I’ve spent most of my life being the person other people come to — the one who holds things together, finds the answer, stays calm when everything else isn’t. I’m good at that. I’ve also spent a long time being less good at doing the same thing for myself.

I grew up far from where I live now, in a world where feelings were often something you managed quietly, not something you handed to someone else. I learned to carry things alone, and mostly, I still do. The people — and the one very good cat — I’ve lost along the way are with me in ink now, so I don’t forget what they meant to me. I write because it’s the only way some things make sense — not after I’ve figured them out, but as I figure them out.

IHYH started as letters I never sent. It became something else somewhere along the way — a place for the things that sit heavy, the conversations that didn’t happen, the versions of ourselves we don’t always show. I built it because I needed it to exist, and I had a feeling I wasn’t the only one.

If you’ve got letters you never sent too — you’re welcome here.