Welcome to the Big Feels Club!
Hello you! Yes you! Honor Eastly here, to tell you that yes it's finally happening! The Big Feels Club is arriving into existence!
For some of you you'll be like "finally!" and for some of you you might be like "wait on, what is The Big Feels Club? Who are these attractive young scallions? And why are they in my inbox?!?" Well friends, all the answers are here in this wee email. To start with, you're getting this email because you've asked to be on the mailing list for the Big Feels Club. Maybe you came to our book club for feelings, or to that panel event we ran about the future of mental health in Australia? Or you signed up via our spiffy new website? Or mayyyyybe you've just come across myself (Honor Eastly) or Graham Panther, and one of us consensually stole your email address after we had a conversation with you about feeeelinnngs?
However you came to being here, it's nice to have you.
Think of this email as being like the starter pack that you get in the snail mail when you sign up to a new energy company. This is the who / what / where of The Big Feels Club right now. If you're short on time, most importantly, you'll be getting little treats in your inbox from us every few weeks, with cool ideas about feelings and distress, and how to get up some mornings. For more info from us, read on.
So who is this "us"??
Me (Honor) and Graham, aka two keen beans trying to change the conversation about feelings. When this photo was taken I'd just finished an interview, and Graham was on the phone to the Government trying to get an invoice paid. IMO he looks way too cool to be currently talking to the Government about invoices.
Many of you probably already know me, I'm Honor Eastly. My bio bills me as a "professional feeler of feelings", which is way closer to the truth than the throwaway line suggests. A few years back I released a video of myself in a psych hospital that people liked quite a bit, and since then I've been writing and speaking and campaigning about messy life experiences. I also work on the other side of the lanyard-only area, where I specialise in the lived experience workforce, and trying to get more voices like yours in to make services more human, and more useful.
The idea for The Big Feels Club came out of an experiment one-off group I ran last year with Rose (hey Rose if you're reading this!). What I wanted was to make a place where I could unpack what all this mental health stuff meant to me, and where all my weirdness wasn't seen as a health issue, but as a philosophical one. A place that was less "now we're going to learn to sit with feelings of Deep Existential Dread" and more "what's fundamentally wrong with having feelings of Deep Existential Dread anyway?"
I wanted a place that went way beyond the classic "it's like a broken leg in your brain", and waded hard into the territory of "how do you make sense of *anything* when you feel constantly and irreparably blown apart all the time? And what does this mean for your ability to have a good life?"
A place where I could turn things over in the company of others who are also turning over their messy life stuff, wondering what shape they'll come out next.
And that kind of a place is exactly the kind of place we're trying to make.
Since then I've done a lot more thinking about how on earth to make that place into existence, and I've also scored myself a collaborator. Enter stage left, Graham Panther.
By day, Graham is a consultant in the mental health sector. He works with government and NGOs to design better ways of supporting people through tough times. By night (and also by day) he is a self-described Spelunker of the Pit of Collective Existential Angst. To witness his spelunking first hand, check out this article he wrote on the ten-year anniversary of his nervous breakdown, here's a little bit:
"Psychiatrists have a tough gig. You go to them at your absolute worst, desperate for something they almost definitely can’t give you: answers. Answers to the biggest questions our little minds can dream up. What do these experiences mean? And why are they happening to me?
You ask them for meaning, but they can only give you explanations. Mechanics. Theories about chemical imbalances or internal switches getting stuck. This can help sometimes. It just didn’t work for me.
I’d tried a range of pills to get my old self back — old school anti-anxiety meds, antidepressants, low-dose antipsychotics, even anti-seizure medication. I tried ‘anti’ anything. There were some benefits, and a lot of drawbacks.
One day I realised something. I wasn’t just swallowing a pill, I was swallowing a whole way of seeing myself. Every time I’d take a pill to quash my anxiety, or limit one of my episodes, I was sending myself a loud and clear message: these experiences are bad, they need to be suppressed."
Graham will be holding down the fort on the newsletter front, while I finish off the first season of Starving Artist, the podcast I'm currently working on. But I'll be in here, adding thoughts and ideas and weird videos I find on the internet, don't you worry!
So what are we actually doing?
Here's the pitch. There are so many ways to think about human distress, and many names we use. Nervous breakdowns, mental health issues, spiritual awakenings. As if these experiences aren't bewildering enough, how do we know who to listen to, to make sense of it all? We wanted to create a space to explore different views about crisis and distress, in the company of fellow travellers.
Big, uncomfortable feelings can be isolating, lonely. But in our experience, they're also an opportunity for profound connection with other people who've been there too. We want to make those connections easier to come by. And we have a few ideas.
For now we're experimenting with a few 'little bets', to see what people want more of. One of them is a Book Club for Feelings we've been running (details on how to join are at the bottom of this email), and one of them is this very newsletter you are reading right this minute. For the newsletter, every few weeks we'll send you one or two ideas about crisis, distress, and big feelings that's designed to get your head thinking.
What's coming up?
Our Book Club for Feelings is currently filled to the brim with a bunch of babes, but we're thinking about ways we could start more if there's enough interest. If you'd like to join a book club for feelings, reply to this email saying 'I WANT TO JOIN A BOOK CLUB FOR FEELINGS', and let us know where in Melbourne / Australia / The World you are.
We've got a few other things on the boil so watch this space.
If you have friends who you think would be into a newsletter about feelings, or the book clubs, or the whole idea, forward them this email! If you are that friend you can sign up at our website.
That's all from us from now. From one big feeler to another, feelings be with you.
(and also with you).
<3