The Coven

I didn’t start this business because I had a passion for entrepreneurship. I started it because I needed somewhere to put everything I was feeling, and my body wasn’t big enough to hold it anymore. The Neurospice origin story: BPD, ADHD, a laser engraver, a raccoon in a witch hat named Scrap, and weird little things made from weird little feelings.

102 days into using the wellness app I built for my own ADHD brain. 275 creatures, a trash settlement you grow from scavenged junk, a communal bonfire everybody keeps alive together, and a creature named Spite who roasted me in its own journal. None of it was in the design document. There was no design document.

Here’s something nobody tells you about having BPD: it’s not that your emotions are wrong. They’re actually incredibly accurate. It’s that they’re enormous. Too big for the moment, too fast for the situation, too loud for any room they’re in.

I want to tell you about my cat. Not in the cute "look at this fuzzy creature" way, though she is fuzzy and she is a creature. I want to tell you about how she got here, because the story is one I've stopped trying to make sound reasonable. Reasonable people don't believe in the Pet Distribution System. I am not one of those people anymore.

There is a moment, somewhere around 11pm, when I stand in front of my laser and ask it the same question I have been asking it for months. What if I put a piece of bread in there. What if I tried to engrave a spoon. The laser keeps teaching me the rules are mostly suggestions.

I've been on lamotrigine for a while now. If you don't know what that is, it's a mood stabilizer. I take it because I have BPD (borderline personality disorder), and without it, my emotional regulation is roughly equivalent to a cat on a ceiling fan. With it, I'm still chaotic, but it's controlled chaos...

Hi. I'm Laura. I'm neurodivergent, chronically overstimulated, and I started a shop to cope. Welcome. A year ago, my brain was doing that thing it does; running eighteen tabs, none of them useful, all of them loud. My day job wasn't cutting it. Screaming into pillows had limited ROI...