No Bad Parts

A Journey Through Parts Work and Creative Recovery

This weekend, I had a friend check on my zine holder at a local bagel shop.

Empty! Again! I rushed over to restock it. I’ve been genuinely surprised by how quickly my free zines have been disappearing from this particular location. Honestly, part of me started wondering if there was a secret saboteur tossing them out or someone grabbing stacks of them for fire starter. It sounds absurd saying it out loud, but my inner critic has always had a loud voice.

When I shared my ridiculous theories with friends, they both responded with the same simple explanation: maybe people are taking them because they actually enjoy reading them.

I wanted to believe they were right.

I recently signed up for SAW’s 6-month Graphic Novel Intensive to expand my autobiographical comic project, Finding Beci.

The story began during one of the darkest periods of my life, when I was emotionally bleeding out from overextending empathy, trying to be everything for everyone else while completely disconnecting from myself. Somewhere at the bottom of that collapse, I heard a small inner voice quietly call to me: you matter. Following that voice led me toward Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and parts work, where I eventually rediscovered “Beci,” an exiled teenage part buried beneath shame. Reconnecting with her transformed my relationship to creativity, storytelling, and community.

During that season of self-discovery, I created a comic called No Bad Parts, inspired by Richard Schwartz’s book of the same name. Schwartz’s work explores the idea that we all contain inner “parts” shaped by trauma, protection, adaptation, and survival and that none of these parts are inherently bad. Instead of suppressing or fighting ourselves, healing happens through curiosity, compassion, and learning how to listen to our wounded inner worlds.

Making comics and maybe more importantly, sharing comics became part of that healing for me. I began reexamining my coping mechanisms through a gentler, less punishing lens and started recognizing that even the parts of myself I once rejected had helped me survive life’s chaos and heartbreak. Eventually, I could even begin to see beauty in the journey.

Over the next six months, I’ll be expanding Finding Beci, a recently finished six-page comic about parts work, creativity, shame, healing, and the unexpected gift of finding community through autobiographical comic sharing. I’m excited (and nervous) to dig deeper into the work and share the process here on Substack and through mini-zines as it grows into a full graphic novel.

Oh and speaking of mini-zines, guess what? … the morning after embarrassingly sharing my disappearing-zine conspiracy theories with friends, I received my very first Buy Me a Coffee donation. The message read:

“You do great work, thank you! The comics at Kinetic (Bagel Shop) today helped me smile at a tough time.”

My friends were right, people are enjoying my comics. That message filled my heart and fueled my creative spirit. Human connection really is everything. I will say it again, all we have is each other.

Thank you, as always, for your support and encouragement. If you’ve enjoyed No Bad Parts, please consider subscribing to The Wrusty Nib.