I didn't set out to build a website.
I didn't set out to write a book, either.
I was having a bad day. For people who have lived with depression and PTSD, a bad day can quickly spiral. But after years of suffering and coming through the other side, I've learned to catch it early — change direction, shift my thinking, give myself somewhere else to go. That day, I started writing.
After five days I couldn't think of doing anything else. It turned out I was writing a book. A memoir. I'm sixteen chapters in as I write this, with two or three still to go.
Somewhere around chapter six, I started to reflect on something I now understand intimately — that there are millions of people currently going through exactly what I'm writing about. Not just the sufferers, but the people beside them. The partners, the family members, the friends who watch someone they love disappear and have no language for what they're witnessing. Being the person I am, that meant finding a way to reach them.
So I started writing. Not the memoir — something different. Materials that weren't clinical, weren't taken from textbooks. Written from the inside of the experience. They're slowly gathering in a section I've called A Place to Understand and Be Understood. Because there's something that happens when you read about your own experience described by someone who has lived it rather than studied it. You don't just understand it. You recognise it.
But I also knew that there are times when written materials, conversation, even company aren't enough. I'd been there. In those moments, something else was needed — and so I kept thinking.
That's where Dear Hope came from.
When I was in the depths of it, I used to have a need. To take whatever was stuck in my head and just put it somewhere. Not for people to read. Not to be analysed. Just to put it down and send it. The thought of doing that gave me a tiny sense that something, somewhere, might catch it. Might hear it.
I still have that need sometimes.
Dear Hope is a place to do exactly that. Ritualised. Short. Immersive. A place to put something heavy down and send it out — not to be stored, not to be studied, not for anyone to read. Just out. I tried several versions before I found the one that felt right. I still use it. I can't fully explain why it helps. It just does.
When all of this started to take shape, I needed somewhere to put it. Somewhere people could find it. So I built this website.
I recovered. You can too.
It's why I built this. I hope it helps you.