It All Begins Here
How This All Started
⚠️ Content note: This entry contains personal reflection about mental health, recovery, and rebuilding life after mental collapse. Please read gently and take care of yourself (and go hug a dog 😉🧘🏼♀️🐺🩵)
I didn’t grow up with parents who taught me emotional intelligence. No one showed me how to feel big emotions without drowning in them, how to regulate myself when everything felt overwhelming, or how to trust my instincts when life felt unsafe. I had to figure those things out on my own — and it’s been the hardest work of my life.
For a long time, I coped the only way I knew how. Drinking started quietly, then became routine, then became a way to avoid emotions I didn’t yet know how to hold. Walking away from that meant facing everything I had been numbing. That part hasn’t been easy. Some days, the pull to escape is still there. But I stay. I face what I used to avoid, learning slowly how to live with my emotions instead of shutting them down.
I’ve learned a lot about what I call my scumbag caveman brain — the survival-driven part of us wired for safety, belonging, and acceptance. When those needs aren’t met, the brain panics. Understanding that changed how I see myself. I wasn’t broken. I was trying to survive without the tools I should have been given.
Animals and nature have always been where my nervous system finally quiets. Watching how animals live taught me something I never learned growing up: instincts aren’t flaws. They’re information. When I’m outside, when I’m walking, when I’m with Sausage, my body remembers how to breathe.
I work hard in a way that keeps me intact. I move forward, learn as I go, and don’t quit — because I’ve learned firsthand what it costs me when I abandon myself. Freedom, self-expression, and purpose aren’t extras for me — they’re the difference between being alive and just getting through the day.
One of the reasons Sausage Says exists is because I want to share the lessons I was never taught — the ones I had to learn the hard way. Not because I have everything figured out, but because I know what it feels like to search for answers alone. If these stories help even one person feel less broken, less behind, or less ashamed, then this work matters.
I don’t want everything. I don’t need excess. I just want enough to survive honestly — enough to build a life that feels breathable. One day, that life looks like bus life, open roads, quiet mornings, and choosing where my energy goes instead of giving it away to places that hurt me.
Every Sausage Says post, poster, and video is a direct reflection of what I’m living through in real time. This is self-expression. This is freedom. This is choosing a different way forward.
If you’re here, thank you for sitting by the fire with me.
This is Megan’s Camp 🏕️☀️ — and this is where the trail begins.
