I entertain a love-hate relationship with bios.

On the one hand, they are a great exercise to map out where we are in our professional and personal lives, a plastic and public display of our identities.

On the other, they open up too many possibilities about how we determine and present ourselves to the world. And that, my friends, can be absolutely crippling.

The first time I had to write my bio was for a mockup roundtable in grad school. It was meant to prepare us for the “real life” of Academia. There were PowerPoints and a somewhat decent audience made of professors and students from other seminars who had been dragged there under the promise of a better grade.

Academia claims it thrives on substance but let’s get real, what they want is degrees, and degrees are what you’ll give them.

Ariane Audet, Ph.D., M.A. and proud member of stay-home club,

Writer, independent scholar and multidisciplinary artist.

Author of four books and many articles published in various journals and international newspapers and magazines [insert only the catchy titles and forget about that obscure Zine that gave you your first shot at publishing].

If you feel like it, end with a witty sentence highlighting how life outside the library is pointless. And, by God, do not mention your social life or family.

Kids suck.

Professional bios, especially in tech, are somewhat even more foreign to me. You have this thing called “Executive Summary,” which makes you feel like a boss bitch and an imposter all at once. Lay thick and fat, and make sure you can sell – doesn’t matter what you sell. Just sell it

Cohesively connects a practice as an interdisciplinary artist to strong proficiencies in business development and nonprofit management. [It’s got to be useful. You ain’t in Academia anymore.]

Thrived on project deadlines while collaborating with artists, graphic designers, marketing strategists and creative directors to successfully bring life to campaigns and projects – from early shaping, teaming, and forward-thinking storytelling. [Forget about sleep or mental health. IT’S ABOUT THE HUSTLE, BABY!]

*Founded a nonprofit organization and successful online documentary project reaching thousands monthly [never forget your followers. ‘ever.]. Advocate in the perinatal and reproductive rights world through Faces of Postpartum [<3] and as a consultant with NGOs such as [add everyone with a big name; doesn’t matter if your “consult” was a five-minute phone call. #BossLady].*

The thing is, I did all these things. I’m proud of (most of) them. I worked hard and was given great opportunities, allowing me to pay the bills most months.

Until I immigrated from Canada to the US back in 2016 (a great year to arrive in the Land of the Free) – and then proceeded to bring two lives onto this earth – I honored my part of the deal: I got shit done, shared my knowledge, got paid, and enjoyed my summers “off.”

Because the US has no parental leave and the life of a scholar here is somewhat chaotic, I did what I said I would never do and focused on my “writing” while I raised my two children. Used to expanding bios, I couldn’t bare the thought of stagnation – and what is a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) if not exactly that?

God, was I wrong.

Raising children full-time this is the hardest fucking job on the planet, not to mention the mental load, the sacrificial narrative surrounding motherhood, the unbearable love – oh, the love.

And yet, it couldn’t possibly be enough, so I always kept some unfinished project on the back burner. I also founded a nonprofit that focused on telling other people’s postpartum stories, stories all so painfully and miraculously similar, and yet profoundly unique.

After my children, this project is the best thing I have ever birthed.

For five years, the pride coexisted with the emptiness. I was free to write and publish anything I wanted, however and whenever I wanted. No agent, publisher, or supervisor. I was editing other people’s voices, but I was free.

I didn’t really think about bios and my professional identities until I entered Web3 in February 2022. My husband was spending his evenings on Discord, and I’d develop PTSD from the notification sound – don’t lie, you get it too.

At the time, my professional, artistic and academic careers were at a full stop, and there was no need, aside from therapy, to map out the outline of my life. I had indeed started an advocacy and storytelling business, but my energy was running so low that I had sneakily disappeared until nothing was left – people don’t talk enough about how easy it is, to disappear.

As for a tidy personal identity, it was long gone under the pile of laundry, postpartum depression, dark humor and my numbing meds.

Still, there were bouts of joy and remnants of longing for a somewhat creative life.

There came NFTs.

This newfound community offered something to me I had never dreamed of: hope. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Suddenly: WAGMI, artists making thousands, women supporting women, speeches of inclusivity and endless support.

I founded the Web3 equivalent of my current nonprofit and dreamed of a UBI funded entirely in ETH for new families. Never mind if the government wasn’t doing its job: we would revolutionalize parental leave. I started a second podcast that focused on caring creatives and met some of the most amazing humans worldwide.

Anything felt possible, and I bought it.

I knew it couldn’t last forever – or at least, not under this form – and that reality would sink in, but I wanted to believe that a better, more ethical world was something we could build together. Bros out and all. And the lure of money. The good ol’ gold rush money. What a treat for my sullen heart.

After a month of connecting, reaching out, and actually getting responses from cold DMs (!!) I wanted more, so I dusted my resumé and went to work. Within three weeks, I applied for an incubator and landed a (close enough to) six-figure job. I was invited to events with people whose names made my jaw drop. Organized parties and saw checks with so many zeros it seemed obscene. I was speaking a whole new language; cordial yet direct, confident bordering arrogance, VCs, founders, 2 am meetings and all.

Like glamour red-eyes in my p-jays.

But I knew something wasn’t right – too white, shallow, and bright. Plus, I had this icky feeling at the bottom of my stomach that something really, really wrong was about to happen to my psyche.

An alligator Paris Hilton’s pool.

My flashbacks began in February, a month before everything took off – and three before it went down.

I remember, as a teen, asking my parents if something had happened to me: I couldn’t naturally be that afraid and anxious. But the answer was always “no.” I was simply a dramatic child.

And then I remembered. I saw before my eyes my grandmother’s husband using my toddler’s little body for his playground. Remembered the quiet afternoons my face pressed against a Star Wars blanket, waiting for him to finish and the years following that first time. My first time. I was 3.

My body knew, of course, but not my mind. My beautiful, beautiful mind. For 32 years, I dissociated, outperformed, felt endangered (and in danger) and battled anxiety and depression with discipline and, eventually, when I was about to snap, lots and lots of meds.

I remembered other kinds of assaults, of course, ones that came later in life. I’m a woman, after all, part of the 1 in 9-club, one of the 82% of females who will experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult.

A whole pack of bruised souls. Alone together.

For a month and a half after the initial flashbacks, I peeled the layers of pain and horrors one after the other with my therapists and found a way to keep my composure and deliver at work.

I was not going to let this ruin my life once again.

I told myself that the pressure at work would allow me to keep everything at bay until my next session. I thought I could contain the trauma, that it wouldn’t get to me, hit me in the face with an ax, causing me to see myself hanging in my daughters’ bedroom, my feet peacefully dangling above their mist grey Nugget™.

Who are we if not the sum of accumulated pain? Is suffering truly what makes us resilient? Or is resilience given to us at birth, like birthmarks or the color of our eyes?

I don’t think I was born resilient. I know others who have suffered much more and are doing “better” in life. Humans don’t share equal parts of happiness. Some believe that we choose our traumas the way we choose our parents; all is One.

I have a hard time believing that I would have chosen these experiences for myself and those around me who love and support me. But again, I’m having a hard time at everything right now.

On Wednesday, May 25, I quit my job in Web3 and completely stopped creating.

On June 3rd, I went to the ER because the intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideations were so potent I feared my brain would snap in half. But I was met with contempt and aggression instead of care and kindness. The staff’s behavior was so grave that it caused me to snap out of it. Out of survival, I left the ER after being threatened, yelled at and ridiculed. One panicked nurse tried to get me to stay, but my body had already stiffened back into its rational and coherent self.

When the twenty-something cops knocked at my house an hour later to “make sure I was safe,” after the hospital had called them on me, I offered them drinks and apologized for the mess in my house.

To my great surprise, they were skilled and comprehensive. This was the Upside Down.

We chatted for a minute, and I walked them to their car, cracking jokes. To my children's delight, they offered to turn on their flashing lights. I walked back to the house hand in hand with my husband while my children played in the front yard, their blond hair shimmering under the golden sunset.

Picture perfect.

Younger, I was led to believe that comfort equaled weakness. Our culture emphasizes a hustle mentality in which grinding and multitasking are the ultimate gifts. “Mental health” is as much a buzzword as “inclusivity”: popular yet empty.

Our workforce – Academia and Web3 included –  is no exception, mainly because it was built by and for white men and thrives under its whiteness (all gender combined). Nursing trauma and caring for oneself leave little to no space to be creative and build. Some can and some do, but at what costs?

When I started this piece, I mapped out the multiple identities – bios – that have defined me over the course of two decades. I also wrestled with the idea of writing such a long essay: Twitter got me longing for concision and brevity – does it fit in a thread? – but I’m neither brief nor concise.

My mind, life and body are expansive. They have been broken and welded back a million times. Now more than ever, no biographical exercise can sum up these experiences perfectly.

To be perfectly honest, I was ready just to give it all up until I read “An Interview with pioneer Vera Molnar” last week.

Vera is a pioneer of generative art. As one of the earliest artists to experiment with an electronic computer, she also created her first NFT at the age of 98. She’s not to be messed with.

Yet, at the beginning of her interview with Zsofi Valyi-Nagy, she admits having no idea about the meaning of the English word “generative” or for which publication she’s being interviewed.

“What does it mean?” she asks. “I don’t know it.”

Her stern admission of ignorance was beautifully empowering. Indeed, who gives a damn about what we know or don’t? about what we’ve achieved – or is yet to come? Especially when we near 100 years old.

She adds, “Ever since my childhood — okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but for a really long time — I’ve had this idea in my head: ‘Je ne trouve peut-être pas, mais je cherche’ (‘I may not find, but I seek’).”

“Je ne trouve peut-être pas, mais je cherche.”

It is obvious now that the promise of an et si (“what if”) would come from within my mother tongue.

This is all a test.

Life, Trauma, parenting, creating or building Web3: an experiment. There is no pretty bow to wrap it all up or bios that sum it up perfectly. All we can hope for is to have the space and the abilities to seek and ask difficult questions: “‘What am I looking for?’ and in the second step, ‘How do I bring that into the world?’”

And the truth is, I have always wanted to be a writer.

But instead of writing, I became a student in literature, then a professor, and a scholar. I wrote quiet books that I never truly shared with anyone. When I had to give that up, I became a mother, an American, a photographer, a founder, an activist, and a communication and marketing lead.

But I am a writer; that’s who I have always been.

Words are how I (re)birth myself, make sense of the world and connect with others. Of course, I am also the photographs, AI experiments, philosophy, social media, institutions, and activism. But in the words of the great Vera, “In life, you can’t do everything. You always have to choose.”

Writing words on a piece of paper “in some sort of order” is where I’ll always start.

That ought to be enough to get me going today.

Make the process visible, I say. No one cares if the wires protrude.

subscribe://

I entertain a love-hate relationship with bios.

On the one hand, they are a great exercise to map out where we are in our professional and personal lives, a plastic and public display of our identities.

On the other, they open up too many possibilities about how we determine and present ourselves to the world. And that, my friends, can be absolutely crippling.

The first time I had to write my bio was for a mockup roundtable in grad school. It was meant to prepare us for the “real life” of Academia. There were PowerPoints and a somewhat decent audience made of professors and students from other seminars who had been dragged there under the promise of a better grade.

Academia claims it thrives on substance but let’s get real, what they want is degrees, and degrees are what you’ll give them.

Ariane Audet, Ph.D., M.A. and proud member of stay-home club,

Writer, independent scholar and multidisciplinary artist.

Author of four books and many articles published in various journals and international newspapers and magazines [insert only the catchy titles and forget about that obscure Zine that gave you your first shot at publishing].

If you feel like it, end with a witty sentence highlighting how life outside the library is pointless. And, by God, do not mention your social life or family.

Kids suck.

Professional bios, especially in tech, are somewhat even more foreign to me. You have this thing called “Executive Summary,” which makes you feel like a boss bitch and an imposter all at once. Lay thick and fat, and make sure you can sell – doesn’t matter what you sell. Just sell it

Cohesively connects a practice as an interdisciplinary artist to strong proficiencies in business development and nonprofit management. [It’s got to be useful. You ain’t in Academia anymore.]

Thrived on project deadlines while collaborating with artists, graphic designers, marketing strategists and creative directors to successfully bring life to campaigns and projects – from early shaping, teaming, and forward-thinking storytelling. [Forget about sleep or mental health. IT’S ABOUT THE HUSTLE, BABY!]

*Founded a nonprofit organization and successful online documentary project reaching thousands monthly [never forget your followers. ‘ever.]. Advocate in the perinatal and reproductive rights world through Faces of Postpartum [<3] and as a consultant with NGOs such as [add everyone with a big name; doesn’t matter if your “consult” was a five-minute phone call. #BossLady].*

The thing is, I did all these things. I’m proud of (most of) them. I worked hard and was given great opportunities, allowing me to pay the bills most months.

Until I immigrated from Canada to the US back in 2016 (a great year to arrive in the Land of the Free) – and then proceeded to bring two lives onto this earth – I honored my part of the deal: I got shit done, shared my knowledge, got paid, and enjoyed my summers “off.”

Because the US has no parental leave and the life of a scholar here is somewhat chaotic, I did what I said I would never do and focused on my “writing” while I raised my two children. Used to expanding bios, I couldn’t bare the thought of stagnation – and what is a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) if not exactly that?

God, was I wrong.

Raising children full-time this is the hardest fucking job on the planet, not to mention the mental load, the sacrificial narrative surrounding motherhood, the unbearable love – oh, the love.

And yet, it couldn’t possibly be enough, so I always kept some unfinished project on the back burner. I also founded a nonprofit that focused on telling other people’s postpartum stories, stories all so painfully and miraculously similar, and yet profoundly unique.

After my children, this project is the best thing I have ever birthed.

For five years, the pride coexisted with the emptiness. I was free to write and publish anything I wanted, however and whenever I wanted. No agent, publisher, or supervisor. I was editing other people’s voices, but I was free.

I didn’t really think about bios and my professional identities until I entered Web3 in February 2022. My husband was spending his evenings on Discord, and I’d develop PTSD from the notification sound – don’t lie, you get it too.

At the time, my professional, artistic and academic careers were at a full stop, and there was no need, aside from therapy, to map out the outline of my life. I had indeed started an advocacy and storytelling business, but my energy was running so low that I had sneakily disappeared until nothing was left – people don’t talk enough about how easy it is, to disappear.

As for a tidy personal identity, it was long gone under the pile of laundry, postpartum depression, dark humor and my numbing meds.

Still, there were bouts of joy and remnants of longing for a somewhat creative life.

There came NFTs.

This newfound community offered something to me I had never dreamed of: hope. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Suddenly: WAGMI, artists making thousands, women supporting women, speeches of inclusivity and endless support.

I founded the Web3 equivalent of my current nonprofit and dreamed of a UBI funded entirely in ETH for new families. Never mind if the government wasn’t doing its job: we would revolutionalize parental leave. I started a second podcast that focused on caring creatives and met some of the most amazing humans worldwide.

Anything felt possible, and I bought it.

I knew it couldn’t last forever – or at least, not under this form – and that reality would sink in, but I wanted to believe that a better, more ethical world was something we could build together. Bros out and all. And the lure of money. The good ol’ gold rush money. What a treat for my sullen heart.

After a month of connecting, reaching out, and actually getting responses from cold DMs (!!) I wanted more, so I dusted my resumé and went to work. Within three weeks, I applied for an incubator and landed a (close enough to) six-figure job. I was invited to events with people whose names made my jaw drop. Organized parties and saw checks with so many zeros it seemed obscene. I was speaking a whole new language; cordial yet direct, confident bordering arrogance, VCs, founders, 2 am meetings and all.

Like glamour red-eyes in my p-jays.

But I knew something wasn’t right – too white, shallow, and bright. Plus, I had this icky feeling at the bottom of my stomach that something really, really wrong was about to happen to my psyche.

An alligator Paris Hilton’s pool.

My flashbacks began in February, a month before everything took off – and three before it went down.

I remember, as a teen, asking my parents if something had happened to me: I couldn’t naturally be that afraid and anxious. But the answer was always “no.” I was simply a dramatic child.

And then I remembered. I saw before my eyes my grandmother’s husband using my toddler’s little body for his playground. Remembered the quiet afternoons my face pressed against a Star Wars blanket, waiting for him to finish and the years following that first time. My first time. I was 3.

My body knew, of course, but not my mind. My beautiful, beautiful mind. For 32 years, I dissociated, outperformed, felt endangered (and in danger) and battled anxiety and depression with discipline and, eventually, when I was about to snap, lots and lots of meds.

I remembered other kinds of assaults, of course, ones that came later in life. I’m a woman, after all, part of the 1 in 9-club, one of the 82% of females who will experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult.

A whole pack of bruised souls. Alone together.

For a month and a half after the initial flashbacks, I peeled the layers of pain and horrors one after the other with my therapists and found a way to keep my composure and deliver at work.

I was not going to let this ruin my life once again.

I told myself that the pressure at work would allow me to keep everything at bay until my next session. I thought I could contain the trauma, that it wouldn’t get to me, hit me in the face with an ax, causing me to see myself hanging in my daughters’ bedroom, my feet peacefully dangling above their mist grey Nugget™.

Who are we if not the sum of accumulated pain? Is suffering truly what makes us resilient? Or is resilience given to us at birth, like birthmarks or the color of our eyes?

I don’t think I was born resilient. I know others who have suffered much more and are doing “better” in life. Humans don’t share equal parts of happiness. Some believe that we choose our traumas the way we choose our parents; all is One.

I have a hard time believing that I would have chosen these experiences for myself and those around me who love and support me. But again, I’m having a hard time at everything right now.

On Wednesday, May 25, I quit my job in Web3 and completely stopped creating.

On June 3rd, I went to the ER because the intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideations were so potent I feared my brain would snap in half. But I was met with contempt and aggression instead of care and kindness. The staff’s behavior was so grave that it caused me to snap out of it. Out of survival, I left the ER after being threatened, yelled at and ridiculed. One panicked nurse tried to get me to stay, but my body had already stiffened back into its rational and coherent self.

When the twenty-something cops knocked at my house an hour later to “make sure I was safe,” after the hospital had called them on me, I offered them drinks and apologized for the mess in my house.

To my great surprise, they were skilled and comprehensive. This was the Upside Down.

We chatted for a minute, and I walked them to their car, cracking jokes. To my children's delight, they offered to turn on their flashing lights. I walked back to the house hand in hand with my husband while my children played in the front yard, their blond hair shimmering under the golden sunset.

Picture perfect.

Younger, I was led to believe that comfort equaled weakness. Our culture emphasizes a hustle mentality in which grinding and multitasking are the ultimate gifts. “Mental health” is as much a buzzword as “inclusivity”: popular yet empty.

Our workforce – Academia and Web3 included –  is no exception, mainly because it was built by and for white men and thrives under its whiteness (all gender combined). Nursing trauma and caring for oneself leave little to no space to be creative and build. Some can and some do, but at what costs?

When I started this piece, I mapped out the multiple identities – bios – that have defined me over the course of two decades. I also wrestled with the idea of writing such a long essay: Twitter got me longing for concision and brevity – does it fit in a thread? – but I’m neither brief nor concise.

My mind, life and body are expansive. They have been broken and welded back a million times. Now more than ever, no biographical exercise can sum up these experiences perfectly.

To be perfectly honest, I was ready just to give it all up until I read “An Interview with pioneer Vera Molnar” last week.

Vera is a pioneer of generative art. As one of the earliest artists to experiment with an electronic computer, she also created her first NFT at the age of 98. She’s not to be messed with.

Yet, at the beginning of her interview with Zsofi Valyi-Nagy, she admits having no idea about the meaning of the English word “generative” or for which publication she’s being interviewed.

“What does it mean?” she asks. “I don’t know it.”

Her stern admission of ignorance was beautifully empowering. Indeed, who gives a damn about what we know or don’t? about what we’ve achieved – or is yet to come? Especially when we near 100 years old.

She adds, “Ever since my childhood — okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but for a really long time — I’ve had this idea in my head: ‘Je ne trouve peut-être pas, mais je cherche’ (‘I may not find, but I seek’).”

“Je ne trouve peut-être pas, mais je cherche.”

It is obvious now that the promise of an et si (“what if”) would come from within my mother tongue.

This is all a test.

Life, Trauma, parenting, creating or building Web3: an experiment. There is no pretty bow to wrap it all up or bios that sum it up perfectly. All we can hope for is to have the space and the abilities to seek and ask difficult questions: “‘What am I looking for?’ and in the second step, ‘How do I bring that into the world?’”

And the truth is, I have always wanted to be a writer.

But instead of writing, I became a student in literature, then a professor, and a scholar. I wrote quiet books that I never truly shared with anyone. When I had to give that up, I became a mother, an American, a photographer, a founder, an activist, and a communication and marketing lead.

But I am a writer; that’s who I have always been.

Words are how I (re)birth myself, make sense of the world and connect with others. Of course, I am also the photographs, AI experiments, philosophy, social media, institutions, and activism. But in the words of the great Vera, “In life, you can’t do everything. You always have to choose.”

Writing words on a piece of paper “in some sort of order” is where I’ll always start.

That ought to be enough to get me going today.

Make the process visible, I say. No one cares if the wires protrude.

subscribe://