No. 114: OCD, Instagram and the Overlap.

Grab some eggnog. We've got a lot to catch up on.

What you’ll find in this letter:

+ A 35 minute podcast episode on my OCD diagnosis earlier this year and my thoughts on Instagram in light of it
+ Everything I bought during Cyber Week last year and everything I’ll be buying during Cyber Week this year
+ Information about the Etsy Shop reopening next week

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This year in therapy, I’ve had a mirror held up to me. Sometimes I clutched that mirror in my hands, so grateful to finally see myself—other times, I had to look away, unable to accept the totality of what stared back at me. “This is part of it,” I’ve been repeating to myself. This isn’t all of it, but it’s part of it. The part that’s uncomfortable, unsettling, gut-wrenching, even, is the part that makes way for what’s yet to be. We have to rip through the soil, deep into the cold hidden earth to plant something we commit to nurture and do our part to bring to life. It’s the dirt under the fingernails that brings the promise of the bloom.

For things as personal and untidy as this topic, I always find it to be more productive and intimate to talk rather than to write. I recorded this earlier in the week, wrapped in a blanket in front of the fireplace. Most of this day found me overcome with the emotion that only comes from changing your mind. Some of it was my own doing by listening to this song on repeat, some of it was receiving the photos of you weeping while reading my book to your babies. That second bit contradicts an ugly core-belief I have about myself and I’m so grateful it hurts. I hope you find this 35 minutes to be a comfort of some kind. If not a comfort, maybe a reminder that we all approach the same world with such a different mind that it’s not really the same at all.