This opinion only reflects the views of the editor-in-chief, not necessarily our staff or any contributors.

This magazine was brought to you by my therapist.

And all our friends.

Six people—writers, artists, and readers—created this magazine, considering and revising almost 600 submissions from folks who shared their work with us.

We made this magazine during in-between hours at jobs, and we canceled plans to read submissions on our weekend afternoons. We gave this magazine our best, and nobody earned more than a pittance. Sometimes I asked myself why we worked so hard on this free magazine.

This magazine was created with somebody in mind.

You tell anybody who asks that you are "okay. Kind of burned out." You don't know how to put words to your gray mood. At night sometimes you are overwhelmed by exhaustion and emptiness.

Or maybe you are newly out of the psych ward for the seventh or eighth time (you've lost track), and you're wondering if you'll ever figure out how to stay alive. (This was me.)

You look in the mirror and wish you could see somebody else, somebody who knows how to be happy.

This magazine is for you.

Know that the people telling you that you are worthless, or less than, are wrong.

You are valuable, because of all the history and experiences and perspective you carry. Nobody is like you, ever. And for that reason, you are precious and amazing, and people you've never met have every reason to love and treasure you.

We wanted to create a collection of art that explores different angles on the visceral, individual experience of mental health. Because our emotions and thoughts create our experiences, underpin the ways we move through the world.

Any stranger or friend you run into has an invisible interior life. And we often aren't conscious of our own experiences that shape us.

The pieces in our first issue bring the invisible and unconscious into fascinating drama. They look at the conversations we have with ourselves, and the ways we are changed.

Several of the works, including Mark Keane's “The Day Off” and Randy Romano's “Advertising Bliss,” capture the haunting interiority of loneliness. What happens when our routines and identity become unmoored from the landmarks of meaningful relationships? Kilmeny MacMichael's “Shells” dives into a longing for connection with a stranger.

Grief, a loneliness of memory in the face of loss, shapes mental health powerfully in Teresa Milbrodt's “Texts from Mom” and Reginald Okeke's “A Tuft of Hair.” Their works feature characters struggling to create new meanings in grief.

In our selection process, our staff strived for breadth of experience. Our first issue includes explorations of how illness can shift our understanding of ourselves and relationships, in RJ Aurand's “One for Sorrow” and Devan Erno's “Drifting.”

“What I Learned from Telling Men When I Menstruate” by Veronica Kirin and “Diagnostic Criteria for 299.00” by J.E. Teitsworth both closely examine the impact of disclosing conditions. Are our relationships changed, by revelations of our experience? Shannon Frost Greenstein's “Sometimes Marriage Is A Butterfly, and Sometimes It's A Six-Eyed Sand Spider” features a partnership mutually supportive of mental health conditions.

Two of our pieces, Megan Wildhood's “Hey! There Are Kids Here!” and Caleb Weinhardt's “Just Checking,” closely follow the inner experience of mental health struggles. Their pieces track the inextricable relationship between our thoughts and our emotional life.

Politics is often inseparable from mental health.

Maybe you are overwhelmed by the news, the dismantling of American democracy, and the rights of ourselves and our neighbors, that has arrived at dizzying speed, with the onslaught of orders, confirmations, deportations, new names for new maps. You don't know how to talk with your coworkers anymore, the topics that are acceptable to discuss without triggering everyone into despair.

You are afraid for your family and friends, for yourself.

This magazine is about mental health, and it has also been about caring for each other, about saying that your sadness and fear connect to my sadness and fear, and my hurt wounds you as well.

In this new time, we fight to keep our hearts alive, to stay open to the ways we can resist. To all of us directly impacted by Trump, know that you don't stand alone. Many of us, hundreds of millions of us around the world, fight together.

I'm tempted, with this editor's note, to avoid polarizing or unpleasant topics. But maybe, out of all the seasons we’ve lived through, this is one of the seasons for stepping out of our lanes, finding the ways to resist that we can.