One of Olympia’s iconic punk musicians Kathleen Hanna is opening up about the disease that forced her to step away from the music scene.

The former Bikini Kill and Le Tigre frontwoman reveals in the documentary, The Punk Singer, which debuted at South by Southwest earlier this week, that she was diagnosed with Lyme disease after six years of doctors trying to figure out what was wrong.  Sini Anderson‘s film marks the first time Hanna has talked publicly about her struggle with the disease, and she tells Entertainment Weekly that she kept it a secret so long because she was embarrassed and didn’t want to disrupt the myth that she was the kind of person who could handle anything.

The Punk Singer covers a year in her life from the summer of 2010 to the summer of 2011, when she lost her voice and was faced with the possibility of being confined to a wheelchair.  But now Hanna has been in remission for four months, and she’s back to doing what she loves — making music.

-Chris Coyle, KZOK

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