un·fixed /ˌənˈfikst/
adjective
1. not fixed in a definite place or position; free, flexible
2. unresolved and variable
3. not fixed but far from broken
4. when broken is the fix
Unfixed Media is a multimedia storytelling platform that shares and elevates the voices of people living with chronic illness and disability.
Our culture loves a fixer-upper story. We celebrate miracle cures, dramatic transformations, and clean resolutions. But millions wake up each day with no such arc—no fix, no finality, no cure in sight. Unfixed offers a different model: one that honors the profound courage it takes to live meaningfully inside the mystery.
To be unfixed is not to be broken. It is to integrate pain, uncertainty, and difference into a fuller definition of self. The humans in our stories may struggle, but they are also adapting, creating, and forging relationships with their bodies and lives on their own terms.
Our growing portfolio includes:
Four limited series: Unfixed Mind, Unfixed Docuseries, Life Rebalanced Chronicles, and Long Haul Voices
A short-form vignette series: Why We Matter
Three podcasts: Unfixed Podcast, ICU, and Unfixed Interviews
A roundtable webcast: MS Confidential
Two memoirs: Liberation of Being by Dylan Shanahan, and Unfixed founder Kimberly Warner’s own forthcoming memoir Unfixed: A Memoir of Family, Mystery, and the Currents That Carry You Home (Empress Editions, October 2025)
An upcoming feature documentary: Unfixed: The Art of Living in Time, which revisits several original participants years later to explore how time reshapes our relationship to illness, self, and meaning.
At Unfixed, we believe living well is not about erasing our wounds—but understanding how they complete us, connect us, and prepare us to walk alongside others.
Unfixed: A Memoir of Family, Mystery, and the Currents That Carry You Home is a haunting exploration of identity, loss, and the unsteady ground of becoming.
When a midlife DNA test reveals that the man who raised her isn’t her biological father, Kimberly Warner is drawn into two parallel mysteries: one excavating the silence surrounding her beloved father’s death, the other tracing the absence of a stranger whose blood shapes her very being.
As she unravels the secrets hidden beneath her family’s story, another rupture emerges—this time in her body. A mysterious illness takes hold, leaving her adrift in dizziness, and a growing awareness that her body knows truths language cannot hold.
Told through lyrical prose and imagined correspondence, Unfixed carries readers across decades and terrain, from the New Age spirituality of Warner’s 1980s childhood to the tidal unpredictability of midlife, where certainty dissolves and the soul insists on truth.
This is not a memoir of resolution, but of reckoning. For anyone who has sought refuge in the known, Unfixed offers a quiet transformation: healing not as closure, but as relationship. Wholeness not as solidity, but as the willingness to remain present to what is.
With echoes of Inheritance, and the emotional undercurrents of Where the Crawdads Sing, Unfixed reveals the beauty and heartbreak of uncovering truths long buried. It is a celebration of the body’s wisdom, the resilience of the human spirit, and a poignant reminder that even in the most uncertain lives, there is space for hope, connection, and becoming. And what feels like drift may be the current carrying us home.
current productions
Unfixed : Unsung - award-winning short film representing LGBTQ+ stories
Long Haul Voices - 3-part limited series with Long Covid and ME/CFS patients
ICU (“I See You”) Podcast - conversations between patients and health care providers
Liberation of Being - ALS patient memoir, NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE!
MS Confidential - monthly webcast
Why We Matter - short-from vignette series
Unbound - short dance film with ME/CFS and Long Covid patients
Unfixed Mind - 4-part limited series with people with mental health diagnoses
Unfixed - award-winning doc-series, 21 episodes with a diversity of unfixed patients
Life Rebalanced Chronicles - award-winning series, 3 seasons with vestibular patients
Unfixed Focus - intimate profiles from the community
The Unfixed Podcast - conversations between patients living with different diagnoses
Unfixed Media Productions is a self-funded labor-of-love. We are continuously looking for sustainable sponsorships, grants, tax-deductible donations and individual project funding. If you or anyone you know can help keep this important work alive, please share or donate. Thank you.
how unfixed began
Unfixed Media Productions started with 20 incredible people who were willing to share their stories with us. They are all in various stages of living with chronic conditions and disability. Some are living with the aftermath of a cerebral stroke, others are struggling with autoimmune disease, terminal illness or daily, debilitating migraines. Beginning February 2020, they began creating self-recorded videos once a month to reflect on specific topics that address what it’s like living with chronic illness. Their honest, unpolished moments are at the heart of the unfixed state - the highs, the lows and everything in between. As the community grows to include cast members from other Unfixed programming, new episodes are created - drawing from the diverse pool of diagnoses, backgrounds and stories.
Unfixed content can be viewed on The Disorder Channel (accessible with Roku and Amazon Fire), The Journal of Health Design, and the Unfixed Community YouTube Channel.
what people are saying
The Unfixed docu-series was the most compelling film I've seen since Crip Camp. They invite us into a world where pain and self-doubt live together with grace and courage. I felt a profound connection to the unfixed community, who embrace their vulnerability and share their stories.
- Gustavo Serafini - entrepreneur, Enabled Disabled podcast host
I feel grateful for the opportunity to hear the voices of the people who have conditions that are not fixable. I think every medical student and nursing student should see this film.
- Dr. Bonnie Reagan - retired physician
I am blown away by the relentless humanity from all of your contributors, by the passion and restraint of your voice as you present your/their stories to the world, and by the power these people and stories blast into cyber space now that you have created a portal. What you are doing is beyond authentic and important. And it can be hard to achieve either of those things most days.
- Kevin Costello, film director
This work makes us all feel like we are still important in the world. While we sit back and feel lonely and lost and hurting and suffering in silence, somehow Unfixed comes along and some of that black and grey turns a little more pink and purple and orange and hopeful.
- Steve Schwier - vestibular patient, cast member in Life Rebalanced Chronicles
What you are doing is so creative, powerful and effective. You are putting patients at the centre of healthcare - where they belong.
- Dr. Moyez Jiwa - Associate Dean and professor of Health Innovation at the Melbourne Clinical School, University of Notre Dame
This work is truly original; I don’t know of anyone who has gone so deeply into the experience and wisdom of living ‘unfixed.” It goes against everything our culture has trained us to do, but leads to a more rewarding way of living.
- Sara Davidson - best-selling author, journalist and screenwriter
To all in this unfixed series—your courage is inspiring beyond words; your sincerity surely opens every heart and mind this film meets; your vulnerability could move mountains; and your tender care for one another feels from this side of the camera, like family. I am made more human by having watched you all share and reflect.
- Renée Eli, Ph.D. - contemplative scholar, phenomenological philosopher of consciousness studies
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