The Living Labyrinth: A Chronic Illness Peer Group
This is an invitation open to all who live and have lived with chronic illness of any kind—recently diagnosed, long-lived, or unrecognized by medicine.
This space is for you if you have felt the impacts of illness and you want to talk with others about sickness as a lived experience and a way of life.
The second Sunday of each month, we will convene to speak and listen to each other. I will provide a loose frame. Like everything I do, this is an experiment; the structure will evolve as the months go by.
The Living Labyrinth refers to the journey that each body takes through life. A labyrinth has only one path, and it leads to its center. As long as you keep walking, you cannot get truly lost in a labyrinth. The winding twists and turns give the impression of loss and confusion, but operate with an internal logic known only to the labyrinth itself.
A labyrinth offers a promise: a single, unbroken thread to follow. It is not a riddle of forking paths, but a unicursal journey that, despite its many turns, will not let you stray. Its purpose is not to confuse, but to hold you as you walk. As both entrance and exit, its gate opens onto a pilgrimage—a long, certain passage into the heart of a mystery and back out again.
And yet, illness gives the labyrinthine body a sense of treacherousness, of unease. Where am I to place my next step?
🌱 Purpose
This peer group is for people living with chronic illness or autoimmune conditions, including:
Those who’ve been sick for a long time
Those who are newly affected, with or without a diagnosis
This group is founded on the understanding that chronic illness is a deeply personal, philosophical, metaphysical, and cultural phenomenon, not merely a medical condition. It is a space to explore sickness as a maze from which there may be no exit, and healing as an ongoing, non-linear process without a final cure.
We challenge the conventional ideas of "health" and instead focus on the wondrous possibilities that can be found within a sick existence. We see the body not as a machine to be fixed, but as a magical labyrinth or a mycelial web, emphasizing limitless interconnectivity and community support.
Ethos:
Rooted in lived experience and the idea of illness as a way of life.
Not about “fixing” or “curing,” but exploring healing as an ongoing practice.
Focus on acceptance, growth, presence, and connection.
A space for inquiry, devoted to posing questions and being oneself, rather than providing answers for others.
Inscribe questions together, rather than allege answers.
A sick body is a magical labyrinth, full of shifting corridors, ever reorienting. To move through the world I rely on this labyrinth. I trust that it will guide me where I need to go. I am not the architect, only a passenger. If I am at a loss, I am only learning to navigate the tides of being.
Sickness is not to be lived as something to be cured, escaped, or climbed out of, nor as a maze from which there is no exit, no future. Healing is a labyrinth; it is the snake eating its tail. It is a unicursal route that winds inward without false turns or choices. Treating such complexity with words, or attempting to cure pathology according to numbers on a chart, is too abstract.
The labyrinth keeps growing. The deeper we go, the more is revealed.
🗓️ Proposed Monthly Themes (2025)
Based on the core concepts of this group, the following themes are proposed for our monthly meetings:
July 13: The Body as a Labyrinth
Exploring the metaphor of a sick body as a shifting labyrinth. How do we navigate this internal landscape?
August 10: Healing as a Non-Linear Process
Discussing healing as an ongoing practice and process without end, rejecting the idea of a cure or returning to a past state of health.
September 14: Interconnectedness & Community
Focusing on the role of community support and mutual aid, and the idea that no growth occurs without autonomous interdependence.
October 12: Questioning Medical Narratives
Challenging the fiction of health and mainstream medical paradigms that view the body as a machine or battleground.
November 9: Dreams & The Inner World
Valuing the inherent 'truth' of inner life and exploring what our dreams and intuition teach us about our bodies and experiences.
December 14: Love, Devotion, and Finding Possibility
Reflecting on love as a healing force and how we find wondrous possibility and meaning within a sick existence.
💌 An Invitation to the Circle
If these ideas resonate with you, and you seek a space for connection and shared listening, I invite you to join us. This is a space to be with the complexities of illness, without the pressure to perform or find solutions.
Please, feel free to share this link with anyone you may know who may be interested.
To ensure a safe and intimate container for all participants, signing up is required. Once you register, you will receive the Google Meet link and an email before our monthly gathering.
We look forward to welcoming you into the conversation.
An Invitation to the Circle
If these ideas resonate with you, and you seek a space for connection and shared listening, I invite you to join us. This is a space to be with the complexities of illness, without the pressure to perform or find solutions.
Please, feel free to share this link with anyone you may know who may be interested:
https://lauremarin.substack.com/p/the-living-labyrinth
To ensure a safe and intimate container for all participants, signing up is required. Once you register, you will receive the Google Meet link and an email before our monthly gathering.
We look forward to welcoming you into the conversation.