Learning a new way to live

Hello my loves 🏳️‍🌈 

Happy Juneeeee! The second month in a row that I get to claim as my own. Birth month may be over but now it’s PRIDE and we’re out here being fruity!

This past week was interesting. I did really well for much of May, mentally speaking, but over the past eight or nine days, I’ve started having occasional shifts back into depression. The good news is we’re just about two weeks out until I start my ketamine treatments! (If you want to learn more about that and/or donate to my Gofundme, you can!)

We’re dropping a new podcast episode tomorrow, featuring the one and only Kamilah Cole (wooo!), so go ahead and follow us on Instagram, or subscribe on Spotify or even Apple podcasts to catch it when it drops! We’ve got a verryyyy exciting end-of-season run of episodes upcoming, and you’re GOING to want to catch up on them!

Final note — don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube where, come July, you’ll be able to catch video interviews with some of my favorite romance authors!

From the heart 💗

Let’s talk about romanticizing life

I posted on my Instagram story earlier this week to ask for tips on “romanticizing the mundane.”

The impetus for that question was my realization that I’m living my life from moment to moment — and by “moment,” I do mean BIG moment — and then feeling despair in the in-between time. This is aligned with the knowledge that my mental health is manageable when I’m active, whether that means engaged in reading a book, writing a story, talking to friends, or some other activity that requires all my attention, but the second I take a breather…I flounder.

This is not the way I’d like to live my life. I want to learn to exist in the silence, in the alone moments, without immediately spiraling into doom and wanting to die. Life is more than just big events and celebrations and highs. It’s also more than the lows, the deep valleys, the moments of sorrow.

Life — life happens in the in-between, too. There is beauty in the moments spent cleaning the dishes or taking a long, luxurious shower or juuuust waking up and lying in bed and breathing in the early-morning air and knowing there’s a whole day ahead of you. There is beauty in time spent with my own thoughts and no one else.

I’ve lost the capacity for finding that beauty and joy. But I want to regain it. I want to celebrate even when it doesn’t feel like a big deal. More than that, I want to know that I’m okay even if something exciting and distracting isn’t happening.

For years, I’ve practiced the art of distracting myself from my depression, and that has been a true life-saving coping mechanism. I think that I might be ready now to learn how to enjoy the non-distraction again.

We’ll see how this goes…

From the question box ❓

Should YA books have spice?

No <3.

From the shelf 📚

Swift and Saddled, by Lyla Sage

What to say about Swift and Saddled…I loved this book. So much. It’s a small-town cowoby romance, the second in the Rebel Blue Ranch series, and this one really built on what the first book started, with so much more of family and home and community to it.

Wes Ryder has depression and Ada Hart thinks she’s just stopping by Meadowlark for a big project that’ll kickstart her career and the rest of her life away from her past. I adored the way the two of them came together and held each other and loved each other. Wes Ryder can have rights, what a man. And Ada Hart! Hottest woman in the world, I swear. She’s prickly and funny and thinks no one could like her and has tattoos and just 🥵.

I recommend this book, but I do think you should start with Done and Dusted if you haven’t read it yet!

Alla prossima 👋

I’m fresh outta thoughts for the week.

— Karis xoxo