I write like no one’s reading. Except, you are. And holy wow, what a gift that is to me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that sounds cheesy (AF). I really do. It sounds like a line out of some 90s romcom (which I would love), but it really is true.

Eleven years ago, after a decade of intermittent psychosis and psychiatric disability, 21 psychiatric hospitalizations, and a suicide attempt, my doctors told me that I would only survive in a locked psychiatric ward. So, to be here with you now feels pretty darn remarkable.

On top of that, though I have done an immense amount of behavioral therapy and self-work since then to re-enter the world, I live with PTSD dissociative disorder — a condition that severs the mind and body connection and impedes my ability to integrate memories successfully. This means that even though I am happily married, have a beautiful community of friends, am forever accompanied by two owner-trained service dogs, and now work at the Chan School as a strategist running public health campaigns, I cannot yet integrate these truths into my understanding of self because my body is trapped somewhere back in that decade. And, even though it sounds like its out of some wild science fiction book, it’s where I find myself each day – consumed with the belief that I am one misstep away from a life of psychiatric incarceration and the only people who will ever read my writing are those who are forced to do so in mandatory group therapy.

All of that to say, when I say, holy wow, what a gift to have you here with me — I really do mean it.

This newsletter is a project built in pursuit of the present moment and my own self-reclamation with the hope that it serves you too.

Here we will explore and experiment with the many ways that humans of all kinds connect with themselves, their bodies, and the world around them.

Each week, The Healing Lab community will be offered an experiment to try and an accompanying writing prompt. We will first explore nervous system regulation and then move on to learning about additional techniques and modalities – holistic, therapeutic, and biomedical – to empower our understanding of the many different ways that humans can navigate stress, emotional pain and suffering.

My hope with this project is to offer a map of all the different paths we can walk through pain so that we can make a truly informed decision about whatever path/s we choose to take for ourselves.

Though I fully recognize that these experiments and learnings will never fix the broken systems we currently live in and face on a daily basis, it is my hope that some of these techniques can offer us a refuge within ourselves so that one day soon we can come together as a community and tackle these injustices once and for all.

Now, I want to make one thing very — very — clear:

Although the information shared here will always be rooted in evidence-based science, this project is not a replacement for therapy or medical treatment whatsoever. This project is also entirely agnostic. It is not here to prioritize, prescribe, or pressure you into doing anything or tell you the right next step about how to manage your pain. That is a decision for you and your doctor to decide together.

Instead, this project aims to amplify the many different paths you can take through that pain and empower you to make an informed decision about which paths you choose to take, all the while reminding you that everyone walks a different path in their healing — each as valid, varied, and beautiful as the next.

So, if you, like me, are searching for different ways to weather heartbreak and hard times, darkness and fear, and the overwhelming experience of being a deeply feeling human being on earth, The Healing Lab is a project for you.

And do know — whether you join me or not, your resilience is as innate as your breath. And although I would never presume to get your fight, from my own trenches, I see you in it and wholeheartedly believe in us both.

Kindly,

Kate

Each week, The Healing Lab offers:

• A Weekly Experiment
  A practice designed to support your nervous system and explore healing. Experiments might include somatic experiencing, breathwork, vagus nerve activation, grounding techniques, or fear-facing exercises. These practices honor both individual healing and the importance of community connection — because co-regulation is just as vital as self-regulation.

• A Reflection Prompt
  Thoughtful prompts to help you tune into your body, mind, and emotions. These prompts invite self-awareness and introspection, helping you notice how the week’s practice resonates with your unique experience.

• Additional Reading
  Links to articles, personal essays, and scientific literature that pertain to the week’s experiment. Sometimes, that might include a vulnerable story from yours truly, reflecting on my own experience. Other times, this might include a personal essay, poem, or article relating to the healing experience. The goal of this section is to remind us all that healing isn’t linear — it’s personal, imperfect, and deeply human.

Paid subscribers make my work and this free resource possible.

In addition to underwriting the project, monthly, paid subscribers will also receive:

• Healing Out Loud

  Healing Out Loud is a gathering where we share our writing, art, and experiences with the monthly experiments. It is a place to find solidarity in the messy magic of healing. Healing Out Loud is hosted on Zoom. Everyone is welcome to share their stories though no one is required to share or even be on video during the session.

• One edition of long-form content that explores the month’s focus

  This will be a podcast episode, guest essay, or interview about how the individual navigates their own healing experience, especially during these recent hard times.

• Access to the archives

  • Maura and Me — the memoir I serialized and wrote here over the course of the last year

  • 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

  Subscribe

About the Author

Hi, I’m Kate. I’m a writer, speaker, storyteller, mental health advocate, 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 about 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, 3 y/o).

As I sit here, free and well(ish) on solid ground eleven years after I was told I would only survive my health condition in a locked ward, I have to say – which I will say again and again because I still can’t believe it — Wow. what a gift to be here with them, and now, you too.

The idea for this project was first born on the pages of my journal. I was in the psychiatric ward for the third or fourth time (if only I dated those darn pages). I was hallucinating, struggling with thoughts of suicide and self-harm, and paralyzed by fear that I would never get better.

I was also deeply confused. Everywhere I turned — my doctors, the research, my family — I was told that therapy and my medication would help me feel better. And yet, even as I practiced every therapeutic lesson with discipline and took every medication exactly as it had been prescribed, I kept feeling worse.

Around this time, as I weathered my fifth year of treatment and the worst year of mental health symptoms I’d experienced to date, I became convinced that the way we thought about mental health and mental illness was not wholly accurate and the ways the doctors discussed me and my condition with words like — “fix,” “eliminate,” and "eradicate" — were born out of a need to control me and my symptoms instead of honor me and my true needs. At the time, these thoughts were chalked up to manic-induced paranoia, and I did my best to hide them thereafter for fear I would be sent to a locked unit for a 90-day hold. But nevertheless, I still wrote about this belief at length. After a particularly tough care team meeting, I scribbled these words:

Beneath those questions, to cope with being caged in a locked unit, I scribbled a whole slew of dreams. Some were undoubtedly a bit out there. I will never marry Legolas from Lord of The Rings, after all. But others were quite thoughtful and astute.

One such dream was The Healing Lab — a place where I could find all the different ways that humans move through emotional pain — a place where health insurance didn’t dictate the next right step — and instead, I did.

This dream, scribbled in (oh-so-kate) hot pink pen glory, recognized the limitations of the modern mental health care system and its for-profit model. It also questioned the heavy use of medication and held a powerful acknowledgment of the lesson the many people I had met in psychiatric wards had taught me: Everyone walks a different path in their healing.

So now, I’m finally honoring that dream and building this out.

I never imagined having even 500 readers so to be here with over 10,000 of you is still quite literally unfathomable to me.

So, one more time, in case you really didn’t get it.

Thank you so much for being with me here and now.

Kindly,

Kate

To learn more about me and my work, hire me for a speaking event or just say hi, visit my website here.