Starter Packs
If you’re new(er) to my work (or not!), here are some recommended previously published works of mine that may be of interest to you … lots of my pieces touch on more than one theme … these are just lineaups I’ve curated, depending on your own interests ...
(The works I tend to recommend most and hear about most, say, are *starred.)
on Mental Health (Care)
My book, *A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia (Scribner), available in paperback, as an ebook, an audiobook (which I read in part, with my pre-T voice) and in French from Belfond … I always encourage folks to request it at your local library and / or buy it from your favorite local bestseller, whether in person (always appreciated!) or via Bookshop.
My feature for *The Believer on electroshock/ECT from last fall. It’s a deep look at the wider debates to do with how we even decide what’s “true” about “mental illnesses” and their “treatment” … historically in our society, and presently — and in our popular culture.
My article for The Cut: “It’s Not Just Britney” about the past and present of psychiatric patient civil rights (written during #freebritney in 2021).
The Kirkbride Plan: My reported 99% Invisible episode on the past (and future?) of mental health care in America. From 2021 but evergreen (other than my voice). (Note for 99PI episodes, I share the Spotify link because that’s the one I can find. Also note, I didn’t write the prose recaps on their site. They do have episode transcripts available there as well.)
“Applied Bob Studies”: my 2020 story for This American Life on how Uncle Bob’s path inspired my own … in terms of moving to the country … and coming out, myself, at long last …
“Out of the Maze”: my essay for Guernica about the painting that’s on the AKOMP paperback, which hangs in the Bethlem Museum of the Mind — and about the artist who painted it. It’s an essay about my own journey grappling with commenting publicly on these topics.
My own, 10-episode podcast *Mad Chat, which is available only on YouTube (for the time being) and is highly recommended to anyone interested in these discussions. I co-created it in 2019 and it was beloved by even the NYT.
Just to note, for mental health professionals: You can hire me to speak or to consult … You may also want to listen to my (NEW!) interview on Cancel Me Daddy, or check out my op-ed for Assigned Media. In both I discuss being a psychiatric-focused report who’s also got my own experiences and identities. (Both could as easily be filed in the next section as well.)
on Gender & Transness
For This American Life, the *story of my singing voice, before and after Testosterone … see also my first story for TAL, described just above.
For Esquire: My essays on going to camp with *150 fellow trans man and working with a speech therapist to learn to speak ‘like a man,’ post-T (both free links, via the Wayback Machine), and *on mourning the trans boyhood I never got …
For Them: *“How Marie Kondo Helped Me Sort Out My Gender” about how I first started coming out as nonbinary, at about thirty … and: my column on my fear and indecision ahead of getting top surgery, “A Farewell To Boobs” (and its follow up, on learning to hate my (trans) body less, after that surgery …) … and “My Gmail Won’t Stop Deadnaming Me,” complaining about all the “stressful nonsense” that comes with being nonbinary/trans … and my open letter to brands begging them to sell trans and nonbinary folks … anything!
My essay for Lit Hub about the challenges of coming out “in public” as my first book also did …
For 99% Invisible: *Where Do We Go From Here? - my reported audio deep dive about the past and future of bathroom design, featuring many smart and cool people including Susan Stryker. Also see: my recent shorter, personal essay for Cosmopolitan “Learning to Pee at age 37” …
NEW! For Eater: “The Delicious, Life-Saving Joys of the Trad Trans Lifestyle” (could easily be filed with “mental health” above as well … )
on “Self-Care”
Listen to me discuss my whole “What’s Helping Today” premise more and my views on “mental health” and “self-care” more during this interview on the TED podcast, How to Be a Better Human: “Why We Should Rethink What Mental Health Means”
My newsletter, speaking of, is in general highly recommended to anyone interested in these topics. (Note: Don’t subscribe on substack bur rather on the newsletter’s new platform: beehiiv.)
Here’s a recent-ish re-introduction of the whole newsletter and my work (especially related to these topics).
Check out this (older) What’s Helping Today post describing my own daily self-care routine
Perhaps also (this also older) Dear Sandy advice column talking about how I started meditating after 20 years of … trying but … failing.
Also maybe check out: this older essay on running and my own mental health, for Bon Appétit …
This one for Them on my past and present relationship with doing yoga … and hating and loving my body
This old post on how I learned to not just tolerate but love baths …
My recent-ish short newsletter on breathing, a topic I’m often going on about, for many reasons. This one on small talk and addressing our actual feelings (during an era of catastrophe). Here’s a primer on guilt v. shame, one encouraging everybody to read Brené Brown if you’ve not already, as I’m often doing. Maybe check out this one on worry.
more on Families on
& Gender / Mental Health
I encourage you to read my book, AKOMP, or to even just check out some of the testimonials on this page to get a sense of why I say so …
See this (older) long response I wrote to a mother of a trans woman, who was worried about her daughter
See also this other advice column responding to another cis adult, worried about a vulnerable minor in their community, reflecting some more of my thoughts and experiences …
For parents of trans/gnc people, I highly recommend my Esquire essay about mourning my own trans boyhood …
For trans/queer/estranged folks especially, I recommend these (older) essays touching on “chosen families” and such, for Bon Appétit and for Them …
This older column about being trans and living as I do, in a rural place (and with access to rural community); also see my Eater essay
Here’s a WHT with some of my favorite memoirs that deal with tough topics like trauma …
for Media Professionals
& Media Consumers
Wanting Better Coverage
NEW! For Assigned Media re: psychiatry and trans people and who gets to decide like, what’s even true, big picture, when it comes to anyone who’s once or is now to whatever extent trapped in the DSM …
NEW! My interview on Cancel Me, Daddy re: transphobia in the media (listen/watch on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube) Also check out this long, two-part What’s Helping Today post, which I released along with the CMD interview (First, Second) analyzing transphobia and how we combat it in our media and our society. Note: This little post is perhaps a good place to start if you’re totally new to reading about my viral ‘cis allyship’ bsky situation …
My older but still-relevant essay on on my own errors when first reporting on “mental health care”, which I published on pharma journalist Robert Whitaker’s media site Mad in America (for context, you may want to read this long feature of mine on police violence committed against people with psychiatric disabilities, which it’s dissecting). See also my Guernica essay (which I described above).
This one for Roxane Gay’s Gay Magazine on it mattering the way we speak about “mental health” or if we even just casually use words like “insane” or “crazy.” (Medium log-in required.)
See my (older) op-ed for CNN about the media’s tendency to scapegoat people with psych disabilities for violent crimes, per the Right — and just how backwards that is …
Also worth checking out my aforementioned pieces for The Cut and The Believer re: the media’s errors when reporting on “mental health” and people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses … and anything else in my mental health section above, especially my book …
Here’s a recent WHT with recommended alternatives to the NYT and other outlets that are stubbornly transphobic … including recommended queer/trans independent outlets you all could consider supporting …
Note for fellow reporters/editors/producers especially: You can also hire me to speak or to consult with your media organization about how to make your “mental health” coverage better …
for Nature Lovers
& Green Thumbs …
My Eater essay about growing my own food, a love-letter to my garden and to my rural home in the Catskills Mountains…
My first This American Life story, about how and why I moved out here back when I did …
This long-ago first Dear Sandy advice column, responding to someone in Tasmania about being queer/trans in rural places … (from before I moved my newsletter off of substack; don’t subscribe on there)
Speaking of, my newsletter What’s Helping Today is recommended, as on there I’m often discussing my garden, and sharing photos and such …
For locals: I’ve got a super short but IMO great essay in this little Catskills & Hudson Valley Wildsam travel guide. My essay is about loving it here and about … birds (specifically the dawn chorus).
for Cooks & Bakers
My old but IMO still great *Ina Garten profile for BuzzFeed News, from 2016
My (aforementioned) Eater essay on growing my own food
And my (older) essay on my annual “Not Thanksgiving” tradition, for Bon Appétit …
My (also older) essay for BuzzFeed News about being a lifelong pie baker (an essay that could also be filed under mental health …)
My interview in Taste re: my online sourdough classes (which I live-streamed during lockdown in 2020)
You’re encouraged to subscribe to my newsletter What’s Helping Today, where I’m not infrequently sharing not only photos of stuff I’ve cooked or baked but also occasional recipes …
for Musicians &
Music Lovers
My book about Uncle Bob, who was huge into music (especially Hendrix) and was himself a talented musician, especially a guitarist … Hence on book tours I passed out hundreds of glow-in-the-dark AKOMP guitar picks to people …
You can hear tiny bits of Uncle Bob’s music (which sometimes readers do ask) both during this wonderful Organist story on AKOMP, produced by host Andrew Leland, and also in the AKOMP audiobook itself …
You should also probably listen to my This American Life story about my singing voice …
Here’s a playlist I made inspired by AKOMP …
I do release my own playlists, one public one a month nowadays, mostly long and ambient …
for Pop Culture Lovers
My (late) podcast Mad Chat is highly recommended — we only made 10 episodes, all evergreen, on various TV shows and movies and other such in terms of how they portray mental health-related topics: Bojack Horseman, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Six Feet Under, Reefer Madness, Frasier, Batman: The Animated Series, Killing Eve, Donnie Darko, the entire holiday of Halloween … and my guests included rad folks with lived experience, activists, journalists and other sorts writers, all people I adore chatting with about such topics — like … journalist Hannah Giorgis, Meredith Talusan, fiction writer and memoirist Esmé Weijun Wang, poet and memoirist Nichole Perkins, poet and speaker Sarah Kay, cannabis-focused journalist Amanda Chicago Lewis, comedian and TV writer Yassir Lester, and … podcast host and comedy writer, Tracy Clayton. I’ve explained this but for now it’s only available on YouTube (for now). It features my pre-T voice but otherwise I think it’s held up pretty well!
Here’s Mad Chat’s trailer if you want to check that out first.
for more re: mental health and culture, check out my Believer feature on electroshock / ECT digs into tons of portrayals of this technology and psychiatry in our (pop) culture — particularly well-known books, movies and TV shows.
Here’s a WHT mentioning some of my very favorite works of (comforting) pop culture.
on Psych Patient Civil Rights / “Mad Pride”
NEW! My opinion essay for Assigned Media on covering mainstream psychiatry as a science journalist, given my own “biases” (identities, experiences, diagnoses). Also see, my ‘21 article for The Cut about the psychiatric patient civil rights movement until then — especially when it comes to the public and media’s frequently repeated errors.
HIGHLY encouraged you read my book, AKOMP (see above for more).
Again, my big feature for The Believer mag (published fall ‘24) on the self-identified electroshock survivors and these same debates, focused upon perhaps psychiatry’s most controversial treatment still in use.
My long and older but evergreen reflection for Mad in America about my own errors when first attempting to parse truth from fiction regarding psychiatric patient civil rights. (This media organization is recommended to anyone interested in this subject matter in particular.)
My episode of Mad Chat with Caroline Mazel-Carlton of the Wildflower Alliance (which I discussed in The Cut article as well) is particularly recommended, as are my conversations with author Esmé Weijun Wang and also with Jonah Bossewitch (an activist with lived experience who’s got a PhD in psychiatric patient civil rights activism history).
I’d also recommend my writings on the related topic of cis allyship and how we create more of it. Also see this post on shame and how it impedes growth in the creating allies sense. Also see this long post about media corruption by transphobia and how we combat it. Also maybe check out this one, about someone who inspires me to speak up to bullies and against hate.
on Spirituality &
Mental Health / Gender
I’d highly recommend my book first and most of all. See above for about accessing it.
I’d recommend my writings on my own deal on topics like yoga and meditation — like this older one on how to start meditating and this also older one.
See my pieces about living in this rural place as a queer person and the spirituality of that for me, for lack of a better word. (This, the very first “Dear Sandy” column “On Queerness in Rural Places” and my same new-ish Eater essay.)
Also, I won’t spoil why, read my big Believer feature (to the end) …
for AKOMP lovers
Here’s a playlist I made inspired by the book …
Here are a few essays I wrote about my own journey of both completing the project and how it’s impacted me since, for example …
This essay for Guernica and on memory and madness and finding my own way with truth as regards psychiatric labels …
This reflection for Lit Hub about my own process of coming out (as nonbinary at first) as AKOMP also did.
My story on Uncle Bob’s path inspiring my own; my first for This American Life.
This essay for BuzzFeed Reader (RIP) about writing “mental health” and my own self-care routines, then.
This op-ed for CNN about the GOP’s scapegoating of psychiatric patients for their own eugenicist harms.
My Best Advice (For The Worst Days)…
My general purpose, concise: “Advice for Shitty AF Times”
My advice for *cis allies who feel despair about what’s happening to trans people …
An article wherein I was quoted on how trans people are surviving despair …
A long more advanced What’s Helping Today with advice for those times when the pain is really unbearable (I say therein but it’s more of a 201-level me-rant, but, sharing here nonetheless. If you’re new to my writings on these topics, you want to start for example here).
My direct words on suicide itself: “Promise Me You’ll Survive.” (As it mentions therein, you may want to read my big feature for The Believer, all the way to the end.) I also found Jonah Bossewitch’s analysis of suicide and Donnie Darko during our Mad Chat discussion quite fascinating, for anyone interested.
My words about breathing …
(which, if you can do it right now, just take a slow long deep out breath. or two or three …)
I also recommend this WHT shouting out my comforting things to watch and listen to and so forth.
Here’s another post reiterating my basic advice for worst days which tends to be: Just survive today.
Whoever’s reading this out there, especially if today’s really challenging, know I’m sending you love … always feel free to reach out, especially if that’d be of help to you … tell me what’s helping you today? I can’t always respond to what folks say to me, but I do enjoy hearing from you. xo SEA
