Frank Brown

I have always struggled with emotional regulation. I was subject to runaway feelings, scary racing thoughts, from a pretty early age. Scary things that I was not able to dispatch on my own. Fear was such an overwhelming feeling for me, I was afraid to be afraid, if that makes any sense. My imagination produced incipient catastrophes from relatively... See more

Seeing self-criticism and self-doubt as things that play out naturally rather than fires to be immediately doused help me take them less seriously and less literally.

Nadia Bolz-Weber’s wise words: “Teach from your scars, not your wounds.” Yes. I need some distance in order to figure out what the heck is happening in the first place!

I finished a notebook (Field Notes United States of Letterpress edition) and typed up anything worth remembering.

Ultimately, trying to control the narrative about my own coolness is like trying to throw a football: I cannot do it.

⁠

⁠

I didn’t begin a life of manipulation and deceit to gain anything other than acceptance. I wasn’t trying to trick anyone out of love or money, or really anything tangible, I just wanted to make them happy. I had come to believe this meant adopting a certain persona, trying to become the thing that each and every person needed and loved, even... See more

Conservatives also believe themselves to be factory-default humans (with obvious demographic implications) and everyone else to be aberrations, errors, and defects in need of recall.

Have you been able to forgive yourself? To accept yourself for who you are and the choices you’ve made? And have you forgiven others for being who they are, with their limitations? Are you able to accept life as it is? Not situations that shouldn’t be tolerated, but the particular life you were given and have gone on to create? Have you been able... See more