My Story
For years, I thought needing help made me less strong.
I've carried a lot of things I didn't say out loud — grief, loss, abuse, my relationship with food and my body, my mental health, my physical health, and stretches of time so dark I didn't think I'd make it through them. For most of that, I told almost no one.
It wasn't that I didn't know help existed. I did. I just believed that reaching for it — admitting I couldn't carry this alone — would make me less strong. That needing support was its own kind of failure. So I white-knuckled through what I could, and quietly went without the one thing that might have made it easier.
I don't believe that anymore. But I know exactly how long it takes to unlearn, and exactly how much it costs to carry things that were never meant to be carried alone.
So I built The Line Between Project to be the place I needed and never let myself use — no diagnosis required, no performance to keep up, no faith tradition assumed or excluded. Every resource I was too afraid to reach for, offered without judgment, so that if you're standing where I stood, this can be the door that's actually open.
Something I wish I'd understood sooner
Telling someone you're struggling isn't the same thing as letting them help. I used to think saying the words out loud — “I'm not okay,” “I need help” — was the hard part, and refusing to actually do anything about it afterward was just me being private, or not ready yet. It wasn't. It put the people who loved me in an impossible spot.
They didn't know where the boundary was. They wanted to trust me — to not push, not hover, not treat me like I couldn't be honest with them. But they also didn't want anything bad to happen to me. Watching someone say they're struggling and then watch them do nothing different isn't reassuring. It's confusing, and it's frightening, and there's no instruction manual for how to love someone through that.
I didn't get that back then. I thought getting help was something I could do for myself, eventually, on my own timeline — my business, no one else's. I didn't realize it would also lift something off the people who were quietly scared for me. Helping yourself isn't separate from helping the people trying to help you — a lot of the time, it's the only thing that actually can.
Helping people put words to what they've been carrying — through reflection, community, psychology, and practical resources. Not because I have it all figured out. Because I know exactly what it costs not to.
Today, that means an editorial journal I hope reads more like a quiet magazine than a mental health website. A resource hub organized around who you are instead of what's wrong with you. A place to leave something you've never said out loud — privately, anonymously, or to a real person who will write back. And a growing community of people who've decided that honesty is worth practicing, even when it's hard.
This is one person's project, built out of my own struggle — not a big organization with all the answers. But if it helps even one person feel less alone the way I needed to, it's already done what I built it to do.