Kelly Williams Brown Has Bad Times With Mental Health, Physical Health, and Marriage But Better Times With Crafts

Episode 18

19th July 2021

The Adulting author’s relationships fell apart and she fractured three of her four limbs in separate events, leading to a harrowing physical and mental collapse. Her memoir about that period, which is genuinely very funny at times, is Easy Crafts for the Insane.

Episode notes

You can tell a lot about Kelly Williams Brown’s life by looking at her multiple bowls of tiny origami. Her “lucky stars” are folded in a pattern that Kelly learned and then repeated over and over and over to help her get through the moments of her life when all seemed lost, when death felt preferable. There are many bowls filled with these stars and they are all very large bowls. There must be tens of thousands of these stars and she keeps the bowls in easy reach in her Salem, Ore. home, reminders of how horrible her depression got and how she got through the worst of it. The title of her memoir, which is not a craft book but a memoir, reflects the sense of humor that was with her all along.

Watch Kelly Williams Brown teach John how to make a yarn ball friend.

Get your copy of Kelly Williams Brown’s Easy Crafts for the Insane: A Mostly Funny Memoir of Mental Illness and Making Things here or wherever books are sold. Visit Kelly’s website here. Follow her on Twitter @KWilliamsBrown and on Instagram @kellywilliamsbrown.

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In this episode...

Guests

  • Kelly Williams Brown

About the show

Join host John Moe (The Hilarious World of Depression) for honest, relatable, and, yes, sometimes funny conversations about mental health. Hear from comedians, musicians, authors, actors, and other top names in entertainment and the arts about living with depression, anxiety, and many other common disorders. Find out what they’ve done to address it, what worked, and what didn’t. Depresh Mode with John Moe also features useful insights on mental health issues with experts in the field. It’s honest talk from people who have been there and know their stuff. No shame, no stigma, and maybe a few laughs.

Like this podcast? Then you’ll love John’s book, The Hilarious World of Depression.

Logo by Clarissa Hernandez.

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