Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Morgan/molly Rondinelli/fishback. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Morgan/Molly, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
One of the gold-standard treatments for OCD is Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy. Simply put, it involves gradually facing your fears, starting small and working to harder exposures, while resisting doing compulsions.
ERP is hard work, but we have both found ERP to be helpful for our OCD, and we love the idea of using art to do creative exposures. In 2020, we created a coloring book to facilitate and inspire exposures. The book is called Color Your Fears: A Workbook Using Exposures to Combat Your OCD.
Molly drew the coloring pages, each broadly related to a common OCD “theme” or fear, and Morgan wrote blog post-style essays to go with each page. The result is a self-published book that individuals can use alone or with their therapists to continue ERP work.
Proceeds from the book support the nonprofit work of Not Alone Notes. We’ve heard great feedback from therapists who use the book with their clients. We even made a digital download version, so anyone can print multiple copies of the coloring pages.
More information can be found on our website at notalonenotes.org/color-your-fears/ or by searching the title on Amazon.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Not Alone Notes is a nonprofit that mails free, handwritten notes to others with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and related disorders. Our mission is to remind others they aren’t alone, encourage hope, and dispense resources.
Morgan started Not Alone Notes out of her dorm room in 2017 with a stack of stationary and an open form, offering to mail encouraging notes to others with OCD. There is power in receiving a message from someone who understands. Molly joined shortly after, offering to handmake cards for the notes.
In these seven years, we became an incorporated nonprofit and only continued to grow. Our team of writers around the United States and Canada have sent over 3,000 notes around the world. All of the notes are hand-written and hand-made, so the recipient also receives a piece of artwork. We mail notes in English and Spanish, as well as for individuals with disorders related to OCD, or to caregivers of someone with a mental illness.
Not Alone Notes is at its core a project that grew out of a desire to spread hope, love, resources, and art. We continue to build this OCD community through mail.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
OCD can be an incredibly lonely mental illness, especially since OCD is often misunderstood. Many people think OCD is about being organized or tidy, when in reality it is a debilitating mental illness involving intrusive thoughts and repetitive mental or physical compulsions.
Finding others in the OCD community can be incredibly meaningful. We have had similar experiences, so we understand each other deeply. Not Alone Notes is about continuing to build that community for people with OCD, centered around sending and receiving snail mail.
Beyond that, Not Alone Notes also attends conferences and mental health walks, posts on social media, and shares our stories as people with OCD to build community. More than anything, we want others with OCD to know and feel they aren’t alone.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
The International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) has greatly helped Morgan, Molly, and many on our team of writers find treatment and community. We appreciate their educational resources and community-building events, like the Annual OCD Conference.
To support them, we have partnered for several years on a project called Holiday Messages of Hope. Each winter, we encourage people in the OCD community to write and send holiday cards to the IOCDF. The cards are then distributed to various OCD-specific treatment centers, for folks who won’t be home during the winter holidays. Molly even helps the IOCDF sort through the cards at their Boston office.
Moreover, Not Alone Notes doesn’t provide treatment; we are trying to provide hope and a boost to treatment. It is very important to us that recipients of Not Alone Notes know other resources to find treatment and more help. We include a list of resources with each note, like the IOCDF, and other organizations supporting people with OCD.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://notalonenotes.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notalonenotes/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NotAloneNotes
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/not-alone-notes/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMJcRQSzMXEwzy0Bz64W7XA
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@notalonenotes
Image Credits
n/a