Dear Mari,
When I was growing up, we all pretty much received the same messages because practically everyone was watching the same things—Friends on Thursday nights, the evening news, TGIF, Saturday morning cartoons...you get the idea.
With so many more channels competing for our attention, it's harder to spread mental health awareness. Awareness Weeks and Months give us a chance to work together to break through the noise. But our efforts shouldn't be limited to a single week or month.
For the last decade, HabitAware has been beating the drum almost daily - from a TED talk to TIME Magazine Best Invention to CBS Innovation Nation to partnering with Marcus Lemonis and Howie Mandel, to countless podcasts and news interviews reaching millions. All to help more people discover their not alone.
Aneela, Where Are Your Eyebrows? is no different.
My memoir weaves my experience with trichotillomania together with the insecurity, grief, and triumphs that every human experiences. My hope is that, together, we can use it to raise awareness OUTSIDE of our existing community.
Building Keen back in 2014 was a big, audacious goal, and we couldn't have done it without the support of the Minneapolis tech community and the BFRB community who tested it, believed in it, and shared their stories.
Today, our next big audacious goal is to get Aneela, Where Are Your Eyebrows? onto the USA Today and New York Times Best Seller lists and we can't do it without YOU!
Not because a bestseller list is the destination, but because making BFRBs impossible to ignore is!
If this memoir reaches those heights, that means MORE people will know about BFRBs.
So today, I ask you not just to "Wear Your Awareness," I ask you to Help Spread Awareness. Here's how:
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Pre-order Aneela, Where Are Your Eyebrows? (ships on/before Sept 1, 2026)
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Register for my intimate zoom convo where I share "The Stories That Changed Everything" for me and the lessons that can change everything for you (Aug 11, 6pm CT)
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Share the pre-order link with friends and family who welcomes "marvelously ingenious storytelling"** that "will captivate anyone curious about or living with these conditions, celebrating the resilience, recovery and hope that is possible."***
Together, let's make sure the next person living with a BFRB finds our community a little sooner than we did.
With love, strength & awareness,
Aneela
*P.S. BFRBs stands for Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors. This group of unwanted self-soothing behaviors includes hair pulling (trichotillomania), skin picking (dermatillomania), nail biting (onychophagia), lip picking, cheek biting, and nose picking, to name a few. BFRBs are trance-like, repetitive and unwanted, causing shame/distress and repeat attempts to stop.
With our Keen2 smart watch, you can break the cycle and retrain your brain to healthy self-soothing habits.
"Aneela’s moving memoir illustrates the challenging impact her hair pulling disorder has on her life, and the immeasurable determination and bravery that is ignited as she strives to understand it better. From designing Habit Aware technology to help thousands of people living with Body Focused Repetitive Behaviours, to navigating complex life experiences, her story will captivate anyone curious about or living with these conditions, celebrating the resilience, recovery and hope that is possible." –Liz Atkin, MA(Dist) an artist, educator and advocate who reimagines her skin picking into charcoal drawings. Her work is held in the Wellcome Collection, and she is an ambassador for The Big Draw, the world’s largest drawing festival.
"Marvelously ingenious storytelling. The moments when trichotillomania felt unmanageable, with a strong sense of the journey that brought healing and purpose.” –Wendy Millstine, Acquisitions Editor NHP
