Kell Smith

Kara's Law Kell Smith

Kell was diagnosed with OCD at the age of 21 and created Kara as a way of reflecting on her illness. She has often found other media portrayals of OCD to be lacking, relying too much on stereotypes and not truly connecting the outward symptoms with what's going on inside the person's head, so Kell wrote Kara's Law to convey what this illness is like from the inside, while ending on a note of hope, showing Kara evolve past the roadblocks of her illness. Her cats, all named after Norse gods, like to offer suggestions as she works. Mostly Loki's suggestions are "fill my food dish, peasant," but she gave Kara's Law a purr of approval."The chemicals of the brain are strange and subtle things. I think of the chemicals in mine as volatile, explosive, powerful and shattering, but indiscriminately destructive. Or maybe not. Maybe they combine to form an acid, seeping, insidious, gnawing. That's what OCD feels like: a corrosion of sense."