To Write Love On Her Arms

I set out at the beginning of this year with a desire to contribute something to this University besides a GPA statistic and tuition fees. My first few months, I floundered about, trying to find my place here—and then it finally happened one night in November. A team of representatives of To Write Love On Her Arms, a nonprofit organization dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people who struggle with such issues as depression, self-injury, addiction, and suicide, came to discuss their mission and goals. That night, I became invested wholeheartedly into a cause, and I now aim to bring that cause to U.Va. on a permanent basis.

To Write Love-U.Va. will be a part of the first group of University Chapters of TWLOHA ever launched (the group has only been around since early 2006). There are thirty prospective chapters across the U.S.; fifteen will be launched in the fall and the others in the spring. To Write Love-U.Va. Chapter is in the process of becoming an established CIO, and will hopefully be initialized in fall 2009, in accordance with both TWLOHA and University policies. The first step in accomplishing this task was to send a representative of U.Va. to MOVE 2009, a training and community conference held this past spring in Cocoa Beach, Florida—and I was lucky enough to attend.

I was nervous, without a doubt. There were the obvious concerns: traveling alone to an unfamiliar place to be with a group of complete strangers and possibly sharing those deep intimacies of your personal life that may take years to share with people you’ve known your entire life. Contrary to the popular “stranger” myth—that talking to the man next to you on the plane is easier than talking to your best friend, major mental health issues are not typical discussions between strangers. But these people, dedicated to honesty and to discovering the depths of humanity hidden by layers of shame and lies and hurt, invited me into their lives for a brief three days at the beginning of April. The other conference attendees and I spent hours listening to some of the most passionate, educational, and raw lectures I have yet heard. It wasn’t like school—you weren’t being lectured at so much as you were learning, through a conversation. It was not a conversation hindered by emotional experiences but rather helped by them, making it easier to relate to the issues discussed through clear examples of the facts. There were sessions spent discussing the symptoms of and available aid resources for suicide, anxiety, depression, addiction, eating disorders, and self-injury, as well as sessions dedicated specifically to learning the process of starting a UChapter. These sessions were led by both TWLOHA officials and licensed counselors.

We were seeking the skills necessary to deal with brokenness in our lives and the lives around us. What we learned is that not one of these issues is isolated. They feed each other— they relate and connect and have similarities across the board. They cross all racial, gender, age, cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic barriers. Because of that, we also learned first-hand that real community is possible.
We all have a little brokenness inside us. No one escapes the tolls life demands of us. Our hardships come from the inside. It is our internal thoughts that become actions—they become hate crimes like the one that happened at U.Va. on April 4th. They become the Virginia Tech Massacre. But it is also our internal thoughts that become the motivation to love, to fight injustice, to believe in one another, to support, to live honorably, generously, compassionately.

To Write Love On Her Arms serves as a link, a motivator, if you will, to invite people to build their own communities, to make people aware that when they walk down the street in a strange city, they are not alone. I want to bring this to U.Va. I don’t think that the barriers we build around ourselves should be necessary here—this University should be a safe place, a loving community environment in which stigma does not force us to hide the things that plague us daily, directly or indirectly. I want to see U.Va. become a community that accepts people without judgment, without animosity, without pressure.

I used to think activism was dead. I used to think people our age didn’t care about anything worth fighting for. I have seen otherwise, particularly in the past year. I have become more aware of these quiet pockets of transformation that are happening all around us. The mouse with a microphone is drinking its milk and eating its cheese, and its voice is getting louder every day.

TWLOHA’s U.Va. Chapter will attempt to start early next semester. If you are interested in learning more, contact Lindsay Boggs, or see the Facebook group page “Prospective To Write Love- UVA Chapter.”