Instagram story viewer> @kristymarief> Posts

1.1K

followers

4897

following

queer. 2S. Métis. writer. bookish. witch. alive. ✨
healing & growing | cptsd / bipolar / adhd. 🧠💕
mother of cats. 🐈🐈‍⬛
keep going. 🏔

POSTS STORIES REELS

Wishing the happiest of birthdays to our Dancing Queen 🪩 and soon-to-be-Mrs 👰🏼‍♀️ who gave us two words (Mamma Mia?) for her bachelorette theme and trusted Nikki and me to run with it 😂 I know, wholeheartedly, that this night will be one of my favourite memories of not just this year, but forever. I feel like we’ve been talking about and dreaming of this time of our life for the 21+ years of our friendship and I am so glad and honoured that I get to share in the joys of celebrating with you. We’ve seen each other through so many different stages of life and have come out the other side stronger than ever and I am so blessed to call you my best friend, to be the Alice to your Bella, etc. I can’t wait to dance the night away with you again so so soon 🩵✨ by @kristymarief

My goal this year was to put a bigger effort into being on time… thankfully, Instagram doesn’t *really* have deadlines, right? Anyway, I turned 29 on April 29th (my champagne birthday, so I’m told🥂) and so far, 29 has been the best age yet, so here’s a belated little photo dump of my favourite memories from the first month of it ✨

Thus far, 29 has consisted of so much love, so much community, and perhaps most importantly, so many birds. I threw myself a medieval princess party just because I could and I was blown away by how lucky I am to have a group of amazing friends who committed to the bit with me and showed up in costume without a second thought. Y’all are so cool. (And if that wasn’t already a recipe for a great birthday, Meg came to visit and the time we were able to spend together was so special and healing. I could write a thousand pages and never be able to perfectly capture what a gift their friendship is to my life.)

I feel pretty hopeful for 29. I have been putting my pieces back together this past year, after a long overdue break-up last August. I am learning to be comfortable with being “lonely,” knowing I wouldn’t have been able to do it without knowing I had my people in my corner, ready to catch me when I fall and remind me that I am worthy of people who see me as my whole self and love me with their whole selves. For the past few years, I’ve just been pushing through, trying to survive, trying to hold on, all while not fully realizing that my hope, my spark, my selfhood, were draining out onto the floor, all for the sake of a man’s ego. And now? I finally, finally feel like I’m truly living again. Thank you to those of you who’ve stuck around when it’s been hard and helped me see the other side. I don’t take any of you for granted. It’s so good to be here. ☀️🌸🍓

PS been writing lots lately and really excited to start sharing more, here and other places hopefully 🤞🏼

#writer #writersofinstagram #queer #metis #plussizefashion by @kristymarief

All I really want in life at the moment is to dance in the club to “mangetout” with my fellow queers and loons, and since that didn’t happen at Birdhouse’s Heated Rivalry night last week, I guess I’m just gonna need to keep living and dancing until I achieve my dream (and then, ideally, long after that, too). I gotta say, it’s so dang nice to be alive and healing and writing and full of queer joy and surrounded by love and my favourite people and music and stories that give me hope for the future. And it’s so dang nice that, when people ask me how I’ve been, I can honestly and truly say, “I’ve been good. In fact, so much better” and they know I’m telling the truth. I hope you are all feeling the blessings of the blooms of spring, or if not quite yet, that you will be soon. 🩷🌸🍒

#queer #sapphic #plussizestyle #metis #vancouver by @kristymarief

Rang in 2026 clowning around with two of my best friends, feeling hopeful, young, silly, and free. Oh so different from last year.

I started 2025 numb. My word of the year was simply “forward” — push forward, as much as I possibly could. It didn’t feel like I would get very far, but I just needed to try. I was in survival mode, hanging on to any stability I could, desperately seeking anything that might help me feel hopeful for the future.

In August 2025, I left a 4 year relationship that had been built on lies from the very beginning. It was a relationship I thought was built on mutual respect, love, and trust, but in actuality was a house of cards and gradually, all of my breath had been taken from me so I couldn’t blow it down. I learned of these lies in fall 2024 but felt stuck, trapped, terrified. Completely out of control of my life, my body, my everything. It took me almost a year to find the stability and strength I needed to confront the truth and admit I wasn’t okay. When I did, that was too much, I was too much, and so he left. And suddenly I could breathe again.

I am still working on finding the words and the courage to tell this story in full. I know I’ve been alluding to it cryptically lately, but it’s because I want to tell this story in a way that does it justice. For the past 4 months, with the encouragement and support of @sara.harowitz, I’ve been putting everything I can into working on my writing, rediscovering my voice, and learning that there is so much freedom in truth.

2025 was hard. It was painful, both physically and emotionally. But I am entering the new year with true hope, maybe for the first time in a long time. Hope found in my family and best friends and their unconditional support; in the laughs of my goddaughters, Gaia and Aura; in my younger brother’s engagement; in all of the friends I was able to see and reconnect with this year; in the experience of seeing my favourite song live with one of my favourite people; in my cats and their unconditional comfort; and most of all, in myself and the knowledge that I need not ever bend myself again to fit someone else’s definition of love. #newyear #reflection #hope #writing by @kristymarief

pov: you get lost in the forest and find me sitting in a mossy bog, waiting to help you find your way out (or pull you into the marsh with me forever?? who’s to say! take a chance and find out!)

🌿🍄‍🟫🌳🐌🧚‍♀️🍃🪾

“Let’s be fairies” is probably a phrase that I or one of my best friends have said out loud too many times to count in the 28 years of my life —and yes, most of those instances occurred when I was under the age of 12.

Then, a few weeks ago when we were brainstorming costume ideas for this Halloween, either Jacy or Nikki suggested we be weird fairies. And I breathed a sigh of relief, because after four years of just coordinating my costume to my now-ex’s set-in-stone costume and going along with his same plans every year, happy to make him happy on his favourite day, all I wanted was to not feel alone on the 31st. To feel like I could still love this day too, like I did before him. To feel like myself. And what better way to feel like myself than to dress up like fairies with my friends, just like I did as a girl.

What a beautiful realization it was that, even in my late twenties, “playing fairies” with my best friends is something that I can slip into so easily, in the same way I expect I would have had they suggested we be mermaids instead. What a beautiful, incomparable feeling of freedom it was to dance the night away in a queer space that reminded me who I am, with two people who never make me feel alone. What a beautiful, incredible, wonderful thing it is to be young and to have hope and to heal —never linearly, but day by day, little by little, moving forward, reclaiming myself in ways I didn’t know I needed.

Belated Samhain blessings and happy Halloween, my friends. Remember to stay warm, honour your ancestors, and know that this upcoming dark and cold season will lead to precious blooms and abundant harvests, not too long from now. 🖤

#halloween #fairy #queer #plussize #mossfairy #samhain #writing #witch #witchesofinstagram #metis #indigenous #michif #mossfairy #bogwitch by @kristymarief

✨ april 29 - may 29: 1 month in of being 28 and I definitely still don’t know what I’m doing, (despite believing when I was younger that I would “figure it out” by the age of 27) but what I do know is that:

- I love being Auntie to MJ and Tía to Gaia & Aura. It’s everything I’ve hoped for and more. Spending time with these little humans is pure magic and I love them so deeply.
- I have wonderful, supportive friends who see me and love me and encourage me to remember that I am worthy of their love and friendship
- moving out of my childhood home was scary and sad and I cried a lot while saying good bye but there was something bittersweet in knowing that a young family with a little girl was moving in. I hope she grows up feeling safe and held by the walls that held me for so many years 🤍
- advocating for myself within the medical system continues to be exhausting and I am so grateful for the people in my life who do not make me feel as though my pain is an inconvenience to them.
- I love spring!!! I feel so lucky that flowers exist!!!!! how amazing is it that we live in a world with peonies!!!!!
- choosing which colours to paint my apartment is way more difficult than it should be. Why are there SO many shades of white???
- give me a glue gun and a themed costume party and I will be unstoppable 💪🏼
- I can always depend on writer’s block arriving at the most inconvenient of times.
- grief persists, but so do I.

#reflection #queer #writing #plussizestyle #photodump #midsizestyle #spring by @kristymarief

$Late to the party with my 2024 post, but I’m late for everything, so f*ck it. A messy collage of my messy life this past year, a couple mood boards for the year to come, and below, an excerpt from my journal from New Year’s Day: There’s so much pressure on the day of January 1st that I’ve tended to just consider it an automatic write off for myself. I don’t do anything special, I don’t try to implement new habits or start working hard on some new resolution. I sleep in. I nurse my hangover from the night before (because even though I only had two drinks, my body loves to remind me that I am not 19 anymore). I watch a movie with my love. I respond to the texts from friends and family wishing me a happy 2025. I sit, I reflect, I wonder. I cry and I laugh. I tuck myself into bed early, not because I’ve made some resolution to start going to bed earlier (though I probably should), but because I have a newfound disdain for this day that I once loved. It doesn’t bring me the hope it once did. Perhaps because the year I wrote that hopeful January 1st caption, well, was 2020, and I can still hear the faint echoes of the universe laughing at me. So, I will start this new year off knowing that I can still hold onto hope and love and joy whilst growing through pain and fear and grief. If 2024 taught me anything, it’s that grief —whether it be for my favourite person passing away at 98 years old, for the heartbreak of a fractured friendship, for the loss of control of my body as I fight to find a diagnosis, or for countless other losses I never really processed— is not some insurmountable obstacle for me to face alone anymore. 2024 taught me to be open to my own grief, to surrender to the cliché of the process, and to open myself to the reality that it is a necessary part of living a life of love and joy and belonging. It’s a reminder that those things existed, still exist, and will exist again. It might take a little time to trudge through the heavy haze ahead, but your tears will help clear the way, your friends will hold your hands as you go, and there might be a root beer milkshake waiting for you at the end. We’ll get through. #reflection #newyear #writing #hope by @kristymarief$

Feeling short n’ sweet and forever brat, and always dancing at the pink pony club in my mind 💙💚🩷 grateful for the soundtrack that was this pop girl spring/summer for helping my brain out with some serotonin production and for whatever forces collided to make the one place in the city that has root beer float ice cream also have a pink wall that matched my pride outfit ✨

#queer #plussize #midsizestyle #vancouver #metis #pride #2spirit #writer #plussizestyle

Outfit details no one asked for 💕
Shorts: @shopcider (cut offs from wide leg jeans)
Mesh Bodysuit: @prettylittlething (thrifted)
Pink Bikini top: @lavieenrose
Belt: thrifted??
Buttons: some booths from @vancouverdykemarch by @kristymarief

“I am nearly always aware of my body; the physical space that I occupy and how that physicality is experienced by others…”

A little July photo dump, starting with sharing that I had an essay published in The Georgia Straight this month for Pride! In the essay, I explore what it means for me to be queer and Indigenous in this world and I try to unpack how colonial views of identity have limited my way of understanding myself. This piece was extremely personal and a bit terrifying to write, but I’m always so grateful to @sara.harowitz for her editing genius and the patience and grace she gives me when I’m spilling my guts and then publishing the results. If anyone wants to read it, I’ll put the link in my bio.

July was a little hellish and challenged me in ways the universe usually reserves for cloudier months, but it was made bearable by beach days, lots of writing, long chats with Emma, working in my garden, ice cream, painting, haircuts, ice packs and brat. Best of all, July brought McKinley home and gave me some time with her and Josh to just heal and laugh and be myself in the presence of two people who feel like the home in which I found myself.

#writer #july #queer #métis #2spirit #plussizecanada #midsizestyle #reflection #findjoy by @kristymarief

Kristy Frenken-Francis

@kristymarief