Please Spread the Word for Mental Health Awareness Week
Gentle readers, As you know, October is Depression Awareness Month; and in conjunction with this, Sunday, October 6th through Saturday, October 12th has been designated as Mental Health Awareness Week. This will culminate Thursday October 10th, in National Depression Screening Day.
Southern Girl Press and To Write Love on Her Arms have collaborated on a book sale benefit in an effort to help those who have never had to deal with depression understand.
Throughout the month of October, all royalties from a trio of vignettes entitled Alicia Embracing the Dark will be donated to TWLOHA, a non-profit organization that focuses on hope and relationships, in order to raise awareness, benefit the organization, and highlight National Depression Screening Day.
A Special Edition of this short collection is now available only from Amazon for 99¢ for Kindle or Kindle apps for any device.
Alicia Embracing the Dark expresses some aspect of depression as experienced by each author at some point in her life. It is published collectively under the name of a fictional character suffering from major depressive disorder and suicidal thoughts in the wake of her collapsing marriage in her own story, in which depression is a primary motif.
Please repost and retweet, get the word out, help others learn about mental illness, bipolar, and major depressive disorder. Encourage others to make the 99¢ contribution in support of TWLOHA. Let everyone know about National Depression Screening Day so someone will hear that there is help and there is hope.
You were created to love and be loved.
You were meant to live life in relationship with other people, to know and be known.
You need to know your story is important, and you're part of a bigger story.
Beyond treatment, we believe community is essential. People need other people. We were never meant to do life alone.
The vision is that community, hope, and help would replace secrets and silence.
The vision is people putting down guns, and blades, and bottles.
The vision is that we can reduce the suicide rate in America and around the world.
The vision is that we would learn what it means to love our friends, and we would love ourselves enough to get the help we need.
The vision is better endings. The vision is the restoration of broken families and broken relationships. The vision is people finding life, finding freedom, finding love. The vision is graduation, a Super Bowl, a wedding, a child, a sunrise. The vision is people becoming incredible parents, breaking cycles, making changes.
The vision is the possibility that your best days are ahead.
The vision is the possibility that we're more loved than we'll ever know.
The vision is hope, and hope is real.
You are not alone, and this is not the end of your story.
—Jamie Tworkowski
TWLOHA Founder
I continue to have this discussion - usually on a daily to weekly basis. The last was over the weekend. I had a girl who didn't want anything to do with her dad because he was accused of child molestation. I told her that if he was in the hospital you would go to see him because he was ill, right? Do you think that when he was six and his teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he got older that he answered "a child molester"? (The conversation sounds kind of rough, but it wasn't) I told her that he likely had an imbalance, or had had some trauma or toxic exposure that made his mind think these things and to think them without any negative associations. I told her that although she is not comfortable having a relationship with him right now (while she was young and more vulnerable) that perhaps she could understand that under it all he is probably not a bad person, that he can still be capable of "loving" her and that no matter what, he is the ONLY dad she will ever have. She thanked me, said that she hadn't thought about it like that before and that it made mental health issues more understandable. (Definitely the abridged version!)
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