“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.”

― Robert Fulghum

I’ve loved this quote for many years, and an argument could be made that my “someone” is my art.

Over the past three years, I’ve been working through a new medium—collage. Smirk all you want. It does sound like something 14-year-old me would enjoy: sifting through Tiger Beat and Teen People, finding the best photos of Usher and JTT and plastering them together for my latest bedroom installation.

But 39-year-old me has found a peaceful challenge in creating something new out of vintage pieces of paper. And it’s weird, and it’s satisfying, and I love it.

Collage has also become my way of expressing how I feel about living with MS. Some of my pieces are bright, layered with gratitude and joy. They reflect the unexpected gifts of my diagnosis: a new lease on life, a sharper sense of the present moment, and a deeper appreciation for the splendor pasted into everyday life.

Other pieces carry my anger and resentment. The dark and heavy imagery lets me express the frustration of living with MS and the complicated emotions that come with it.

When it comes down to it, collage is a place where both realities exist side by side: joy and grief, gratitude and rage, calm and chaos. Just like life with MS, it’s rarely neat or predictable. But when I step back, I often find that the pieces come together into something honest, beautiful, and really, really weird.

I share this in hopes that you find your own version of collage—and maybe you already have. Embrace your weird, in people, in activities, in everyday life every chance you get. It’s in that weird that we find love and start to embrace our truest selves. What a gift to be able to be open to such things even when living with something that can feel so very unfair.