Our work focuses on the everyday realities of navigating chronic pain in Canada, including barriers to care and the impacts of shifting policies. We approach this work through community care and advocacy grounded in the knowledge of those most affected by chronic pain.As a small collective, we are unmanaged in two senses. First, we are not governed by any type of board of directors or hierarchical leadership structure. We are a small group of people with chronic pain living across Canada who are working with a non-existant budget trying to effect actual change in systems and practice. We have no PR team, no gala dinners, no expensive conferences, no merch.Second, we are all living with some form of unmanaged or poorly managed pain. We reject frameworks that position people like us as 'heartsink patients' or 'difficult' patients. We are grounded in an ethics of care that rejects binaries between 'good' and 'bad' patients, 'easy' and 'difficult' patients, and people who 'deserve' care versus people who don't. While we are deeply unhappy with pain care as it currently exists and intersecting structures of oppression that shape ours and others' lives, we are also hopeful that we can make positive changes through advocacy and mutual aid. We carry on in the belief that there is still much to look forward to.

Leigha Comer (she/her)

Leigha is a critical sociologist who has been living with chronic pain for over a decade. Her research looks at how health care for pain is organized and how wildly different experiences of health, illness, and dying are created and experienced in Canada. As a person who is disabled and who uses a wheelchair to get around, she’s also very interested in access and the ideas we have about people who are disabled. She lives in London, Ontario, with her husband, their two boys, and their absolute floof of a cat, Finley.

Ocean Rain (they/he/she)

Ocean Rain is a disabled person with experience in community care, art activism, and critical disability research. They bring lived experience of chronic illness, medical trauma, and neurodivergence, which deeply shape their understandings of disability. In addition to their passion for disability justice, they enjoy circus arts and wildlife conservation work, and harbour a lifetime goal of petting as many dogs as possible. They live in Tkaronto, Ontario, with two sassy senior cats, Lily and Neville.

We develop accessible, plain-language resources to support people living with chronic pain, their families, and health care providers. We also provide educational materials on navigating health care systems and advocating for oneself as a person with chronic pain, a loved one, or a caregiver. In addition to Leigha’s work with Pain BC in supporting the development of credentialed courses on chronic pain and disability, we also offer workshops on engaging with pain research and understanding medical information for all audiences. You can find information on our upcoming workshops below.

We understand firsthand how isolating chronic pain can be. We provide peer-based support to people living with chronic pain and their loved ones. This includes one-on-one support over the phone and through email and virtual support groups. Our approach to support is grounded in ethics of care that centre lived experience and epistemic humility.

We welcome you to get in touch at [email protected] for information about our next
virtual support group or for direct peer support.

Our advocacy work focuses on addressing structural barriers in chronic pain care. This includes supporting patients in advocating for themselves in accessing pain care, helping patients address inaccuracies in their medical records, guiding patients in making complaints to their provincial or territorial licensing college, contributing to policy discussions on pain care and opioid prescribing, and engaging with policymakers and regulatory bodies. Our work is informed by research and lived experience. We welcome you to get in touch at [email protected] if you would like to collaborate or if you could use our support, including an in-person or virtual advocate to accompany you in clinical encounters.

All workshops are held virtually via Zoom. To register and receive the Zoom link, please contact [email protected].

Workshops are free and open to people living with chronic pain, caregivers, clinicians, and anyone else who would like to learn with us.