Love, Anything:
28 Expressions for 28 Luminous Years
A photographic exhibition and speaker series honoring Ryyan Chacra’s life
The Fulginiti Gallery and Gossard Forum, Center for Bioethics and Humanities Pavilion, CU Anschutz Medical Campus
April 10 - June 26, 2026
Ryyan Chacra was a remarkably gifted photographer who “focused on the surreal sightings of daily and nightly life.”
Tragically, Ryyan struggled with OCD, a tormenting, under-diagnosed, and widely misunderstood brain disorder. It was difficult for Ryyan to express the extent of his suffering to his friends and family; in May 2024, he took his own life. He was just 28 years old.
Presented by the Ryyan Chacra Foundation in partnership with the University of Colorado Anschutz’s OCD Program, LOVE, ANYTHING will feature a series of Ryyan’s photos on brushed aluminum panels (his preferred medium) alongside excerpts from his journal entries. In total, the exhibition will display 28 works — one for each year of Ryyan’s life — with the goal of keeping his story alive and spreading awareness about the complexities of OCD.
OCD is a painful, complex, and varied brain disorder — one that can be crippling if not properly treated.
In conjunction with the exhibition, CU Anschutz will be hosting a speaker series to help shed light on the complexities of OCD. This series aims to help those who live with anxiety and OCD to not feel alone, and to empower those who love them to better communicate with and support them.
The series will open by stressing the importance of reframing OCD as a brain disorder, not a mental illness or weakness, as well as understanding OCD as a prison and a distorted lens through which those who suffer from it view the world. It will emphasize how critical insights and the right medical environment can be life-saving, especially through cutting-edge interventions like deep brain stimulation.
The series will culminate by drawing strength from loss and pointing to a future where the light of those who are no longer with us can trace a meaningful path forward through the concept of “unfinalizability.”
That concept is manifest in this initiative to keep Ryyan’s story alive and rendered consequential through his gift of photography and the work of the CU Anschutz’s OCD Program.
Ryyan’s story shows that mental health struggles can touch any family, in any community.
Speaker series
OUR SPEAKERS:
THE LENS OF OCD: THE BRILLIANCE AND THE BURDEN OF SEEING EVERYTHING, April 10 - 6:30 PM
Rachel Davis
Rachel A. Davis, MD, DFAPA, is a Professor and Division Chair of Adult Psychiatry, Medical Director of OCD Program and interventional psychiatrist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She lives with OCD and depression and brings both clinical expertise and lived experience to her work. In her professional and personal life, she has seen how OCD shapes perception—intensifying meaning, responsibility, and doubt, while also influencing creativity and moral seriousness. In this talk, she reflects on what it means to experience the world through a different lens, and how understanding OCD from the inside can deepen compassion, reduce shame, and open space for more honest conversations about suffering and survival.
Moksha Patel
UNLOCKING OCD’S GRIP: MY JOURNEY TOWARD TAMING ANXIETY, May 4 - 6:30 PM
Moksha Moksha Patel, MD, is an internal medicine physician specializing in hospital care and Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He is also a life-long OCD warrior, having dealt with the crippling disease since his early childhood. Moksha holds a unique position of having to deal with OCD from both sides of the divide – as MD and as patient. A journey that helped him realize that anxiety, OCD and related brain disorders are rooted in physiology. And that brain health can be greatly helped when the right insights and timely interventions can produce life-altering change. Moksha’s journey toward taming OCD staged two critical successes. First, being able to break his silence about OCD and become his own best advocate, and second, becoming one of 300 candidates nationwide to undergo Deep Brain Stimulation surgery - a potentially life-saving medical intervention that offers hope by charting pathways to better accommodate brain disorders. Today, Moksha hopes to share his journey and some of the lessons he learned along the way.
OCD AND ANXIETY IMPACT FAMILIES: THE POWER OF INFORMATION AND SUPPORT May 14 - 6:30 PM
Lynn Lyons
Lynn Lyons, LICSW, is a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist in Concord, New Hampshire. She has been in private practice 35 years specializing in the treatment of anxiety disorders in adults and children. Lynn travels internationally as a speaker and trainer on the subject of anxiety, its role in families, and the need for a preventative approach at home and in schools. She is a sought after expert, appearing in the New York Times, Time, NPR, Psychology Today, Good Morning America, Today Show and other media outlets. Lynn is a featured expert in the 2023 documentary Anxious Nation. With a special interest in breaking the generational cycle of worry in families, Lynn is the author/coauthor of several books and articles on anxiety, including Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous & Independent Children, and the companion book for kids, Playing with Anxiety: Casey’s Guide for Teens and Kids. Her latest book for adults and teenagers, The Anxiety Audit was released October ’22. Lynn is the co-host of the popular podcast Flusterclux.
Lissa Soep
LOVE, LOSS AND THE LANGUAGE THAT LIVES ON, June 18 - 6:30 PM
Lissa Soep, PhD, is an award-winning writer, editor, producer, and scholar whose work across media explores the ways that we love and learn, lose and find one another through language, and how our words can both serve and betray us when we need them the most. Blending memoir and philosophy, her 2024 book, Other People’s Words, reveals the power of language to keep us in dialogue with the people we’re missing. She is a senior editor at Vox Media, editorial lead on Language Please, and founder of an audiobook experiment called Bonus Chapter. As Executive Producer at Youth Radio, Lissa's collaborations with emerging journalists advanced reforms in criminal justice and child welfare and appeared on NPR, the New York Times, Teen Vogue, and many other outlets. Her next project is a narrative nonfiction exploration of intrusive thoughts in minds and culture.