Welcome to the Circle

The Kickstarter is over, but you can get the book right here, right now:

https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Circle-Mental-Health-Book/dp/1698812779

"These pieces reflect deep compassion and committed empathy. Incredibly moving. I read it in one sitting." 

-Maggie D.

"The writing is full of emotion and one can feel that it's sprouting directly from your heart." 

-Satdeep G.

I never expected to wind up in a mental hospital, yet life threw me an unexpected turn. Mental illness is not a dead end, however. It can be a powerful beginning.

Mental health isn't easy to talk about. I wrote this book to help people on their personal journeys of illness and recovery. I wrote it for people whose loved ones are struggling. I wrote it to deepen compassion and acceptance for how mental illness can interrupt lives, but doesn't have to be their defining tragedy.

This is my story, and the multitude of lessons I've learned along the way. Dive into the essays, sit down with the poems, tick through the lists, and dig into the guides. I truly hope they add insight, understanding, empathy, and practical knowledge to your life.

I want to invite you into the conversation I've been having, for the last 7 years, about mental illness and mental health, recovery and redemption, life and loss, gratitude and hope.

This journey doesn't have an end-point. It's a conversation that spans a lifetime, and even generations. To heal and to grow, we need to pull up our chairs, sit down, speak our stories, and listen to the people around us.

Read the online version: welcometothecircle.net

EVERYTHING GOOD I WISH SOMEONE WROTE:

"A creative and passionate compilation, Welcome to the Circle is an indispensable guidedpost to treatment and recovery. It tells of masculinity unwound, resilience restored, and community centered. It is a treatise on acceptance, a call for deeper listening, and a spark for the movement of sharing our stories. 

Welcome to the Circle is a manifesto for empathy: a raw, honest, transformative and singular work of the heart. It is a lifelong project, born of personal suffering and self-expression imbued with the poetry of healing. With stepwise practices for growth, Welcome to the Circle offers vulnerable transparency as it stretches with inspiration into the spirit of every student and seeker. 

Patient and welcoming, playfully introspective, Welcome to the Circle is a breakthrough in reckoning with our complex humanity and a reaching wake-up siren for psychological diversity and a more wholistic understanding of growth.

Welcome to the Circle is a definitive debut, with wonder like Hafiz' ecstatic Sufi poetry, variety like Sherman Alexi's compelling collections, reflection like Ursula K. Legiun's investigative essays, and humor like Bo Burnham's raucous memes. It combines the resourcefulness of the National Alliance on Mental Illness with a psychological memoir that crushes stigma and charts a course for possibility, redemption, gratitude and hope."