Morning beautiful human,
I hope this note finds you choosing yourself this morning (or afternoon). I have spent the past week doing exactly that — choosing ME — and it feels nothing short of revolutionary. Of course, at first glance, it also sounds epically narcissistic. But this approach to my week was actually quite the opposite.
It was a week spent looking beyond myself and imagining a life defined beyond the biomedical model of my being — beyond the diagnoses, treatments, and structured understandings of recovery. It was also a week guided by intention towards service — towards building a life that actually honors me and translates quite directly to one that honors others. This focus — this determination to look beyond myself while still honoring it transformed my mood and energy entirely. I found a lightness of being and childish joy that glimmered like the sun dancing on a late afternoon windowsill when the breeze sways the leaves just right.
Now, in saying this I am not trying to re-write what I experienced last week. Re-entry after my vacation in Maine undoubtedly held challenging earthquakes. But, after the initial shockwaves reverberated through my body and mind, I found a wealth of stamina in their place as I realized that this Sunday — tomorrow! — I finally get to step into actual alignment.
I get to do what I have wanted to do since I was a very little girl:
Shift my collective attention from the past — from “this happened to me” — to the future – to I don’t want this to happen to anyone else — to you.
This alignment brought with it a grounded ease and, as odd as it sounds, a deep knowing — the realization that in order to show up in this work best, I had to do two things:
1. Clean out all the things in my house that I have been holding onto in the fear that the doctors really were right and that I am in fact doomed to a life of disability in a locked psych ward and will never be able to buy another shirt, dress, water bottle or lamp shade again.
2. Rename this newsletter.
Likely, both of those things sound a bit odd to you but both the state of my house and the name of this newsletter are reflections of my life defined by illness — by my life in pursuit of recovery and my life written entrenched in the insidious conditioning that is the biomedical model.
Now, I’m not going to go fully into this with you today. That would take a lot of time and quite honestly, a dissertation’s worth of writing. That is what the many future pages I will share here will be devoted to.
But before I begin that sharing — that unpacking — that exploration of mental health and its culture, at large, I do want to be very clear. My conditioning doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The biomedical model doesn’t have to be a bad thing either. And that is not what I am saying here — at least not yet. Both helped me in the end and I am certainly not here to judge my past self who clung to that paradigm and was in a way, saved by it. I am also absolutely not here to judge or dissuade anyone from treatment, therapy, or medication intervention. I still go to therapy once a week, psychiatry once a month, and take medications daily. And for the moment, that is the long-term plan.
But recently, alongside the biomedical practices of recovery that I engage with, I have also begun to explore many other interventions and practices. I have explored bodywork, somatics, and spirituality. And more than that — more than anything — I have begun to question every fiber of understanding about what I went through and how I can best move through it. I have found myself asking all sorts of questions about how psychiatry and psychology are structured and how the framework has informed my understanding of self and suffering, at large.
This week, as I found a newfound freedom in getting rid of things I had not used, worn or even touched in years – things plagued by my doctors’ understanding of who I am and what I have the potential to become – these questions swirled particularly loudly about what I wrote last week.
Were my feelings upon returning home informed by an assumption entrenched in what my doctors had taught me?
Is it really true that I can’t change the past?
Is it really true that my life will always be the fight of mental illness recovery?
Or is that actually untrue?
Can I actually re-write the story of my life with perspective?
Can I cease to be anxious or even probably anxious, at all?
And what if — yes what if I can de-hoard my understanding of the past just like my house?
What if I can explore and unpack my past so thoughtfully that I am left with good bones and a beautiful home — a clean slate to colorfully claim as my own?
Yes, what if? Indeed.
As I took trip after trip to the thrift store while thinking this through, I grew ever lighter and ever more full of energy.
So today, seven trips to the thrift store and this essay layer, I proudly give myself one of the best late 37th birthday presents I could ever give myself. I rename this newsletter:
A newsletter for people in pursuit of self-reclamation and a life that grows beyond fear and towards self-actualized freedom.
Yes, I rename this newsletter with a title that holds space for the brighter tomorrow that no doctor, no therapist and no biomedical understanding of myself could ever offer me. I rename this newsletter to a title undefined by disorder and instead definite by freedom.
The newsletter will still be an exploration of my lived experience with serious mental illness but additionally, just like the many closets I unpacked this week, it will also unpack mental health, its culture, and how we think about recovery in and beyond the biomedical model.
Now, I get this likely doesn’t make a ton of sense, and even though I do care that one day you understand, today I don’t. Today I am too damn elated and free and wholly okay to care. Yes – today I am me and I am finally stepping into a new chapter — one that is actually, truly, wholly blank and free for my own writing. And today, unapologetically, I am going to savor that completely.
~
Now, separate from this rather large breakthrough, I am so excited that
We begin FEARS Camp tomorrow at 5 PM EDT!!!
For those unfamiliar, FEARS Camp (Face Everything And Reclaim Self) is a community-building framework for growing through and beyond our fear together. The framework is what brought me friends — real true friends, community, and my wonderful husband Dave. It is also the framework that cured my agoraphobia, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder. It is the framework I am currently using to tackle my rediagnosis of OCD.
Now, please note: FEARS Camp is not medical advice or therapy and it is in no way a substitute for that.
It is a community of people who are in it — facing fear and growing beyond it — together.
Tomorrow, I will share the preliminary structure of FEARS Camp and introduce the first focus — Restoration of Self — an invitation to explore rest. We will then take time for questions and time allowing, have a brief solidarity story-sharing gathering.
ALL ARE WELCOME.
IT IS FREE.
And if you can’t make it to the first one - no problem! You can join whenever works for you.
So – zoom details! Let’s see if I can actually get it right this time :)
FEARS Camp — An Invitation to Explore Rest — Meeting Info
Katharine S. is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: FEARS Camp -- An Invitation to Explore Rest
Time: Sep 1, 2024 05:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
https://harvard.zoom.us/j/97435313294?pwd=RWqOaSBptgKWDOw08tCWKtHN0sgHgf.1
Password: 393980
International numbers available: https://harvard.zoom.us/u/aWsJTsEi3
One tap mobile: +16469313860,,97435313294# US
Join by SIP conference room system
Meeting ID: 974 3531 3294
97435313294.393980@zoomcrc.com
And with that, I’m off to help this wonderful daddio of mine with his barn and a porch that needs resurfacing. Ahh to use my hands in the company and service of others.
Hoping your day holds a glimmer and a moment of peace.
But regardless, I really hope you do know that no matter what, a day is enough — just like you.
And so, I wish you a day.
Yes, you beautiful human,
I wish you a day.
~
I love you. And my two best girls send all the snugs your way.
Kindly,
Kate
Love the new name for this newsletter. 😍
Great name! I can’t make it tomorrow but I look forward to being there for the next one!!!