To Write Love
This article includes mentions of suicide, addiction and self-injury. Feel free to skip it. <3
2006 was such a good year. The Hills premiered, Rihanna released her first album and the Twilight books were brand new. And that January I moved to New York City to go to school and intern in the music business. It was right before non-students could be on Facebook. We were doing full blown coding on Myspace (my God, my Myspace page was something to behold!!). It was also the year an organization launched in Florida called To Write Love on Her Arms.
If you’re unfamiliar, it probably sounds like a really weird name. But if you were a depressed teenager in the early aughts, it likely takes you straight back to that moment in time.
The story of To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) famously goes that a devoutly religious twenty something, Jamie Tworkowski spent 5 days with Renee: a young woman that was struggling with addiction, depression, self-injury, and suicidal thoughts. He and a group of friends from church spent 5 days with her while she waited to enter rehab. They played her favorite music and prayed with her. In the days afterwards, Jamie would write a Myspace blog about the experience that was titled To Write Love on Her Arms (referencing words she’d cut into her own arms). It went as viral as a thing could be back then and started a movement within the youth Christian music scene and eventually spreading to tours and pop culture across the spectrum.
If you were a sad, music loving person in those years - you knew TWLOHA and felt heard and seen for the first time. Jamie later wrote a book, called If You Feel Too Much, that I remember reading after I had a full blown mental breakdown the year I turned 30.
This year, TWLOHA is celebrating their 20th anniversary with a documentary that comes out on May 31st (here’s the documentary trailer).
I’ll be watching/crying my way through it. It’ll be weird to remember that era, the music, the newness of the internet before social media ruined everything. It was before my life was changed by a skinny kid with a funny name who would go on to become our 44th President and everything that came 8 years later.
But I’ll also be watching as the unintentional founder of a mental health organization for political and democracy workers. If you’d told me back in 2006 that this is what I’d be doing I’d have been incredibly confused. I didn’t even know that I had mental health issues, wasn’t involved in politics and certainly had no interest in running a nonprofit.
But alas here we are.
I spend a lot of my time feeling like we’re not doing enough. Like we’re not growing as fast as I would like. And that we’re definitely not raising enough money to help the people who need us.
And then earlier today I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a post by TWLOHA teasing some upcoming offerings they have. I started swiping with that feeling of dread you get when you’re looking at an acquaintance announcing, I don’t know - their wedding, their baby, their cool new job. You know you probably shouldn’t look, but you’re a glutton for punishment so you swipe anyway.
TWLOHA is offering:
Mental health grants
Suicide prevention training
Peer support groups
A resource library.
And I had this realization that Mind the Movement is also offering:
Mental health grants
Suicide prevention training AND crisis training
Peer support groups
A resource library
What one of my hero organizations is offering 20 years in, is exactly the same as what Mind the Movement is offering 7 months in.
Without staff. Without a yearly 5k fundraiser. Without bands wearing our merch.
We did it.
Well, I did it.
(With lots of very part time help from our clinical team, advisory council, group facilitators and board.)
We’ve also done all of this on a shockingly small budget.
Which is why my focus for the rest of the year will be on fundraising. If you’re able to help make Mind the Movement sustainable for the next 20 years…I’d love for you to consider making a donation.
We currently have more people in our application queue than we can provide mental health care to.
We have requests for more peer groups for different identity groups, but that requires paying for training new facilitators and then paying them for leading the group.
If you can donate: please go here.
We have folks who give $5 each month which in a way means more to us than some of the biggest contributions we’ve received.
If I could write love and thank you on your arms, I would.
~Ashley
If I could write "love" on your arm, Ashley, I would! You have done an amazing job with this. I subscribe to that saying, "Like most overnight success, it took ten years" - so what you have done in just 7 months is incredible to me.