To Exist Is To Flare: Labor-Less – A Virtual Sick Bay for Radical Rest
Hosted by Ella deCastro Baron & Anya Pearson
🗓️ September 7, 2025 | 1–4 PM PST / 4–7 PM EST
📍 Live on Zoom
💰 Sliding Scale: $50 – $100
🎟️ Register Now
In a world that demands constant output, "To Exist Is To Flare: Labor-Less" offers a radical pause—a space to reimagine what love, rest, and embodiment look like for those living with chronic illness of body or mind. Co-facilitated by authors, storytellers, and activist-creatives Ella deCastro Baron and Anya Pearson, this 3-hour virtual gathering is a sacred sick bay for the weary, the wondrous, the flaring, and the in-between.
🧡 What This Workshop Is (And Isn’t)
This is not a wellness bootcamp. This is not a seminar on how to "fix" yourself.
This is a tender, unhurried, co-created space for chronically ill folks to gather in their entirety and complexity — to shed performance, to show up soft and sick and sovereign, to be witnessed and held without needing to be "better."
It’s a reclamation of rest, rage, ritual, and redefinition.
🌿 Why You’ll Want to Join
Western narratives frame illness as something to conquer. But those of us living with chronic illness know better. We live between flare-ups and false hope, judgment and gaslighting, disconnection and deep truth.
Fall—the season of shedding and stillness—is our metaphor, our medicine.
In this space, we will:
🌬️ Decolonize the urgency of healing
💌 Practice sick-informed “love languages” (laughter, silence, tears, touch)
✨ Honor our stories of sickness and resilience
🌒 Gather in liminality, not resolution
🔥 Explore what it means to “labor less” and love more
You don’t need to be well to be worthy. This gathering is a permission slip to exist—flaring, hurting, healing, whole.
✍️ What We’ll Do Together
This 3-hour virtual experience is grounded in story, slowness, and sensory practices. We’ll explore:
Somatic Portals – gentle prompts to reconnect with the body, even in pain
Radical Love Languages – practices of support beyond toxic positivity
Group Storytelling – space to voice and listen without fixing or performing
Rest Rituals – guided moments to release, reflect, and just be
You are welcome to lay down, turn off your camera, show up from bed — come exactly as you are. This is your body’s house, and you don’t need to clean it up to let us in.
💸 Sliding Scale Pricing (JEDI Model)
PriceFor You If…$100You have access to food, housing, and savings. Pay it forward for someone with fewer resources.$75You live with some financial strain but can meet basic needs.$50You are under/unemployed or carry major financial stress.
✨ Need further accessibility support? Contact us to discuss payment plans or exchanges.
👯♀️ About the Facilitators
Ella deCastro Baron
An author, educator, and community weaver, Ella is known for exploring the intersections of chronic illness, faith, Filipino heritage, and motherhood through creative nonfiction and embodied storytelling. Her work centers love as resistance.
Anya Pearson
An award-winning playwright, poet, and activist, Anya is a spoonie, survivor, and fierce voice for the unseen. Her art interrogates systems, uplifts lived truth, and inspires collective transformation.
Together, Ella and Anya create a space of gentle rebellion and collective reverence.
🌒 Conclusion: You Were Never Meant to Heal Alone
To Exist Is To Flare: Labor-Less is a sacred pause — a soft resistance against the lie that we must constantly strive to be whole. It’s a radical act of loving ourselves as we are, in the bodies and minds we live in today.
Come shed capitalism’s grip. Come explore softness in flare. Come rest.
We’ll hold the space for you.
💬 FAQs – To Exist Is To Flare: Labor-Less
1. Do I have to have a chronic illness to attend?
This space is lovingly reserved for those who live with chronic physical or mental illness. Please honor this boundary with care.
2. What if I can’t attend the full 3 hours?
That’s okay. Come and go as you’re able. There is no pressure to “perform presence.” Rest and rejoin as needed.
3. Will this be recorded?
No, to preserve intimacy and confidentiality. This is a live-only experience.
4. Do I need to prepare anything?
Nope. Bring your body, your breath, your pain, your power. We’ll meet you there.
5. Is there a specific religion or belief system tied to the event?
No. All are welcome. The space centers love, justice, and collective care, not any particular doctrine.
