The onset of AI has had me rethinking every aspect of my work. As someone who pretends to be artistic, from time to time, my poetry or written pieces, have been most on my mind of late. For those of you who have followed me for many years, you all know I love to write, but the truth is that writing heals me.

My writing allows me to release all the pain I can absorb from this terribly hard work. So, I’ve had to think of how I can still write, but also reach new people, all while ensuring they don’t think my work isn’t mine.

So here I am, doing a new piece I wrote this weekend on video, which is my one true nemesis. No one loves to watch themself on screen, but to fight the machine, I will do what I must.

This piece is rough and real and raw and not for the faint hearted.

“Mental Health is Unwell”

Dedicated to my dear friend, Gordon Corsetti, a once true beacon of Hope. I miss your light.

Mental Health has harmed me. I once showed up, very different. More open, more me. Then, over and over again, I learned that I was not allowed to be. 

As a story, I was encouraged to speak, to cry, to even wail openly for all the world, most often in front of strangers. Strangers, I was convinced I should empower by my courage through sharing. So I did. I spoke, I muttered more often than not, especially at first, but I walked through every door they opened, smiling… at least until I shared. I broke myself open again and again, not for me. But because I was told that was how I was supposed to help. My pain was the salve of salvation. But when I began to edit, to condense, to help myself by shortening my story for my own wellbeing, my power was gone. I knew I needed to help, but retelling my trauma wasn’t the answer for me.

I thought if I learned everything about the work, the research, the practice, maybe my story would not be my only use. So I read, I watched, I listened, and learned. I still do. I wanted to understand, to know, to be able to go toe to toe, with the “experts” and create. When I first became curious, I asked questions. They told me nonwords. Nonanswers, said in circles upon circles. I felt lost, and out of my depth. I felt like I couldn’t possibly understand because there was something about my experience that made me less suitable, less learned, less capable. I realize now I was never meant to follow. 

Still, I had only hoped to learn and help. My mistake was thinking I could learn from them. All while they only ever intended to shove me on stage with words of false encouragement and the appearance of belief. They wrung me out to save the world, but never checked to see what I was slowly becoming. A tokenized trauma mascot, a one-story pony. I wish I had seen them for what they were back then, maybe my heart wouldn’t have had to become so closed off, like it has today.

Still, I wanted to learn more because the stage is skin deep. It is the facade of action backed by awareness. Underneath it is the truth of change, but in order to touch truth, you must aggressively address the challenge. It must be done head-on. If only I had realized those “claimed to be competent” carers had never actually cared. Perhaps if my young and awe-struck self had seen, I would not have suffered from the hands of this field as I did. 

I could say my learned experience about this field was unique, but after a decade in these spaces and hundreds upon hundreds of stories, I know we are many. We are countless. We are multitudes. Those who were harmed and those still being harmed. Those who are hoping to be titled healers, by the ones who wield only titles. Those whom we call “healers” ignore the depth and damage of true harm. Because we do not know what actual growth and healing looks like and when it is introduced into this cancerous place, we do everything we can to snuff it out. No matter how incrementally small it might start out to be. For true growth, requires insight and exploration. It forces us to first look inward at the real demons of what stops us from being human. 

Healing is the scariest thing we could ever endeavor, and to be healed… the most often unimaginable, well, it produces a seeming second sight. We grow to where we not only see ourselves but one another for who we truly are, the broken children shoved deep, deep down, screaming so desperately at the dimmed down adults we pretend to be. The dimmed-down adults we once swore we would never become, but here they are, everywhere.

These safe spaces are too often anything but. They are scrawled over scars that scream at us nonstop, so we never have the capacity to stand the silence required to do the work we all desperately claim to do. We cannot help others if we have not first helped ourselves, but we cannot help ourselves because the pain that was once inflicted on us against our wills was so great that it broke every possible future we pretend we now live out loud. 

And hurt people, hurt people. 

It may be slight, or just a tad small, or medium, or worse. It might be lies, upon lies, we hope no one ever sees for what we truly are. It might be positions of power, used to punish those who can smile, while we cower away through endless complaints. It might even be things so unimaginably intentional and disgustingly inhumane, because it reveals that we can no longer even see another human being across from us. All while we lie openly about how utterly deeply we care about everyone’s lives and livelihoods.

This space is unwell, and for many, it is right now, at this very moment, a living hell. 

But if you’re already in hell, you might as well walk through the fucking fire and taste the truth of what Heaven on Earth could actually be. Search through yourself for the answers you carry because the answers grow from out of the pain. They break through like a ripping force, thorns thrashing out of your painted-on skin. Your plastered-on smiles. They pierce you from the inside out and make you have to admit your truth… and don’t you dare think for a second that you won’t have to admit your truth, to yourself, and to others. You must, all of it. Every single word.

Not necessarily on stage, or even all in one person, but you might find your mouth speaking against your will in bits and pieces as you try to violently sew it shut. It will gnash through the thread, and speak against your will. Because healing, has but one path, through. And healing wants out. It wants out of you.

The truth must be owned; over, and over, blatantly so, otherwise we cannot live what we say we do. We must admit we have been small. We have been mean. We have made mistakes. 

I have been small. I have been mean. I have made mistakes. 

We have not learned, sometimes stubbornly but most often secretly. We must tell the outside forces of our inside natures, and then, Dear god, oh no, we must work against them. Not only for us, but for all the others. Not one, not a few, not the ones only like you, but ALL of the others. The same small, the same mean, that you once were not long ago. But also, the scared, and the lonely, and the not so quite “normal”, the ones other than you.

We must, be a beacon of constant light on all the wrong so the wrong will slink back into the night. 

But the wrong’s one and only goal, is to extinguish the light. 

If you are a light, please. I beg you with all I am, shine. Shine bright. Shine so fucking bright… but know everyone will see you. They will see. They will blame you. They will hate you. They will harm you. Yes, you, this magnificent light. They will hate you for all you do for them, because you show the world they have not yet truly seen the light that could emit from within them.

But they must see you, to know you exist as a beacon of what is truly the defining characteristic of this overly used word we always call Hope. 

YOU, are our only hope. The pain that pushed through and bore out from true healing. 

To do this work, you must first do your work. Then, and only when you are ready, you must protect every aspect of what you healed. Because this space is rife with harm and it will break you in new ways that make all your old wounds feel small. Your ability to heal though, is the power we need. But we won’t admit what we need, not to you or ourselves. So you must do the hardest thing, and fight our very nature so we can finally grow, flourish and feel. 

Please, do not give up on us. You are the hope that heals. 

Susie Reynolds Reece, May 24, 2026