It wasn’t until I began writing my 51st Love Letter that I really thought about mental health and the kink community. I started this website to be a voice of clarity, inclusion, and understanding. I wanted to help people realize how multilayered we all are, and how those layers are all worthy of celebration. Unfortunately, leather, fetishes, and kink are all quite shrouded in secrecy and stigmas, reinforcing the harmful sense of otherness we as members of the kink family experience from time to time.
It’s time we start talking honestly about mental health. It isn’t going to be an easy or comfortable conversation, but open, honest communication is the foundation upon which all healthy relationships are built and we all deserve that.
I am working on some new content that I hope will help start a conversation surrounding mental health, opening the way for people to feel more empowered to take ownership of their circumstances like I did earlier this year when I swallowed my pride and began taking Lexapro, a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) that treats depression and anxiety.
If you are living with unmet mental health needs, or maybe you’ve been taking meds to treat them for years and no one knows, I want you to know that you’re not alone. Your otherness is beautiful and it makes you who you are – a unique, complicated, fascinating, and perfectly imperfect human.
Never forget that I love you, and that excludes no one.
Love,
