, when I speak, it is not from a place of conclusion. It is from a place of continuity. I am still in the labyrinth. But I’ve learned to carry my own thread.

 

What Writing Gives Me 

 

Writing is not just a therapy. It is a mirror. And in my mirror, I allow myself to be whole; not polished, not perfect, but complete. Writing gives me space where the chaos makes sense. Where the many selves I carry—mother, survivor, writer, student, neurodivergent stormwalker—are not contradictions, but chords in harmony.

When my mind spirals, I write. When the voices whisper doubt, I write. When I am angry that I survived in a world that loves to forget survivors, I write.

And slowly, a tapestry emerges. It is not always pretty, but it is mine.

Balancing my life as a mother and creator, student and dreamer, is not a matter of scheduling. It is a matter of grace and permission and knowing that sometimes the greatest rebellion is simply to rest without apology.

 

What I Need You to Know

 

You do not need to be fully healed to matter.

You do not need to be inspirational to be worthy of love.

You do not need to be “over it” to be allowed to speak.

If you are reading this and you are tired, grieving, still shaking from the memories no one else sees, you are not broken. You are becoming. Let the gods rage. Let the myths unravel. Let the monsters have teeth.

And let yourself live anyway.

Ariadne’s thread is not just a lifeline. It is a legacy. It says: “I was here. I mattered. I made it through.”

So here is my thread, spun from trauma and triumph, motherhood and madness, stories and scars. If you’re holding your own thread and it’s tangled, or frayed, or soaked with tears, hold on.

You are not lost.

You’re just in the middle of your own myth.