What have you been up to these last couple of months? Share freely any publication news you may have, and please include any links you’d like us to include.

My past few months have been focused on teaching and performing. I teach in the music department at Milligan University. Spring semester is a busy time in a collegiate music department. We have lots of end-of-year performances. I conducted the musical Little Women and a spring orchestra concert in honor of Earth Day. Grades have been submitted so I’m on a bit of a break from teaching for a few months. It was also a fruitful writing and publishing time for me with both essays and poetry. I also started a newsletter on Substack. I was reluctant to start it because I didn’t think I had the necessary time to invest in the community there, but it has been lovely and affirming. Here is the link to my Substack newsletter titled Notes Between Notes. https://kelliedbrown.substack.com/

Here are recent publication links.

Poetry:
Flowering Benedictions
Still Life in C Minor
Caritas

Essays:
In Flight (micro)
Sitting on Ruins
Margaret Dryburgh’s The Captives’ Hymn
The Siren (micro)

 

 

What are your long-term creative plans? Are you working on something big and secret or taking it day by day?

I am working on a memoir about my healing journey from complex trauma that came about because of my mother’s mental illness. This is the large project that I work on as I have the capacity to. It takes a lot of emotional and spiritual energy. It is helpful for me to work on smaller projects like poems and essays at the same time to both give myself a restorative break and so that there is the satisfaction of completion. 

 
 

What’s the status of your mental health these days? It’s in all ways prosaic to say that we live in trying times. How is the zeitgeist responsible? What are some actionable ways in which you’re taking steps to quiet the void, if any? (If it’s a glass of wine and an episode of  Mad Men at the day’s end, that counts, please know that).

The absurdity in American politics makes everything harder. It means that I have had to cut out watching the news altogether and that I have to be selective about how much social media I take in. Writing is where I am finding the most calm from the storm. I am also trying to do small things that are helpful as I can, whether it is a putter around the yard talking to my trees or exchanging funny memes with a friend. I am also trying to be gentle in my self-talk and to give myself credit for everything I accomplish in a day. I make a mental list at night and congratulate myself for drinking water, for taking my medication, for flossing my teeth, etc. 

 
 

 

What is something you’d like readers to take away from your work in regards to mental health advocacy, discussion, or criticism?

One of the hardest things for people to understand who are not dealing with mental health issues either in themselves or someone in their life is how it is not black and white. They so quickly want to offer up what seems to them an easy solution— “You should do….” or “Why don’t you try…” Everything is messier than that. It lives in the gray zone. If there was a straightforward solution, we would have already done it. So, I hope to encourage people that just because recovery is not linear doesn’t mean that recovery isn’t happening. 

 

 

Why do you create, still, despite the climate and political current and pervasive doubt we’re inscripted to?

The most honest answer is because I can’t stop myself from creating. I am driven to it. It is when I am my truest self, and I love that person. 

 

 

When was the last time you told your psychiatrist or therapist something you were afraid to disclose? In your own words, how do you feel about going up against the stigma?

I am fortunate to have a wonderful therapist with whom I’ve worked with for 15 years. I look forward to my sessions because I feel free to share any and everything with her.