self-publishing a coffee table book for catharsis, yours & mine

The Rabbit Holes Coffee Table Book

Hi loves,

I’m really excited to share that I’m self-publishing a coffee table book called Rabbit Holes.

Rabbit Holes is the culmination of lived experience. Throughout my early 20s I suffered from recurrent panic attacks and debilitating anxiety. I was bolting down every corridor of life that promised happiness - status, careerism, materialism, spirituality, identity after identity. Throughout a series of ego deaths (that is ongoing and getting increasingly subtler to this day), I’ve let go and loosened my grip on many rafts that gave safety, but cut me off from the Absolute unfolding of life. Up until 25, I had been living a life that was deeply out of alignment. Subconsciously and consciously, I was creating worlds around me that reified who I thought I was, based on vestiges of parts that yearned for safety and approval in outdated ways. In reality, I had no clue who I was. And still have little clue. Who am I? How did I become this way? What actually matters? Words could not convey how these questions haunted, subsumed, and wrung me dry. And so, I wrote exploratory essays in this newsletter, but saved the more stormy catharsis for another newsletter called Rabbit Holes.

In it I curated visuals and words that reflected what I could not fully convey in neat and tied up ways: the oscillations of atrocity and beauty, union and separation, terror and elation. The in-between congealing and aggregates of pure energy, before they became materialized and concretized into concepts and identity structures that became stale. The newsletter became my monthly ritual to metabolize each ebb and flow of life that swelled within me, enabling me to transmute my heart and surrender to it fully.

It also solidified what I care about the most in serving others: the purpose of my life is to stay present and true, and then do the best I can to transmute that realization into art and acts which can illuminate the path of others back to themselves.

In making Rabbit Holes public for others, I hoped it could provoke inner-knowing and self-unfolding for those who read it. Fifty issues of Rabbit Holes later, I wanted to create this book to commemorate the milestone and look back over the span of 5~ years. To feel and metabolize all the reveries, dreams, and fiery truths I intuited, in one fell swoop of curation. Paired with music, each page is carefully create with psychoactive poetry, quotes, and art, to open your mind and move you towards what unfolds below. It’s also embedded with some of my favorite essays that i’ve written here on Wellness Wisdom. In totality, it is a love letter to my 20s. The book I will pass down to my children as they navigate the suffering and elation of the human condition.

Below i’ve shared some of my favorite pages from the book and hope to hear more about what you think of the book when it releases in September 2024. You can pre-order it here.

I’m Patricia and I write this newsletter in my free time every time an insight needs to be grappled with and birthed.