Last night, someone made me question everything.
My work. My integrity. My art. My future. Whether I was going to make it. Whether I was even a real artist. Whether the thing I've poured the last year of my life into — this brand, these designs, this whole pivot — was just some naive idea that was never going to amount to anything.
And for a while, in the quiet of my apartment at 11pm on a Monday night, I believed them.
Not all at once. Not consciously. But slowly, the way old wounds open when something sharp lands in exactly the right place.
The Comment That Started It
I won't go into the specifics. The person doesn't matter. The context doesn't matter. What matters is what happened inside of me when I read it — and what I did to come back.
What I will tell you is this: someone called my work AI. Told me to hire a real artist. Said it would sell better.
And just like that, I was eight years old again.
The Wound Underneath the Wound
I grew up in an abusive household. And one of the things that happens when you grow up being told — outright or implied, sometimes by the people who were supposed to love you most — that you are a burden, that you are too much, that you are not enough, that you will never amount to anything… is that your brain starts to believe it.
My dad literally called me a burden growing up. In a family of six, I was told it wasn't all about me. That I needed too much. That I was too loud, too sensitive, not smart enough, not talented enough — a starving artist, they said, like that was the worst thing a person could be.
When you spend close to 25 years being told — directly and indirectly — that your existence is an inconvenience, you eventually build your entire core belief system around it. You internalize it. You carry it.
And then you spend years and decades in therapy trying to unlearn it.
I know I am enough. I know this now. I've done the work. I've sat across from a therapist and said those words out loud and meant them, or at least practiced meaning them. But knowing something and feeling it are two very different things. And last night, when a stranger on the internet told me my work was cheap and fake and that I should pay someone better than me to do it — every single old wound cracked open at once.
The Spiral
I want to be honest about what the spiral looked like. Because if you're a fellow overthinker, if you have ADHD or anxiety or a trauma history, you already know this spiral. You've probably lived it.
It started with the comment itself.
Then it moved to: Does my work actually look like AI? Does it look cheap? Do people not see that I'm trying?
Then: Is my whole style wrong? Am I actually fooling myself?
Then: Do I even have integrity? Am I misrepresenting what I do?
Then: Oh God, am I going to fail? I literally don't have a job right now. I'm putting everything into Self-Care Shirts. What if it doesn't work? What if people are just humoring me? What if I end up broke? What if I become a burden to my partner?
Full catastrophizing. Full spiral. From one comment by a stranger who had probably spent two seconds on my website.
That's what trauma responses do. They take a pebble and turn it into an avalanche. And the worst part is, in the moment, it feels completely rational. It feels like you're just seeing clearly — finally, painfully, clearly.
I Literally Went Through Every Single Design
Here's the part I feel a little embarrassed about, but I'm going to tell you anyway because it's real.
I opened my website and went through every single design. One by one. Looking for evidence.
At first I was defensive about it — this is clearly hand-drawn, that one is obviously mine, look at the imperfections in the letterforms, no algorithm made this — I was almost arguing with him in my head as I scrolled.
And then, about ten designs in, something shifted.
I started actually seeing my work. Not through his eyes. Through mine.
I could see the little imperfections in the type forms that only I would notice. The organic quality of the curves. The way everything has the same handwriting — the same weight, the same warmth, the same quirky little decisions that are just mine. I could see the cohesion of the whole collection in a way I hadn't let myself see before, because I design one piece at a time and rarely step back to look at it all together.
And I realized: this is unmistakably mine.
Not because it's perfect. Because it isn't. Because perfection is the tell. What I saw was something that came out of a human brain and a human hand and a human experience — and no prompt in any model is going to replicate that.
I went from defensive, to proud.
Not in a loud way. In a quiet, settled, oh. Yeah. I made this kind of way.
About the AI Question (Because I Want to Be Honest With You)
Here's something I want to address directly, because integrity matters more to me than optics.
Yes, I use AI as a brainstorming tool. I have. I do. In the same way designers have used Pinterest for years — as a mood board, a starting point, a place to explore layout concepts and iterate on ideas. I use it to speed up the thinking part of the process, the same way talking something through with a creative director would.
But every single design is hand-drawn by me. Every stroke. Every letterform. Every color decision. Every composition. I draw in Procreate on my iPad, and I have time-lapses on my website and my social media if you want to see the process. Not as proof — just because I genuinely love sharing how things get made.
Nothing that comes out of a brainstorming session becomes a final design. It becomes a starting point that I then change, combine, rebuild, and make entirely my own. I've been doing illustration and design professionally for over 13 years — long before AI existed in the form it does today. My work has a style that's mine because it's been developing for over a decade.
I'm telling you this not because I owe anyone a defense. But because I care about being honest, and because I know there are other creators out there who use AI as a tool and quietly wonder if that makes them less legitimate. It doesn't. The work is still yours. The decisions are still yours. The hand is still yours.
What Actually Helped Me Come Back
Here's what I kept returning to, once I was able to slow the spiral down enough to think:
His reaction wasn't about me. It was about him.
I had reached out to this person with genuine excitement. I saw someone in a similar-ish space and felt hopeful about a connection. I was open, vulnerable, honest — I shared my story, my why, the whole thing.
And he responded from defensiveness. From scarcity. From a place of feeling threatened by my mere existence as a company.
That's not about my art. That's not about my integrity. That's about where he was, in that moment, and how he processes perceived threats.
People show you who they are. I believe that deeply. And what he showed me was someone operating from fear and scarcity — not someone who actually looked at my work and had a considered critique.
Here's the distinction that helped me most: I didn't label him. I labeled the behavior.
Saying "he's a bad person" or "he's an angry person" — that carries emotional weight I'd have to carry too. But saying "his behavior was defensive, and his response reflected that" — that I can set down. That's not mine to hold. And it lets me feel something that surprised me: compassion.
It genuinely must be exhausting to move through the world that closed off. To feel so threatened by someone you've never met that you come out swinging. I felt sad for him, honestly. Not in a condescending way — just in a human way. I know what it looks like when someone hasn't done the work yet. I've lived it. I've been there.
And I was able to hold that without taking it on.
The Core Wound That Never Fully Heals (But Gets Quieter)
The reason last night hit as hard as it did isn't really about AI art or any of the actual content of what he said.
It's because not being seen is my oldest wound.
All I ever wanted as a kid was to be seen. To be enough. To matter. And I was told, over and over, in a hundred different ways, that I was too much and not enough simultaneously — which is a particularly cruel kind of gaslighting that takes years to untangle.
When someone misunderstands you, dismisses you, reduces you to something smaller than you are — it touches that. Every time.
What I've learned is that the feeling doesn't go away completely. It just gets quieter. And you get faster at recognizing it. At naming it. At feeling it without becoming it.
Last night I sat with it for about an hour before I was able to come back to myself. An hour is actually pretty good, considering where I started from.
Why Self-Care Shirts Exists
I started Self-Care Shirts after I was laid off from my job as a graphic designer at the CDC — on April Fools' Day, of all days. The universe has a sense of humor.
In the month that followed, my therapist said something that changed things: do something with the art you've been making for yourself. Because for the last five years, I had been drawing things I needed to hear. During therapy sessions, during hard mornings, during the long slow work of healing from abuse and learning what it meant to take up space in the world. I'd been making shirts for myself to wear to therapy. They were, quite literally, self-care shirts.
I launched May 1st, 2025, for Mental Health Awareness Month. I think I got one sale. From a former coworker. It was not a smashing success.
Eleven months later, I donate 10% of all proceeds I make to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and The Trevor Project. I get emails from people saying a shirt made them laugh on a hard day, or sparked a conversation they'd been avoiding, or made them feel less alone. That's the whole thing. That's why I do this.
Not for the person who sent that email. Not to prove anything to anyone. For the person who picks up a shirt that says you are not a burden and cries on the way to checkout because they needed to hear it.
That's who I make this for.
If You Relate to Any of This
If you're someone who spirals when criticized. Who immediately searches for the grain of truth in every harsh word someone throws at you. Who grew up being told you were too much or not enough and still, after all the therapy, sometimes believes it — you're in the right place here.
You don't have to carry what isn't yours.
Someone else's defensiveness is not your truth. Someone else's scarcity is not your ceiling. Someone else's opinion of your worth is not your worth.
You are allowed to feel it, sit with it, check it for anything useful, and then set the rest down.
You're allowed to look at the thing you built — whatever it is — and feel proud of it. Even if it isn't perfect. Especially because it isn't perfect.
You're still blooming. At your own pace. And that's enough.
Self-Care Shirts donates 10% of proceeds to 988 and The Trevor Project. Every design is hand-drawn from lived experience — because the things you needed to hear deserve to be worn.
