I spent years of my life processing my pain and experiences the wrong way. I’ll spend the rest of my life writing about the way out.
Hi, I’m JR and I write Beauty from Agony
33, obsessed with writing, psych, dark-art/dark academia vibes.
Trigger warning.
The first time I wrote other than to learn, I sat down in my room and wrote down my most recent encounter; getting the shit kicked out of me by my birth mother. I folded it up and tucked it away in a little blue suitcase (my Irish twin sister had one to match).
From that moment on, I was a writer… I just didn’t know that’s what I was.
In 2011 I made my first Reddit account and started posting in communities I liked with an account bio that said “I like to say meaningful things” and over the years had many hundreds of conversations, lifting fellow men/women/they/them just by meeting them where they were at. Often, it wasn’t even a lift, it was just being someone there with you to sit and to listen.
In that same year I began my career in medicine, moving through an array of therapeutic areas, gleaning immense insight into the lives and suffering of thousands of people.
Around 2013 I made social media accounts and began to volunteer and connect with my little community in rural Northeast US. I’d often write long form posts about patient encounters, working with the homeless, lessons I learned along the way and the compassion I was cultivating in myself and my little world.
In 2020 I narrowly escaped death for the fourth time, which sparked a massive spiral of self doubt, insecurity, isolation, and sadness. This was made worse by that thing in 2020, and the insecurity of becoming a parent after a lifetime of insisting that I did not, I WOULD not, be like my birth parents.
Just a few months ago, November 2024, my therapist recognized that I’ve been showing signs of healing (8 C’s of Self Leadership for those interested or informed) and that I was beginning to bloom back into my old self.
Wiser; a bit more physically decrepit, but ME.
And what a lovely time to be so - I have hundreds of little writings, ideas, lessons, parenting pillars, songs, poems, and fucking heartbreaking stories collected in a conglomerate of places that I simply could not share because of where I was in my mind.
Creating this page is me, living up to the man a friend believes me to be.
David, I don’t know if you believe in this kind of thing, but when we met, I needed you.
If you read this far, please, know that every single thing that I write on this blog comes from a place once horrifically broken, and sharing is my effort to mend…
…Me.
And hopefully share things that are deep and meaningful for you too.
I’m here for the broken shit. The quotes about heartache. The poems about loss. Touching the profoundly good. Reconnection. Grounding. Hopelessness. Finding ourselves. Getting lost in the music.
Today, I RETURN.
If you’d like to read more, consider giving this article a look, where I discuss similar landmarks in greater depth on my Substack.
Take good care of yourself, and we’ll talk again soon.
JR
An Ode to Kindred Spirits.
