When I made this illustration I was dealing with severe period pain and it was also a super hot day. I do a smaller version of this in real life in my own sketchbooks but imaging this on a larger scale became the inspiration for making this small comic strip. Pain overwhelms everything I find and therefore finding a way to tame it somehow, to boundary it, feels so needed when it is at it’s worst. Pain killers are definitely part of that for me!

And yet there is also something else I find myself wanting and that is the sense of capturing what I’m experiencing emotionally and then expressing how that feels as well.

This time my pain came to life as a monster painted in deep red with claws, sharp teeth and an evil grin.

I felt I had defeated something for a short while at least.

Does anyone else do this? Or something similar? I’d be so interested to now how other people with persistent pain conditions (I have endometriosis) find ways to manage living with pain?

And whatever ways you cope I hope it brings you moments of peace and the distance from that pain to feel that you are and always will be more than that pain, despite how overwhelming it feels.

Bryony xxx