Welcome to the Lab…!

The Healing Lab is a community project dedicated to exploring the many ways humans survive hard times and emotional suffering — together.

And here we are building a map and safe place to explore the many paths that humans walk through healing,

• We don’t presume to know your story, your truth, and the fight you are currently waging.

• We’re not here to “fix” you. (You are not and never were broken.)

• And we’re certainly not here to give you one weird trick or a seven-step plan you need to pay $99 to access.

Here, we aim to to explore what becomes possible when you build safety within yourself — and learn how to take bold, brave steps into discomfort for the sake of growth and community.

Founded by writer, public health strategist, and former psychiatric patient Kate Speer, The Healing Lab is what she needed and never had: a place to find the many different tools that can be used to move through hardship, and a safe space to experiment with them.

Here, we hope to amplify what healing actually looks like — especially when your body, brain, or life doesn’t fit what everyone else expects.

At The Healing Lab, we believe:

🌀 Your Worth Is Innate and Not Up for Debate
You are worthy of care — in all your colors, contradictions, and chaos. Not “once you’re better.” Right now.

🌀 Healing Is Not Self-Improvement
This isn’t about fixing yourself to fit a broken world. It’s about reclaiming yourself with others — because real healing happens in community for the sake of community.

🌀 It All Starts with Radical Acceptance
Radical acceptance, kind curiosity, and a growth mindset — that’s our foundation. No shame, no pretending. Just showing up, exactly as we are.

🌀 Discomfort Is Not the Enemy
Discomfort isn’t danger — it’s an opportunity. Here, we harness the power of discomfort to grow. We’ll help you build safety first, and stretch yourself from there.

🌀 We Trust Science and Story, Together
We believe in peer-reviewed research and lived experience. The body knows. The story matters. The science is real. Healing lives at their intersection.

🌀 There’s No One Right Way
No answers. No expectations. Just real people, showing up, trying real things. We believe in many paths, and in the courage grow — together.

Why This Exists

For decades, I (Kate) survived major depressive disorder, suicidality, psychosis, PTSD, dissociative fugue, and 21 psychiatric hospitalizations — all while feeling alone and overwhelmed by the question: How am I going to survive this?

Of course, I had help, unlike the many friends I lost in my twenties. I am a white, cis, upper-middle-class woman with more privilege of access than most could dream of.

But mental health does not discriminate and nor does disability. My story holds both the protection of privilege and the violence of the healthcare system, and I believe in honoring both, without flattening either.

This project is in honor of my survival and in service of those who do not have the privilege of access that I do so readily.

I first dreamed of The Healing Lab in the psych ward as an answer to that question after being told that I would not survive without living in a locked, residential psychiatric ward. I had tried more therapies than I could count and a ridiculous number of medications and still, I had not yet found the relief and well-being I worked so tirelessly for. In that hopeless state, the dream was born and now, fifteen years later, with my partner Amy I am building this place: The Healing Lab.

The Healing Lab is a place to offer what I never had: a map through all the ways humans can heal, and a place where it’s safe to explore them.

For me, that was never the healthcare system. When I was entrenched within it, I didn’t even feel like I owned my own life. The choices in front of me were: locked psych ward or more drugs. It was so barren. So unbelievably barren and stark. I didn’t even feel like owned myself, nevertheless, what happened next.

But here, you do. Here, we celebrate that you have a choice in how you move through your pain and suffering. And here, you never have to do it alone.

Each week, The Healing Lab offers:

🧰 Practical Tools & Guides
Nervous system regulation practices, fear-facing experiments, and self-advocacy resources to help you build an internal oasis — a grounded place from which you grow, heal, and meet life’s chaos without losing yourself.

💜 Stories of Survival
We call them “solidarity stories” and they are the maps of survival and healing from Kate and the community on what mental illness looks like in real life — symptoms, successes, setbacks, and all.

🫂 Community Conversations
Zoom calls, live chats, and comment threads where we hold space for nuance, experiments, imperfection, and brave attempts — together.

📢 Unabashed Honesty
Writing that names the grief, rage, mess, and joy of living with mental illness, neurodivergence, and the exhaustion of being human right now in this burning world.

FREE SUPPORTERS get weekly tools, essays, and shared experiments to help you find safety and growth on your own terms.

PAID SUPPORTERS unlock deeper dives, live calls, personal archives, and extended offerings like Healing Out Loud Community Zooms, 101 Kits and Guides, my unpublished memoir Maura and Me, and deep resources for holding yourself and others in collective care. This helps sustain keep The Healing Lab and keeps it accessible to anyone who needs it.

If you cannot afford a paid subscription and find these resources may help you, please email hi@the-healing-lab.com and you will be added, no questions asked. Cost should never be a barrier to accessing healing resources.

Come experiment with us.

About the Author

Hi, I’m Kate. I’m a writer, speaker, storyteller, mental health activist, and public health strategist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

I’m also a dog mom/service handler, absolute goofball, enthusiastic leisure athlete, avid dork dancer, and daily cold plunger. My dogs are my children, and thankfully, my parents have three nephews, so please don’t ask me if I’m going to have kids for their sakes the next time you see me at the deli counter. All good there.

I am also a born and raised Vermonter and still live here to this day with my wonderful, environmental scientist nerd of a husband and our two pups – Waffle (Bernese Mountain Dog, 10 y/o) and Tugboat (English Labrador, 4 y/o).

I never imagined having even 500 readers, so to be here with over 10,000 of you after serializing my first memoir, Maura and Me — well, it is still quite literally unfathomable to me.

I am joined in this project by my partner, Amy, who serves as an editor, sounding board, and friend.

So, one more time, just in case: What a gift to be here with you.

One small thought…

Please know — whether you choose to stay or not, I am so grateful you are here now. Just by reading these words, you have helped make my wildest dream come true: to be free not only on the page, but in life.

And with that, just as I said every day in the ward and every day since:

I wish you a day.

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

Kindly,
Kate