In advance of her new graphic novel ‘Meat Eaters’ arriving in stores, the creator shares a personal essay about her health struggles and how they relate to her protagonist’s journey.
Today we welcome Hinges creator and Black Cloak artist Meredith McClaren to the blog, where she shares her deeply personal reflections on health, identity and transformation.
These themes also appear in Meat Eaters, her new graphic novel from Oni Press that arrives in stores July 7. It follows Ashley, a young woman looking to escape her stagnant small town life, but whose carefully laid plans are shattered when she wakes up one night covered in blood—and discovers she’s dead. As Ashley grapples with this shocking transformation and the changes happening within her, McClaren weaves a powerful story that resonates with her own experiences of unexpected life upheavals.
My thanks to the author for sharing this with us. It’s a wonderfully written essay with illustrations in the same style that I see on her Tumblr, which I recommend you follow if the essay resonates with you. You can also check out her travelogue on visiting Greece.
FUN TIMES
By Meredith McClaren
Author and Illustrator of MEAT EATERS
Your body will betray you.
(That’s a bummer of a starter sentence. Sorry. But stay with me, I have a point.)
Your body will betray you. It’s a universal human experience. I’m sorry. There’s no getting away from it. Some of us get there faster than others but we all eventually find ourselves in the unenviable position of feeling truly, utterly, devastatingly betrayed by our bodies.
For me it started with a tickle at the back of my throat that never went away.
I tried describing it to people. ‘You know how it feels when you suck in a big breath of cold air?’ It’s the way your throat feels tight. Constricted.
‘Sounds like asthma.’ One of my friends said.
But I wasn’t coughing. Yet. It was just a tickle. And it was always there.
The coughing came later. Over months. Over a year. Just one or two. A day. Everyday. Then it was a couple of times a day. Every time I woke up. Every time I went to bed. Sometimes an extra one somewhere in the middle.
It wasn’t until a friend’s wedding that I really reconciled that there was a problem. And I couldn’t really ignore it anymore.
‘You cough a lot.’ My Dad said.
‘I know.’ I said.
Destination wedding in Flagstaff. A higher elevation. I was coughing. And I knew it wasn’t just the thinner air.
Continue reading “Guest Column | Meredith McClaren on ‘Meat Eaters,’ health, identity and transformation”
