Easy Crafts for the Insane is a deeply personal (yet also hilarious) memoir about your struggles with mental health. What drew you to write about such a difficult time in your life?
A Conversation with
KELLY WILLIAMS BROWN about
EASY CRAFTS FOR THE INSANE
What is even the point of going to the asylum if you don’t then get to write about it? I’m kidding, and only people who have been to the asylum get to call it that. The easiest answer is that I knew I had to, and I can’t entirely articulate it beyond that. But a longer answer, I suppose, is that while the details of my story are fairly unique and ridiculous, the experience I’m describing— the feeling that you are a certain person, with a certain life, and then you come to realize that you are very wrong, and have to pick up the pieces and figure out what is next—is a common one. I’m so struck by personal work where the creator turns their own anguish into something funny that alleviates the pain of others; it feels like the ultimate lemon/lemonade move. When someone can make me laugh about something awful, it’s liberating, because then I too can approach my own experiences with that lens, and if you’re not going to laugh about it, what are you going to do?
How did you first get into crafting, and why do you think this was something you turned to when you were s truggling? I can’t really remember when I didn’t craft. I was equally obsessive about it as a child—I’d learn a new craft, then do nothing but that craft until parents/ teachers forced me to eat/ go to bed/participate in P.E., etc. I have a brain that will never, ever shut up for a single moment. All day long, it’s a running narrative full of regret, critiques, free-floating anxiety, annoyance, hilarious barbs that I will never deliver and shellfish longings. But when I craft, it brings me to a single and present moment. My brain, for a bit, stops passing 10,000 judgements per second and instead zooms in on how my hand should be moving, where this thread will come out, or how to smooth this surface.
At a time when it was too painful to be in my own mind, this created some space and some relief. My crafts, while not beautiful, proved to me that I was capable of something, and that I could add small pleasant bits to my surroundings.
What is your favorite craft in the book? Probably the lucky paper stars. They are so easy, so satisfying, so fun, and you can literally do them with no functioning arms! The list goes on: they are cheap, they are colorful, they can be done while paying close attention to your favorite Bravo program and, like dried beans, it’s so fun to stick your hand in a bunch of them. I also love the symbolism of them, the idea that you can create your own luck. I still have thousands—maybe tens of thousands—around my house, and I love giving someone a little porcelain bowl of them as a housewarming gift or when they’re in the hospital.
You cover so many heavy themes in your book—mental illness, heartbreak, and physical disabilities, just to name a few—but you manage to still speak about your experiences with a lot of humor and warmth. Could you talk a bit about the importance of humor while grappling with such large issues? Laughing is fun and great, while crying makes my face look like a big ham for 48 hours, so my preference for the former is strong.
Trauma, to me, exists mostly as fear, a dark powerful something in my mind that could swamp or destabilize me at any moment. Humor is a way of asserting my own power over that fear and those forces. Sure, trauma won the moment, but I will win the war. When you can find the absurd and the ridiculous in a situation, it not only robs the situation of its power but also allows you to develop further meaning and understanding. The harder something is in the shortterm, the more I can see why, in the long-term, it had to happen that way. I believe the universe must exist precisely as it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to make sense, and that’s where the humor comes in.
In your memoir, you talk about l osing the relationships with your closest friends. Why was that loss so devastating, and what role do you think female f riendships play in our lives as we grow older? I, like lots of people in my age group, am not married and do not have children. While I’m very close with my family, my closest day-to-day relationships have historically been with friends, and this was doubly true when I was depressed, agoraphobic, and only willing to see four or five people. Then, those friendships, particularly when coupled with living together, functioned much more like a family. And then, I lost two of them. I had no more thought that those friendships could go away than I thought my sisters could divorce me. Sure, it was a possibility but . . . what could ever lead to that? Later, when I was in the hospital, someone described it as “catastrophic loss of chosen family,” and I was shocked that someone had been able to articulate why it was tearing me up, when my explanation (“Two of my friends don’t like me anymore”) had in no way spoken to my immense grief. These days, I have a lot of close female friendships, some of which are in their third decade and some of which are relatively new. There has always been, for me, a certain type of emotional intimacy I feel in my closest
it isn’t for everyone, but it is for many of us—I would try as hard as I could to establish care with a psychiatrist, because brain chemistry is complicated and the stakes are high. The right medications can save you, but a wrong one can be terribly dangerous. Even if the first available appointment is four months away, take it, because then you will have established care. I would also say that, despite what your mean brain might be saying, your friends and family want to help you. If it feels really, really overwhelming to try to find a doctor or appointment yourself, you can ask one of them to do some legwork for you, or at least to check in with you and see if you’re making progress. friendships that can never be matched in a relationship. There are, of course, lots of different types of intimacies in a relationship, but the ability to relate in our day-to-day experiences, the full understanding that comes with knowing someone since they were 12, not as much.
You discuss how difficult it was for you to get the care you needed for your mental health. What would you say to readers who may be struggling and in the same position? So before I start, I want to acknowledge a great, free resource that is available to everyone, at all hours, which are crisis lines. You do not have to be actively suicidal to call or text one! And they will tell you if they need to get off the phone! I’ve called them for non-suicidal things, and have always felt profoundly better and safer afterward. This is a hard question to address because our healthcare system in general, and mental healthcare in particular, is a terrible, cruel mess. Even people like me, who are privileged enough to have decent health insurance, have a hard time accessing care. There are some great free mental health resources out there. I’d start by Googling “free mental health in [your county, your state].” Don’t underestimate how healing group work can be; meetings are often free and you can learn so, so much from those who have went through or are going through what you are. Check with colleges and universities to see if they offer clinics. I would highly, highly recommend that if medication is part of your treatment—and I know
What is your writing process, and did your experience writing this book differ from the experience writing Adulting? Oh, it was totally different. And, frankly, awful! With Adulting, I got to interview interesting people and learn things, and also each chapter was its own thing. I didn’t have to remember to allude to the Money chapter during the Cooking chapter; I just wrote how So-and-So said to properly store their veggies, and then got to move on to the next topic. This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and at first, it was the saddest little lump of a notbook you ever did see, because I’d never had the experience of writing a full-length, deeply personal narrative. I had so, so many questions that I didn’t know how to answer. What should I include? What is too personal? How do I fairly treat people I write about who will probably never be able to fully reply to it? How do I strive to say the kindest things possible while not making them into paper dolls who have no flaws and never make any mistakes? The editing process—my God. It must’ve been, like, six rounds of edits, and I second-guessed every word. It just wouldn’t be a book without my editor, Michelle Howry. But since it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, it’s also the thing that I’m most proud of. I feel like I was able to alchemize the shittiest thing in my life into something that might make some people laugh or feel a little better for a day or so.
Who are your favorite memoirists, and what books did you turn to for inspiration while writing Easy Crafts for the Insane? There are so, so, so many writers who inspire me. David Sedaris has the ability to move from being hysterically funny to tragic and back within a single sentence. I grew up reading Mary Karr and Ann Lamott. Allie Brosh was one of the first people who, when I read, it felt like someone was telling my story, just with different details; her ability to both share deeply and retain her privacy is something I truly admire. In more recent and non-book contexts, I was blown away by both Fleabag and I May Destroy You, which told stories born of immense pain that make the viewer feel better about being alive.
What would you like readers to take away from your book? This is something that my extremely wise friend Allyson said to me when I was starting to feel better, but didn’t actively feel like living. I shared this with her, and then she said, “So . . . you know how when you go through an awful breakup, there’s 30 good seconds after you wake up that you don’t remember you’ve broken up, and those are the best 30 seconds of the day? But then you remember, and you don’t want to get out of bed and into a world where this breakup happened. You hate EVERYTHING. You hate this picture of a you that hadn’t been broken up with, you hate this makeup bag, you hate the Crest Corporation, you hate your own teeth. And you don’t feel like doing anything. But you have to brush your teeth anyway, because some days are just like that. You have to brush them because, presumably, there will be a time after this and you will still want to have teeth.” Many, many of us experience, at one time or another, a stretch where we just don’t feel like being alive, and don’t take pleasure in living. But we have to find ways to abide and endure because it truly won’t be like this forever. It may be some fresh new shit, but it won’t be this shit.
Also, mental health is not different than physical health, it’s just an organ working or not, and while it is very hard to see around it when you’re in it, there are resources—both internal and external—that you don’t know about but can be drawn upon. Let others help you when you need it, and then be as helpful as you can when you don’t need it.
What’s next for you? Living in my medium-size Oregon town and continuing to work for an educational nonprofit. I’d like to restart my trivia night; it was canceled during the pandemic and I truly miss my regulars and buying awful prizes at Goodwill. I’ve been lucky enough to get close with my neighbors during the pandemic, so I definitely want to keep those relationships up. I don’t know what my next book will be, or if there will be one. I find the book writing process very difficult, and I never want to write a book just to write one. It’s such a pain in the ass and is in no way worth it unless you really, really want to write this book. Finally, I am truly hoping to get on a jet ski this summer, and am very open to jet ski collaboration opportunities. That is very important to me.
Easy Craft:
T H A N K YO U R LU C K Y STA R S This is a frustrating craft—at first! You will make 10 or 15 of these and they will look wonky and dumb and you will feel annoyed. It’s a steep learning curve but once you get it, it’s super easy, almost reflexive. Commit to making at least 20 (they take less than 90 seconds apiece) and you will happily make 20,000. Also, I know for a fact that you can do this craft with literally no arms (more on that later), so have some perseverance.
M AT E R I A L S Long strips of paper. That’s it. You can buy them online, at Michael’s, at Japanese stationery stores, or you can just cut them out of magazines. Anything works, as long as it’s not super thick. Construction paper won’t work; printer paper is good; magazine paper nearly perfect. Make it a centimeter wide by at least ten inches long. Sometimes, I’ll stack a bunch of magazine pages and then use a paper cutter to do a bunch at once. Visually, you’ll only see the last inch or two of the strip on the star itself; I find stripes turn out especially cute.
STEPS 1. Pick up your first strip of paper about an inch from the end, then curl that end behind the main strip to form a little loop. Carefully tuck the end into a simple knot. 2. Slowly and gently tighten the knot by tugging on various ends, and jostling the middle until it is nice and tight. Flatten this. The flattened knot makes a five-sided, pentagram shape. Try not to read too much into this. 3. Fold the short end of the paper around the back of your pentagram knot and tuck it in. Take the long end of the paper and begin to wind it around the pentagram. Follow the angles. When you’re almost at the end of the strip, tuck it under the flap. If it feels too long, carefully fold it back on itself, then tuck it. 4. Hold the small pentagram by the edges. Carefully pinch two sides with fingernails until it puckers and forms points. Do the same thing on the opposite sides. 5. Hey, look, it’s a tiny star! Put it in a bowl. Start another. If you have it in you, think a small nice thing as you wrap the star into itself. “It will not always be this,” maybe, or “I exist in the same time and space as flamingos; perhaps this is the year I see one in person.” If things are especially dire, just contemplate Dolly Parton. Remember that if she met you, she would like you. Picture her saying, “Well, haigh! Ahm Dolly! It is SO nice to meet yeeeeew!” Keep making more stars; keep putting them in the bowl. Put in red ones and brown ones and blue ones and glitter ones. Make them again and again and again, until your fingers can do this without a single thought in your mind. Make them in front of the TV when you need a distraction from your life, make them when you are on hold with the hospital’s billing department, make them while you cry. Tell yourself they will bring you luck, if not today or tomorrow then someday. Know that luck is real and change is real and tomorrow is going to be a lot better. Or at least different.