Someone* I saw:

My therapist

Lorna Simpson, Good Twin, Evil Twin, 1989

If there’s one thing to know about me, it’s this: I’m a prepper.

In my early 20s, I read about the typical age-of-onset for mental health disorders and knew I needed to get into therapy—and fast. Because of my family history, I understood I was statistically more likely than most to encounter some form of mental illness. So I made a plan: get into therapy early. Build a wall. Build a moat. I thought, If I’m already in therapy, someone will be there to catch me if I fall.

Dear reader, I’ve survived two major mental health crises since then—and no amount of preparation could have fully readied me for the journeys each would demand.

This Friday will be my last day as a Curator at Pace Gallery. This chapter has given me so much—more than I could have planned for. I often called Pace my version of graduate school, and now, I find myself in a season of graduation. At the same time, a new chapter begins: I’ll be heading to actual graduate school this fall, moving to London after twelve years in New York City.

Since beginning my “preventative therapy” journey, I’ve watched my mental and physical health ebb and flow in ways I wouldn’t wish on others (ok, maybe… some others). Still, alongside the wreckage, I’ve managed to build a beautiful, hard-won life. There are excruciating moments I’ll likely never share online. But after my last long-term depressive episode in 2021 just before beginning my job, I was faced with a choice: die, or fight for a life that I could survive.

Now, as I prepare to leave New York—not just for a visit, but to live elsewhere—I am terrified.

This will be my first time living away from New York for more than a month since I arrived in 2013. And although I travel often (more than most would recommend), living somewhere new is a different kind of leap. I’m scared that this next step might be leading me toward danger, rather than deliverance.

The other day, my friend Justen sent me a video where someone said, “The more I heal, the less ambitious I am.” It left me spinning a bit, thinking about ambition—the root word ambire meaning “to go around,” from Roman politicians canvassing for approval.
Thinking about ambition as external validation has been clanging around in my brain, especially amid all the conversations about "Black excellence."

Lately, I’ve been spending time with Dr. Judith Joseph’s High Functioning: Overcome Your Hidden Depression and Reclaim Your Joy. In the book, Dr. Joseph defines High Functioning Depression (HFD) and its emotional architecture. I had to pause the audiobook after just a few chapters—the words felt too raw, like Dr. Joseph was speaking directly to me. (Like sis: why are you yelling at me?)

In her descriptions of maladaptive coping, I saw myself too clearly. Not with shame, but with shock—at how much of my survival had been engineered to look like success. Processing these realizations in therapy has given me—and the younger versions of myself—a little more breathing room. A little more language for the archive of survival I’ve been quietly building for years.

So, dear reader—this isn’t a newsletter about art today. It’s a letter about living.

It’s tempting to believe mental health follows a clear timeline—that crises have start and end dates, that strength or ambition will save us. It’s tempting to believe we control the map of our lives.

But if I’ve learned anything, it’s this: survival isn’t linear. Healing isn’t linear. Growth isn’t guaranteed. It’s easy to tell the hero’s tale once collapse is seemingly in your rearview.

After a recent therapy session, I wrote a note to my teenage self—who’s been tapping on my shoulder lately. Back in 2004, Baby K and her parents moved her to Middletown, Rhode Island to enroll as a boarding student at St. George’s School. Those four years are pure memoir fuel. I couldn’t see it then, but being admitted to meet a diversity quota wasn’t freedom—it was forced ambition. A stripping of agency I’m still healing from.

Y'all, I don’t have all the answers—even after tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours in therapy. I’m just writing to you all with the tenderness I often feel as I stumble into Spring.

I hope you’re not facing the future with rigid resolve or perfectionist ambition, but with tenderness—understanding that life is uncertain. We can prep. We can read. We can plan. But unless we meet ourselves with curiosity and compassion, there may never be true growth. And there may never be true survival.

Here’s to the beautiful, bewildering work of staying alive.