The Power of Intention: My Disability Superpower

With Teethe Research for All About Curating "Creative Synergies" Program

There is a particular vulnerability in entering a new professional space when you are unsure whether your body—and brain—can sustain it.

When I began "Creative Synergies", an online membership program as part of the All About Curating, I hesitated. The structure required long hours online: meetings, discussions, computer work, and sustained focus. For many, this is standard. For me, it is an energetic negotiation. Since my traumatic brain injury in 2021, screen time, cognitive load, and prolonged concentration are not neutral activities. They are expenditures.

I questioned whether I could fully participate.

And yet, to my surprise, I am able to participate.

Not easily. Not effortlessly. But successfully.

This program is not glamorous. It is not the romantic image of the artist bathed in light, producing genius. Instead, it represents a new kind of work for me: one grounded in strategy, positioning, articulation, organization, and imagination of sustainability. It asks artists to clarify what they are doing and why—and to communicate that clearly within institutional and collective contexts.

In all my years as an artist, I had never truly strategized.

I did not make daily plans.

I did not make weekly projections.

I did not map long-term trajectories.

I worked organically—responding to deadlines, thriving under pressure, excelling in intensity and improvisation. My process was intuitive and urgent—until it wasn’t.

This program has required something new of me: consistency, reflection, and specificity.

For the first time, I have spent sustained, deliberate time asking:

• What is my project actually communicating?

• What do I want to communicate—on my own terms?

• Where do I want to position myself?

• What questions am I investigating?

• What structures and organizations can support this?

• How do I imagine myself inside the scope of what I am trying to accomplish?

These are deceptively simple questions. But they demand clarity.

And clarity requires intention.

Since my brain injury, I live inside limitations.

Limited energy.

Limited cognitive endurance.

Limited physical capacity.

I cannot afford to scatter myself. I cannot rely on last-minute surges of adrenaline. I cannot “go with the wind.”

So I must be strategic.

I must create daily, weekly, and monthly plans.

I must define goals.

I must articulate timelines.

I must be coherent.

This is not optional—it is survival. And in adapting to this constraint, something extraordinary has emerged.ged.

The power of intention.

Intention, for me, has become a superpower.

With limited resources, intention becomes precise and embodied. I cannot waste energy on ambiguity or chase every opportunity. I must choose, focus, and decide.

And in deciding, I begin to reach goalposts I never previously set.

Before, I worked toward outcomes without naming them; now, I define them. Before, momentum carried me; now, I generate direction.

This brain injury—something that fundamentally altered my capacities—has forced me into alignment. It demands I live deliberately, setting clear intentions so my limited energy moves toward meaning. When intentions are specific, the world can respond. This response—whether from the universe, community, or personal alignment—shows the difference between drifting and declaring.

I am not dismissing the beauty of drifting; there is value in openness, surrender, and flow. But with limited resources, drifting is a luxury that disperses energy we do not have.

Intention gathers energy.

It concentrates it.

It transforms it.

I can only speak for myself. But what I once experienced solely as loss has revealed itself as discipline. What felt like restriction has become refinement. What seemed like disability has become design.

My brain injury forces me to be intentional.

Intention is not just power—it's my way forward. It is how I build a life of meaning, even in the face of constraints.