I am 44 years old, live in Berlin, Germany, and work in film productions. Expressing myself through art is something my autoimmune disease taught me and it is a great way of healing. That’s the reason I took part in Expression Days and I hope a lot of people take part and will understand the feelings of autoimmune patients better, by looking at the artwork.

I suffer from Hashimoto, a chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis and this is an autoimmune disease in which the thyroid gland is gradually destroyed. You can’t see my struggles with this disease from the outside. I look like a normal, healthy middle-aged woman. My piece, YOU CAN’T SEE ME is something my Hashimoto says every day, when people tell me that I look “normal”. The pupil symbolises myself, floating in my own life, detached in a sea full of divine yellow energy. I am well, when Hashimoto lets me.

The pupil is actually a picture of my own pupil – red in the middle, like the strong will I have to live a normal life. I am framed by dark clouds from above which are letting stars rain on me, since on good days I am able to see the value of the disease and the lessons this disease taught me. These lessons are that I need to love myself to feel good and overcome the struggles of feeling weak and depressed, which I feel for no obvious reason. I need to listen to my body and give myself lots of me time to recharge and recover.

At the bottom of the piece, the frame is filled with darkness. This is to show that when I am not careful, I crash into a sea of depression and self-destruction and YOU CAN’T SEE ME, since I am not available. To avoid drowning, I have to find a light in the darkness and a straw to climb up again into the light.