However, most mornings, when I wake up, due to memory damage from electroconvulsive therapy and amnesia from my dissociative fugue disorder, that is all I know about myself with certainty.

Fortunately, writing has helped me slowly reclaim my lived experiences, and here in this space, I share them — my learning disability, serious mental illness, psychiatric in-patient stays, and decade-long, psychosis-inducing misdiagnosis. I also share about the ten recent years I’ve spent in recovery, building a life and fighting my way to freedom in the face of my doctors’ belief that I would only survive in a locked, residential psychiatric unit.

Due to my fugue disorder growing more severe recently, I am currently only able to work part-time. But when I do, I am a writer, speaker, mental health advocate, and part-time Public Health Strategist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health Communication. Most people know me from my advocacy, TEDx talk, mental health pages — Kate Speer, Wafflenugget, and Solidarity Stories — and five-year tenure running the internationally renowned storytelling company, The Dogist.

But as I said, most mornings, I wake up, and all I know is that I am a human being, so I just think of myself as a messy human who is trying to get out of bed and live a full life with serious mental illness.

Here, I share that adventure, and though I don’t exactly where it will take us — both in my past years and future ones — I do know this:

My life is not a sad story.

My life is simply that — a life — just like yours — one that holds the perpetual duality of existence — pain and joy, hardship and ease, darkness, and light — and when we lean into that truth of coexistence and embody it fully without moralizing it, we set both ourselves and others free.

And whether you stay and join me or not,

Thank you.

I mean it.

Just by being here and reading my words as I live outside a locked psychiatric ward, you have helped make my wildest dreams come true because I am finally a writer who is not only free on the page but also free in life as well.

And with that, just as I said in the ward and every day since, I wish you a day.

Because a day, just like you, is always enough.

Kindly,

Kate

Here, we explore the perpetual duality of life and healing from emotional pain in these forms:

1. The free weekly newsletter

This newsletter goes out every Friday and includes an assortment of the following:

1. A short essay or brief update about my week’s mis/adventures in healing.

2. Glimmer/s of my week — usually a story about my service dogs. Because, well, DOGS.

3. Stories from my past experiences with serious mental illness and the mental health care system.

4. The weekly invitation to explore healing out in the world.

5. The weekly writing prompt to empower your practice.

6. Solidarity stories from our community so we can be in this messy magic — together. This includes but is not limited to art created in response to weekly prompts.

7. Photos, art, and poems that offer permission to pause.

8. Dog photos. Always dog photos.

2. Healing Out Loud Together

Healing Out Loud Together is a gathering where we share our writing and art to find solidarity in the messy magic of healing. Healing Out Loud Together is hosted on Zoom. Everyone is welcome to share their stories and poetry. To bolster accessibility, this is an entirely free offering. All are welcome to join us. Of equal importance, though all are welcome to join — no one is required to share or even be on video during the session.

3. The Patient Is In

The Patient Is In is a long-form piece or podcast episode for paid subscribers that explores one of these things:

• An interview with a writer, advocate, or mental expert about their healing practice

• My personal experiences in the mental health care system and my re-entry into the world after years of disability.

• Mental health culture — online and in person — and how it informs our understanding of self

• A question from the community about mental health and healing

• The biomedical model of mental illness and how to break from its conditioning

• Dogs, always dogs. And what we can learn from them.

  

To accredit my messy human self, I was told to tell you that I’ve been seen in…

A bit more about what this space holds…

Here, I examine the human condition and humans’ conditioning. I unpack hustle culture and toxic positivity. I explore recovery in and beyond the biomedical model. And I share deeply honest stories from my lived experiences with mental illness, write the beauty that is the unabashed truth, and question just about everything I have been taught about health, wellness, mental health, success, and how we think about emotional pain and a life worth living.

Since I spent a decade navigating a psychosis-inducing psychiatric misdiagnosis and still live with PTSD and dissociative fugue, my focus here is particularly linked to mental health. However, this space is not limited to those living with mental illness or mental health challenges.

This space is about reclaiming intention and humanity so we can define well-being on our terms in a world that prioritizes the exact opposite.

That undoubtedly is an endeavor open to every single human being.

Here, through invitations to get outside in the world in different ways and writing prompts to examine the many worlds within us, we celebrate the practice of discovering, reclaiming, and building the places we were happiest in as children — spaces where:

• Less is more

• The little things are the big things

• True beauty is finding, reclaiming, and being our full selves in safety

• We are together — living, breathing, laughing, crying, fully ourselves — with our people.

Quite simply, I want to reclaim that state of being where a chrysalis is all the content I need for an afternoon and my dogs full body waggle is celebrated as the good medicine it is. But as easy as it is to write such truths, living them proves far harder and that is the invitation of healing out loud — to practice and process this pursuit — together.

So, if you are a seeker of your one true self, that belly laugh and full body giggle, alignment in purpose and passion, and a fort made of sheets where you can cry, love, and be truly safe as you are seen — this project is for you.

And no matter what, whether you join us here or not, I hope you find what you are looking for. Yes, I really really do.

Wishing you a day.

Because a day — just like you — is always enough.

Kindly,

Kate

Healing Out Loud is an entirely reader-supported publication. Being a paid subscriber makes my advocacy work possible and keeps this space sponsor-free. If you are able, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today.

A subscription costs $6 a month ($1.50 a week) or $60 a year ($1.15 a week).

Paid Subscriber Benefits Include:

• The Patient is In — a monthly long-form essay or podcast that explores

  • My personal experiences in the mental health care system and my re-entry into the world after years of disability.

  • The experience of a renowned writer, advocate or scientist and their perspectives on healing in the modern day.

  • Mental health culture — online and in person — and how it informs our understanding of self

  • A question from the community about mental health and healing

  • The biomedical model of mental illness and how to break from its conditioning

  • Relationships and how best to weather hard times.

• The Full Archive — which includes:

  • Maura and Me — the memoir I wrote and shared here as a serial about my lived experience finding best friendship and a lifeline while navigating psychosis and disabling serious mental illness.

  • Dogs are Medicine — personal essays about the dogs I’ve met and the healing they have so generously given me

  • Lines — my version of poetry — that explore recovery, resilience, and self-reclamation in a body and mind that society deems unacceptable

• Healing Out Loud Gatherings — a monthly storytelling hour devoted to sharing our writing and art and celebrating being human together.

• My deepest gratitude.

Subscribe now

Please know: I am not here to add more barriers to an already broken world so if you would like access and do not feel able to pay for it, simply fill out this form and I will add you no questions asked.