Surprise—I survived.

I'm still here.

Honestly, I'm really happy about that.

Salutations—I'm Katie.

I've been blogging on and off for the past six years (mostly off), and I'm finally accepting something about myself: I write because I have to. If I don't get my thoughts out of my head, they start multiplying like ants in my brain until I feel as though my skeleton is about to hatch.

So here I am.

One of my biggest life goals is to publish a book. Maybe it'll be a memoir. Maybe poetry. Maybe an epic fantasy. Maybe it'll just be a collection of essays and blog posts written over years of trying to figure out what it means to be a person. At this point, I don't really care what form it takes.

Done is better than perfect.

The only way to become the writer I want to be is to keep writing.

Lately I've been obsessed with making tiny zines. So far, I've created two. One is a self-love devotional honoring the Goddess Aphrodite. The other is something I jokingly call The Employee Handbook for Life. After struggling with executive dysfunction for years, I realized I don't respond nearly as well to "practice self-care" as I do to "here is your job description." Somehow turning my own well-being into a job description made me finally start showing up for myself.

I've always been fascinated by people.

Why we become who we are. Why we repeat the same mistakes. Why some people heal while others stay stuck. Why our brains insist on making life so much harder than it has to be.

In 2019, I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Seven years later, I no longer clinically meet the diagnostic criteria.

That didn't happen by accident.

It took years of therapy, medication adjustments, DBT, EMDR, psychological testing, books, podcasts, journaling, uncomfortable conversations, ugly crying, and more self-reflection than I ever thought one person could survive.

Not to toot my own boot, but surviving that makes me feel like I can survive just about anything.

These days I'm diagnosed with combined-type ADHD (still unmedicated), which explains approximately ninety percent of the ants.

The upside to all of this is that I made a lot of mistakes first.

If something I've learned can save someone else even a few years of suffering—or help them understand themselves a little better—then every frustrating, exhausting step was worth it.

Around here you'll find essays about psychology, mental health, trauma, ADHD, relationships, spirituality, creativity, books, healing, and the wonderfully strange experience of being alive. Sometimes they'll be deeply personal. Sometimes they'll be practical. Sometimes they'll be funny because humor is how I've survived most of my life.

Mostly, I just want to tell honest stories.

Because I don't think our lives are meant to stay hidden.

I spent a long time believing I needed to become a completely healed, perfectly organized, impossibly wise version of myself before I was allowed to have something worth saying.

Turns out, writing is part of how I become that person.

So thank you for being here.

Whether you found this by accident or chose to stay, I hope you leave feeling a little less alone, a little more understood, or at the very least with one interesting thing to think about.

I'm glad you're here.

All my love,

K.