About Quirk

Hi, I'm Staci, AKA Quirk.

I'm an artist, creator, excellent cook, avid traveler, and human rights advocate, and the person behind Quirk Curio and Olfactory Postcards.

Finding The New Me

As my condition worsened, it felt like early everything that defined my life was slipping away. I was still an artist, but had no way to produce my art. I still loved cooking, and traveling, and creating, but I no longer had a way to pursue those things as I had before.

There are still times when pain consumes everything, but when treatment gives me some room, I'm learning how to build a life that incorporates where my body is now. I am not the person I was before; I lost the ability to be vertical for long. I don't think I could ever be that person again.

I'm figuring out who I am now - and how to build as full a life as possible as that person. I hope that Quirk Curio can build a community that helps others do that, too,

Why Quirk Curio?

Quirk Curio grew from that need to have a full life while living in a body that requires so much accommodation - and from realizing how often disabled people are expected to settle for functional enough.

We deserve more than functional enough.

Beauty. Creativity. Pleasure. Comfort. Autonomy. Play. Identity. Connection. Anticipation. Choice.

These aren't frivolous extras that become inappropriate once someone is disabled. They're essential parts of being a person.

Whoever you are, you deserve the opportunity to be more fully YOU.

Our Story

Why are you Quirk?

For most of my life, I had things happening with my body that no one could explain.

Pain. Joints that didn’t behave like other people’s joints. Severe gastrointestinal problems. Allergic reactions. Things that hurt, moved, failed, or simply worked differently—with no good explanation for why.

When you live that way long enough, you develop your own language for it.

I called them my quirks.

It’s just one of my little quirks. I’m odd that way.

It was easier than trying to explain something I couldn’t explain myself. And after years of being told that many of my symptoms were anxiety, or that tests looked normal, or that I simply needed to learn to live with the pain, “quirks” became a way of living around things that didn’t yet have names. You know, the strange habits I got into because they somehow helped were now "Quirks" when I got strange looks.

Eventually, some of my pain and illness did get names.

In my 40s, I finally began receiving diagnoses that helped explain things I had experienced since childhood. That didn’t give me my old life back, but having names was a relief. That's something a lot of people without chronic illness don't get. We should be relieved when the tests come back negative, and sometimes we are, but at the same time, just because the test said that we are fine, doesn't mean that we are. It doesn't make the pain go away. It just means more doctors to convince and more tests. In spite of finally having a few diagnoses, we were still missing something and my physical abilities continued to decline. Today, even with tremendously better healthcare, I spend most of my life horizontal.

But Quirk stayed with me.

Now it means something different.

It reminds me that different does not equal less. That accommodation isn’t the end goal; it’s what can make more of life possible. And that even when circumstances change profoundly, we can still have beauty, creativity, pleasure, autonomy, connection, play, purpose—and more. Those aren’t frivolous extras. They’re part of having a life.

I don’t know exactly what my own life will look like from here.

But I know I don’t want to spend it simply being alive.

I want to have a life.

Let’s go.

This is where I’ll share what I’m learning along the way, and I hope you’ll share what you’ve learned, too. We can learn from one another and find more possibilities together.