A few years ago, I was scrolling through the sub on Reddit for my mental health diagnosis. I’m not sure what brought me to the sub that day in the first place, but my eye was caught by a post someone made about feeling guilty for having had children after her diagnosis because research suggests that many mood and mental disorders could have a hereditary component and she felt that any future diagnoses her children might receive would be her “fault.”

Well, it happened: I was felled by dermorexia.

Get any group of women together and the conversation will, at some point, turn to shared pain. How much did it hurt when you had your IUD inserted? Have you physically recovered from childbirth? What works for your menstrual cramps? And, most frequent of all: is what I’m feeling normal?