Sadie McCarney's raw, galvanizing virtual presentations about mental health and identity will leave your audience floored by all their "aha" moments. They might even -*gasp* -

start laughing!

Call me crazy, but doesn't it seem like so much content about mental health is pushing the same tired trio of narratives? 
It's either a) something you push through heroically, b) something you never discuss at all, or c) a Very Serious, Tragic Matter that Should Never Be Joked About.

Let me be quite clear: I'm going to talk about it, and I haven't pushed through anything. I'll always be rolling the boulder of my mental illnesses up the damn mountain. 

And honestly? I've been through enough of my own nonsense (I once believed Google had hired me to lead a global Creative Revolution!) that I think you and I have earned the right to laugh about it. Hard. With beverages coming out of our noses!

So that's what I do: I create short (under 2 hours), impactful performances and talks that leverage my experiences to transform conversations about mental health, neurodivergence, and identity. Some of this work centres around my mental health-themed poetry collection Your Therapist Says It's Magical Thinking, or my award-winning performance text made from parts of my mental health records, Head War. Other performances are just me. (And the ghosts who followed me here this morning.)

I once spoke for a group of my psychiatrist's grad students, which was 12 flavours of awkward. They gave me a potted plant, which promptly died.

I've since spoken to various groups and classes, and taught a poetry workshop for Toronto-based mental health arts organization Workman Arts. I've performed Head War for the Island Fringe Festival, and a spoken word piece about queer coming-of-age, "The Summer of Becoming", for Island Fringe's 2020 Pounding the Pavement event. (There's video evidence of that below.)

Maybe I'll speak for you, too!

I'm a Charlottetown, PEI-based writer/performer living with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Bipolar I with Psychotic Features, and Autism Spectrum Disorder. It's like we're roommates at a poorly conceived summer camp. I'm also a one-woman Pep Squad for other writers (this includes teaching writing courses) and the author of 2 books and many pieces of loose poetry and prose. You can find me elsewhere at http://sadiemccarney.com .

As an autistic 6-year-old in a tragic gold skirt, as a young adult in hospital garb with a head full of blossoming delusions - I've done a lot of it so that those of you who haven't, don't have to. 
For those of you who have done it: let's swap stories!

Getting good speakers is time-consuming and costly. Usually, on top of the fee to finally get someone in to talk, your school or organization also has to foot the bill for hotels and airfare to your illustrious shindig. 

Not so with Sadie McCarney. 

I bring my party to you - you just provide the guest list and pay the speaker's fee. I'll even throw in the voice in my head for free!

But seriously. Don't you and your colleagues/ students/ friends/ pack of trained marmosets deserve a better way to talk about mental health and neurodivergence? I think you owe it to yourself, too. Not to mention that weird, wonderful brain of yours.

So what are you waiting for? Let's boogie!