āwherever I go, whatever Iām doing, Iām taking you with me.ā
content warnings for terminal illness, suicide, panic attacks, hospital.
today, for me, is THE audio drama sunday OF ALL TIME. when my friend recommended me the bright sessions 9 years ago today in 2017, i was in the midst of my first real heartbreak. thought nothing would ever have meaning again, that my anxiety would swallow me alive, and nobody could understand the pain i was in. then i found sam, joan, caleb, chloe, mark, adam, and owen. and thatās how i found lauren. i try all the time in many different words and ways to express just how much this podcast and lauren have meant to me for the past 9 years, and now iām gonna do that again. might seem a bit trauma dumpy, but i promise thereās a point to this. iād already been seeing a therapist, but sam and caleb and chloe and joan helped me discover a lot about myself that i never would have known without them. a lot of times it felt as if lauren had taken a script right from my heart and was giving it back to me, something i never knew i was missing, through these voices and this found family. i thought about ways i could thank these people for helping me with so much, and this is how i discovered the bird app. and whatās STILL unbelievable to me is they immediately reached back? i was starstruck every time, and it turns out weāre all just people who love art and wanna share that. so i really enjoyed screaming into the void and having the folks who created the things reach back, it remains so special to me every damn time. the next year, a friend of mine died by suicide at 15, and that was the worst heartbreak i had ever experienced. that year i often thought of caleb going through his high school experience, and iām convinced some of empathetic tendencies to protect and connect come from him. in 2019, i graduated high school and still decorated my graduation cap afterwards. i decorated it with holographic gold paper, cut out lightbulb fairy lights, and chose this quote from owen: making the mistakes we have makes us uniquely suited to do better in the future. i donāt even know of it exists anymore, but iāll never ever forget it. towards the end of 2019, the infinite noise came out. being a new adult at college, i wasnāt able to make it to the book tour so instead i carried the infinite noise around with me on campus for a good few months. oh man, it cracked me open and i loved every word. lauren had found the perfect words to describe a lot of what iād been feeling for a long time and never knew how to say. āyou keep me greenā is forever special to me for a billion reasons- so these hearts are (after the stencil fades) green. green is the color i associate with the bright sessions, because of caleb and adam and the infinite noise, laurenās first book. we all know how 2020 started, letās skip right past that to the fall, when lauren announced a neon darkness & the college tapes. god that was such a fun moment in time online. that fall was truly an atypical spooky season, we got to experience episode drops live (sometimes with no warning), and it was such a special way to let the fandom in on what was happening, like we were all in it together. the only thing i wanted for my birthday that year was to go to a bookstore and find AND on the shelf and buy it. so i found a time where not many people were there and took a risk for about 5 minutes, and i found it- then proceeded to not touch it for years. i donāt know why but damien was always important to me, even when he scared me, even when i knew he was just being a fucking garbage person and only doing harm, i just always wanted to know more about him and how he came to be that way- and i think thatās why it took me to long to decide to read, i didnāt think i was ready to face whatever morality shit was in that book. fast forward a little to 2022, the year i discovered atypipals. i donāt remember how, i just thought hey thereās a thing that says i can donate to them, let me try it out, and then i joined discord. even just joining was fucking terrifying because lauren was already excited that i was there and someone knew who i was from my screaming into the void
and it was the first time i had ever talked to anybody else about podcasts. iām guessing thatās when the fascination really started to take full form, because i was pulled into a fan server that would help me find some of the best people i have ever known and these podcasts also took over their brains all the time. summer 2022 i go and meet some of the atypipals for a live reading for a pod that barely exists anymore but will forever have a special place in my heart because of this event. i remember thinking before it started that this may be the most excited i had ever been for anything. to get to see some of the people who had been only in my ears and on my screens for so long. i ended up going nonverbal out of excitement and also probably overwhelm but it was still one of the best days of my life. in 2024 the unthinkable happened and i wanted to crawl into a hole but i found comfort in knowing i could always go into my fictional world where the president was a dog so they could never have this to stress about. i also jumped ship from the bad place but i still miss it sometimes and the community that once was, because that was the place i had found all of the folks who made my favorite piece of media happen, that was where all of the live reactions had been. in 2025 i left the first place i had ever worked, and i donated each of the bright sessions books there. in 2025 i moved in with someone who broke up with me knowing i could not afford to move, started at a new job site, and discovered my mom had a terminal illness all in a few months time. 2025 was also the 10 year anniversary of my favorite podcast, so they were doing livestreams with different people to celebrate and it felt a little like the 2018 patreon times. i finally listened to AND and SFP, because i was trying to capture any amount of serotonin i could. i grabbed hold of that joyous nostalgia i had been feeling and nursed it into something special. when the bright sessions started, samantha barnes (voiced by lauren) was 25. sam was special. she became my comfort character, my constant, her self regulation skills for the time traveling panic attacks helped me tons with my own. in the epilogue, that was released in november, sam revealed that the appointment was a lifeline. she told joan, āYou reached back. That's all I needed. Right then, at the very limit of what I could take, all I could do was try to reach out, grab hold of something, anything. And you reached back and held on. And I'll never really be able to thank you for that.ā it immediately struck me- that was the way i felt about the bright sessions. i had been trying to find the right words for years, thinking nothing i ever said would be able to express the amount of gratitude i felt. sam said those words while talking about that first time she met joan when she was 25, and iām still 25. every time iāve needed something uplifting, when everything was going wrong and i didnāt know what to do, a new podcast episode or instagram video or atypipal message or livestream link would pop up. as if lauren knows exactly when I need it. a few weeks ago, my mom was in the hospital and while i had the pods in my ears what i grabbed onto when i wasnāt supporting her was desperate hollow. it was my source of serotonin for the week, and became a (still going) hyperfixation. i tried explaining that sentiment to lauren and she sent me a message that iāll cherish forever: āi will always reach backā. i was joking around about getting that tattooed instead. then comes the idea from beloved nicky: you have two arms to reach back with. so with some digging around in my apple data (never again) and the help of some new pod pals, I found the date that I started the bright sessions: today, august 2nd, in 2017. the friend from my hometown who introduced me to the bright sessions moved to the same area as me, and i knew i had to get them on board to go with me to get this tattoo. at first, i wanted it on my wrist because thatās where lauren has hers.
through the process of planning these tattoos it has become something special all its own, matching on both wrists to be two arms and hands reaching back, with hearts that connect if my wrists are together (thanks blake!). when i met lauren again this summer, that actually ended up being the most excited iāve ever been. online friends for years were standing in front of me and weād come from all different parts of the continent just to be here because of this strange woman and her unusual therapy podcast. that morning at tafcon, shoutout to re: dracula folks, there was a bracelet making station. sitting there trying to figure out what to make, it dawned on me. i knew the quote was super important to both of us but i didnāt know how emotional she would get and after that i felt absolutely invincible- so i asked her to write it out for me for a tattoo and she almost cried again! it was all so worth it because look how fucking cool and beautiful and special holy fuck these are part of me forever and every time someone asks me about them i get to tell them a version of all this!!!!!!!!!!!!! so in case anybody missed it, hopefully this post clues you in- i love the bright sessions with all of my heart. because of this podcast, all of the incredible people at the audio fiction convention i met, and especially lauren, iām going to try my damndest to use my background in community care to make a difference in the audio fiction sphere. because as long as we keep trying, we donāt fail. šš«
@thelaurenshippen @thebrightsessions @atypicalartists
