During this period I became a mother and also physically disabled, with lasting mobility impairment. The CPTSD I had previously navigated within demanding social and professional structures became unavoidable. These changes unfolded together and reshaped my life at every level.

My body’s capacity altered abruptly. Movement became restricted. Sensory processing intensified. Tasks that had once sat in the background required full attention. Time reorganised. Energy became unreliable. What I could produce, how I could work, and how long things took all shifted.

At the time, these changes were poorly understood and often dismissed. The onset of immobility was treated as anomalous, difficult to explain, and frequently minimised. It would take years for trauma and autonomic dysfunction to be recognised as contributing factors. During that interval, uncertainty itself became a condition I had to work within.

This period also carried material consequences. My economic stability changed. A previously viable professional path slowed and fragmented. Access, independence and predictability were reduced. I had to relearn how to live, work and care under different conditions, while also caring for a new life.

Strata Shift was not a single event but a reorganisation of systems. Physical, emotional, perceptual and economic structures were altered together. The change was not temporary, and it did not resolve.

The work that follows does not treat this period as subject matter. It emerges from it. Methods shifted toward sensation, material behaviour, listening and duration because those were the conditions available. Attention replaced speed. Relation replaced mastery. Making became a way of staying in the world rather than advancing through it.