?? I wrote a children's book about anxiety for my son

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[Note: this one is admittedly off-topic for cannabis business / alternative medicine. But since mental health is a major theme of my posts, I wanted to share this personal story here. I hope it resonates.]

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My son, Colin, gave me permission to share this story.

Colin has struggled with anxiety since he was four or five years old. He’s seven now. A global pandemic surely didn’t help his genetic predisposition toward worrying, and he found himself stifled by nagging thoughts about what could go wrong.

His anxiety revolved around a few themes - mostly around cleanliness or disaster scenarios. Sometimes he would cling to something scary he saw in passing on the TV. The presentation was in the form of questions: “I just touched something brown - is it okay?” “My strawberry touched Charlie’s hair - is it okay?” “What if zombies came to the house - would we be okay?” And on and on.

At times, it would get so intense he would hold his head and cry.

As a parent, this experience is shattering. You blame yourself - for your genes, for your potential missteps in parenting him as a baby, infant, toddler. You feel guilt for the attention you give to him, which necessarily takes away from the attention that the other kids get. You feel guilty about your impatient reactions when you’re tired and you’ve heard the worry questions 100x in a day. You cringe at the realization that his anxiety revolves around being “okay,” which is kid-speak for being safe.

You feel like a failure.

But - if you’re like my wife and me, you take action. We got his little ass into therapy, and we started learning the tools. Therapy was heavy on parental involvement, as it should be, and we all studied and attended sessions, then tried our best to implement the learnings.

And, over time, he has vastly improved. We have productive ways to engage with “Big Worry” (his therapist asked him to name his anxious thoughts) and a heck of a toolbox to move forward with confidence and compassion. He’s a different kid than when we started, and I’m so proud of his hard work I could cry. (I have cried).

Big Worry and Jeff the Dinosaur

Part of Colin’s therapy sessions involved drawing Big Worry - but also drawing his hero character; an imaginary friend that could come to his aid and remind him of the tools he had at his disposal.

He is intensely into dinosaurs, so he sketched out a friendly brachiosaurus named Jeff (that’s an homage to his grandpa, Geoff, but he’s seven and he spells it like it sounds).

The characters felt vibrant - the tools felt important - and I was inspired.

So I started writing a children’s book about it. I don’t know why. I think I wanted to give him (and the many other kids struggling with the same issues) something tangible to latch on to. Something material that didn’t make them feel “other” or “less than.” Something fun.

So I wrote the text, intended to fill out 32 pages, and I named it Big Worry and Jeff the Dinosaur.

One major issue - I can’t draw

I am a mediocre author - passable to young children, probably - but I’m a dogshit illustrator.

Then I saw this tweet:

My ears (eyes?) perked up at the mention of MidJourney. I didn’t need ChatGPT, because I had already written the story. And to be honest, if I hear one more thing about ChatGPT, I’m going to throw my computer out the window.

But MidJourney! Apparently, this AI was able to produce images according to descriptions of scenario and style. Cool.

I had to download Discord like a youth, but I got there and started feeding the robots.

It took me a few days to produce all of the images I needed. And some of them aren’t perfect. Early versions of them were very, very not perfect. Like these:

The verdict

I got a proof of the book. I sat down with Colin, and we read it together. I had shown him updates along the way, but it was powerful to see it all put together.

He wants me to buy a copy for his classroom and read it to his classmates. That’s the best kind of review.

It’s for sale

Big Worry and Jeff the Dinosaur?is for sale on Amazon. I’m going to split the proceeds between two things: 50% will go to the?Child Mind Institute, and 50% will go to Colin’s college fund.

Buy it if you’re interested. Or, more importantly, if you know a kid going through a similar anxiety journey - buy it for them. I hope it makes a small dent in our collective Big Worry.

?? tl;dr         

• My son has struggled with anxiety for a few years, and it’s heartbreaking
• We took him to therapy, he did the work, and he developed some cool characters along the way
• I wrote a children’s book based on his experience, and I used AI to illustrate it
• It’s for sale?here. Half of the proceeds will go to the?Child Mind Institute, and half will go to Colin’s college fund
• It is Wednesday