Giving Pause: Epistemological Diegesis and Self-Sentience created through the novel Our Life in Red Jello

The effect of the global pandemic on systems of education in Ontario has renewed the call for mental health resources in schools. The detrimental impact of Covid-19 on mental-health related issues for students resulting from school closures and lockdowns raises awareness to the importance of mental health and wellness for students in Ontario schools. For my masters thesis I have written a novel called Our Life in Red Jell-O to foster a diegesis of mindfulness. The litmus test for the aforementioned creation of a space of mindfulness that happens is ones own personal response to the content of the novel. If reader response reveals a reception to a feeling of mindfulness, or freedom from thought, in the transactional analysis between reader and text on any level, we have a mindful diegesis, or from an epistemological standpoint, a way to know what mindfulness means through experience.