A newsletter about survival, storytelling, mental health, humor, and hope after ruin.
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A personal essay about autistic burnout, trauma, creative overwhelm, and the fear of disappearing. After a difficult week nearly pushed me to quit writing, I began rethinking what it means to be seen, to slow down, and to let the work truly reach people.
I spent a long time proving my generosity by how much of myself I was willing to give away. I am beginning to wonder whether disappearance should really be the price of belonging.
A Journal of Public Record, Municipal Alarm, Domestic Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, Literary Judgment & Canine Administration
A personal essay on psychological abuse and the self-hatred it leaves behind, and why the voice doesn't leave just because the marriage did.
I speak four languages fluently. Nobody ever taught me the fifth.
The hardest part of impostor syndrome was not doubting what I could do. It was doubting what I knew.
DELIVERED BY SHADOW, AGE FOURTEEN
A recording from Christopher Carazas's live video
A recording from Christopher Carazas's live video
My 14-year-old German Shepherd has opened a formal review of my conduct. I am not permitted to defend myself.
A sequel letter about learning to trust your own instincts before your family gets a vote, told through a courtroom, a grave, and a pickleball paddle.
Established for the Preservation of Public Morals, Coastal Security, Proper Breakfast Administration, and the General Supervision of Man
When AI Thinks You’re a Machine: Autism, Language, and the Cost of Being Misread
How I learned to edit pain before anyone else could reject itA systems thinker examines trauma, autistic masking, and revision, asking whether lyrical restraint can become another way of hiding pain.
A darkly funny, intimate essay about trauma, grief, atheism, and the body’s long memory, with an aging German Shepherd as witness and guide.
Printed in Plymouth under editorial standards last revised in 1886
The myth of “starting over” sounds comforting until you’ve survived psychological abuse. In this deeply personal memoir essay, I explore autism, coercive control, trauma, healing, and the loyal German Shepherd who helped me trust my own reality again.
Two years after escaping psychological abuse, a stranger says my ex-wife’s name at a World Cup party, and my body reacts before my mind can. This deeply personal essay explores complex PTSD, EMDR therapy, nervous system healing, hypervigilance, and the extraordinary way my retired hearing dog, Shadow, carried both of us until we finally began learning what safety feels like.
Every finished essay is built on the remains of several others.
Published Every Sunday, Whether Humanity Deserves It or Not
