Brianne Benness

@bennessb.bsky.social

3054 Followers 111 Following

currently: sick / haunted in Western Mass, host of No End In Sight - a podcast about life with chronic illness, creator of #NEISVoid | previously: Stories We Don’t Tell in Toronto | she / her

a stack of business cards that say “Thank you for wearing a mask! Want to be friends?” with a graphic of two anthropomorphized smiling respirators high fiving each other.
collage of three photos: a white spitz wearing a blue camo dog like jacket, a black poodle wearing a green tropical print dog life jacket, and a photo of both dogs from behind showing the full vests.
photo of a sleepy looking black poodle lying flat along the back of a grey couch.
‘You know, there’s a Syrian myth of going into the Underworld, and when you emerge, you come out with what they call “death eyes” — eyes turned inward. I had been given “death eyes.” I had been changed. I had a deeper sense of suffering but I also felt a deeper sense of joy. Hard to explain, but I remember someone saying to me, “Terry, you’re married to sorrow.” And I said, “No, I’m not married to sorrow, I just refuse to look away.” You stay with it — we are stronger than we know. But it isn’t easy. And you don’t have any assurance that you’re going to find your way out.’
photo of a fluffy white dog lying on a pillow with his tongue out and his ears tucked back.
screenshot of a reply that reads “Wearables are totally unnecessary. I'm disabled and manage my pacing and needs just fine. It's called listening to your body and adjusting accordingly.”
photo of a handwoven brown dogbane basket with a black chevron pattern and a buckskin rim.
Lockdown and a legacy of trauma “Many of us, especially healthcare workers, experienced trauma during the early pandemic,” explains Kindschy, who worked as a trauma therapist before she was disabled by long COVID. It is understandable, she says, that people have negative associations with COVID and would prefer to forget about masking. Still, she says, it is hard to hear people use trauma to justify not masking — a simple action that could protect her and people like her from risk of further disability — and that, moreover, if adopted by more people, would make it possible for her to be included in public life. “Trauma is not a life-sentence; you can get treatment for it. It should not be used as an excuse to marginalize disabled and vulnerable people.” She continues, “I’m begging for people to care about my life, and it’s just mind-boggling to me that they don’t.”
screenshot of a facebook post from Tia Kelsey in a group called Cross Stitch, Embroidery and Crafters on the Tedooo app. the post includes a photo of a bald white man sitting beside a berry large cross stitched representation of his face in blue yarn on white peg board, and a caption that reads “This is my husband next to the 8' portrait that I cross stitched for his birthday.” The post has 1.7k likes.
photo of a pale hand holding a partially woven basket with a black stripe along the bottom and a few additional black stitches above woven between the natural brown dogbane.
photo of a flat woven dogbane disk with twined basswood warps sticking out the edges in every direction
“Culinary herbs like sage are deeply embedded in culture and cultural memory (and rosemary and lavender and thyme), having accompanied us through the ages in our most comforting foods and recipes. Using them is a direct portal to ancestral experience and medicine. We are all possibly entering an intense few weeks as we approach the presidential election. Sage can be an ally for us as we live through what can feel like unprecedented or even unlivable times, reminding us how much our ancestors lived through before us and how much beauty and safety we can find in small moments of care for ourselves and each other.”
photo of a batch of freshly baked green-tinted shortbread spread out on parchment paper with one cookie missing.
graphic promoting a Post-Election Embodiment Practice on Nov 6 at noon ET and 9am PT, hosted by Óscar and Prentis at The Embodiment Institute. the graphic includes smiling photos of both hosts over a purple space-like background.
photo of two dogs in the corner of a room with a single green croc. a black poodle puppy lies casually beside the croc in her bed, while an alert white spitz lurks in the background, partially obscured by a cabinet.
promotional graphic for a virtual event called Creative Nonfiction in Conversation with Eula Biss and Saeed Jones hosted by Harvard Medical School’s Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health. the graphic features headshots of both writers (Saeed is a thoughtful-looking Black man, Eula is a smiling white woman) and indicates the event is on October 15, 2024 from 4pm ET to 5:30pm ET.
screenshot from a fitness tracking app that says: “Activity detected Maybe: Horseback riding 12:13PM, 12 minutes, 72 calories” followed by a button to confirm the activity.
graphic of a circle broken into five sections that each point to the next section to create a recurring cycle. The sections are labeled: Symptoms, Food / Body Mistrust (Fear), Conditioned Food Avoidance, Food becomes a Danger Cue, Conditioned Food Sensitivity (hypervigilant nervous system reacts to food). Credit to Wendy Busse Consulting Ltd (2024)
photo of a white spitz and a black poodle looking out a window together.
photo of a fluffy white spitz curled up on a gray couch surrounded by pillows.
“in the last year especially, I’ve been so grateful for my time and community in Toronto. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was learning how to discern between generative conflict and abusive conflict. which is to say, I was learning to discern between thorny disagreements in which two people are genuinely trying to understand the other’s perspectives across all of the enormous barriers that history & oppression have put in our way AND thorny disagreements in which one person is trying to keep the other engaged in disagreement for as long as it takes for that other person to get so exhausted trying to break through such an enormous barrier that they give up and give in. in one instance, two people are attempting to tunnel towards each other without a map; in the other instance, one person is lounging in the sun waiting for the other person to get buried alive in the tunnel they are trying to build alone.”
photo of a fluffy white spitz with perked ears sitting on a rainbow rug in front of a blurry window.