This Is Not Ideal: A Year of Coping Skills

This is Not Ideal: A Year of Coping Skills is a raw, deeply personal collection, encompassing multiple inpatient psychiatric stays and chronicling over a year of introspection, trauma processing, and survival. Themes of grief, identity, love, queerness, mental health, and resilience weave throughout, painting a vivid picture of struggle and triumph. Augstkalns' poems explore the complexities of being human, especially through the lens of neurodivergence, trauma, and the search for meaning.

With a mix of lyrical prose, sharp wit, memes, illustrations, and unfiltered emotion, this collection is both a mirror and a lifeline, offering solidarity to those who have felt unseen and a reminder that survival is its own form of rebellion.
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"MC Augstkalns combines vibrant artwork, vulnerable poems, and clever humor seamlessly. You heart will be soothed, your mind will be rapt, and your soul will be shaken to its core."

-Eva Xan, Best-Selling Poetry Book Editor & Author of Esoterra

"Augstkalns, a linguist, explores neurodivergence, queerness, and childhood trauma in this intimate book of poems... Augstkalns invites readers into their private, complex inner world in this earnest poetry collection... A raw and candid examination of mental health."

-Kirkus Reviews