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This embroidery, ‘The chaos in my mind does not define me’ by LeAnn Baigent, depicts the maker’s own lived experience of how chronic mental illness presents in her mind. It is a rare, first-person material account of living with lifelong mental illness which also pays tribute to the role of embroidery in LeAnn’s healing journey.
LeAnn originally submitted the embroidery for Te Papa’s Asian Mental Health project zine, Unravelling Threads, which featured perspectives and personal accounts by contributors of diverse Asian heritages living in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the zine, LeAnn (who is of Malaysian Chinese heritage) explains to readers that the statement ‘The chaos in my mind does not define me’ refers to her years of struggle with identity after being diagnosed with chronic mental illness at a young age:
“For a long time, I questioned where things had gone wrong to have caused my illness. In the early days of being diagnosed, my parents did not know much if anything at all about mental illness. I guess it’s a generational thing and it wasn’t really something they came across in their upbringing in Malaysia. My parents refused to accept the diagnosis, believing that I was okay and just needed to heal my body with Chinese herbal medicine. Being Chinese in descent, showing respect to your parents was a value drilled into me from a young age. Even as an adult today, I find myself constantly seeking approval from my parents. When my parents did not believe I had mental illness, this created a lot of discord and chaos in my mind. Here I was being told by Western doctors that I had this life-long illness. On the other hand, I was being told by my parents that I do not have this illness, and my symptoms could be magically cured.
“A Chinese upbringing in a Western society had at times been extremely conflicting, and my recovery journey has been a real testament to that. After a lot of tears, heated arguments and deep and meaningful conversations, my parents and I have learnt to accept that my illness is something I will carry for life. This acceptance gave me a lot of inner peace and could in some ways draw similarities to the stages of grief (we could call it the stages of recovery). I learnt that my diagnosis does not define me or my identity. I am still the same old person, with the same values and aspirations. And as cliché as this may sound, recovery really is not a destination or a goal that can be achieved – it is a journey.
“I wanted to depict this conflict or “chaos” using embroidery as my medium. The images I chose do not have any special meaning or significance as such but depicts how my illness presents at times. At my most unwell, I lose touch of reality, and can become consumed in a flurry of chaotic thoughts. My family and I have learnt that when I am unwell, this is not my fault, and is not who I am. I hope to remind people to look beyond the illness. We are all human at the end of the day and the brain, like every other organ, is prone to disease. Everyone deserves to find peace in themselves and to feel accepted – warts and all.”