The Story

There was a day when I needed help and couldn't find any.

I called three therapists' oﬃces. Every one of them went to a machine. Leave your name and number. Someone will call you back within 48 to 72 hours.

Two never called back. The third called days later to say the wait was six weeks.

I was not going to be all right in six weeks. I needed someone that afternoon.

I've thought about that day a lot since — not the news itself, but the hours after it. Sitting with a phone in my hand, slowly understanding that there was no one on the other end of it.

I was in my own home. I had people who loved me. And I have never felt so alone in my life.

In the days that followed, I needed something to hold on to.

So I made myself a shirt.

It said: Giving up is not an option. You must persist.

It wasn't a design. It was a sentence I needed someone to say to me. So I put it where I would have to see it.

I wore it.

It was a promise to myself. Not that everything would be fine, but that I could take things one day at a time.

Finding my way through that season took about a year and a half.

I learned to breathe on purpose. I wrote things down and shredded them afterwards. I went for walks and stayed out longer than I meant to.

None of it fixed anything quickly. It made the days possible, one at a time.

breathe. feel. persist.

It isn't a slogan. It's the order I actually did it in.

Mimondo is that promise, made for someone else.

Six pieces. Each one carries words I needed someone to say to me.

If you're in one of those days — if you've called and no one answered, or you haven't called because you already know what the machine will say — I'm not going to tell you that everything will be okay, or pretend to know what you should do.

I don't know your life.

I only know what it felt like to need someone and hear only a machine. No one should have to hear that.

I made something that reminded me I could take the next small step.