This is a tough post to write today. This week my husband Matt and I lost a friend. Generous, sweet, loyal, and one of my hubby’s nearest and dearest, this man with a smile that could light a room was suffering. Without prose or drama I will say we lost him sooner than we would have ever wished, but he wanted to go. His suffering consumed the possibility of hope for relief.
This morning my husband texted me…”I’m really sad he isn’t here. It just sunk in.” It isn’t likely that our friend was thinking about everyone that loved him, all those that would feel lost without him, and the support that was available to him if he had reached out for it in his greatest need.
And such is the heartache of suffering. It tends to happen in silence. Aloneness. Isolation.
When we are fractured and fissured from the warmth of love, life can feel pretty hopeless. And haven’t we all felt that at one time or another?
We are not different. Each desperate feeling he felt, we’ve felt. Each hopeless thought he had, has passed through our own thoughts before. But when these hopeless feelings and thoughts are strung out from a note in your life, to a chord, to a phrase, it becomes a tragic song. And then a life gone too soon. Yet within the sadness of this music is a beautiful string of notes that make a gorgeous melody of our memories of him. When we attended his life celebration there were so many of these shared. Matt shared some really sweet ones with me, and I have a few of my own too.
In his life celebrated I find joy in hope. The possibility of no lives lost due to hopelessness. I am excited to be a part of this hope with Amy Clover on April 2nd at the OM collective for a special bootcamp class for a cause. Amy Clover is whole heartedly living her mission of bringing hope to the country through her 30×30 project. At one point Amy suffered in silence and then, she found hope and was pulled back from a suicide attempt to living her life out loud and passionately. Here is what she has to say.
“In high school, I struggled with clinical depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. I had so much pain building up inside of me, but I was too scared to reach out to anyone for help. After years of trying to act strong on the outside, and falling apart on the inside, I reached a point where I couldn’t handle the pain anymore. I decided to end it. I was stopped, and admitted into a suicide watch program where I started realizing that doing everything on my own was keeping me from healing. Through the act of finally opening up to my family and friends, I discovered that I had never actually been alone”.
Every day people across the world suffer in silence because they’re too scared to reach out for help. In fact, 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression and ⅔ of those people never seek treatment. They need to know that their life matters, and that hope is real.
She created 30×30 as fitness movement to inspire thousands of people to find hope, to show them how strong they are, and that they are not alone.
This class is entirely donation based and all funds raised go to the organization ‘To Write Love On Her Arms’. It is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.
On Tuesday, April 2nd @ 6am Amy will be leading a bootcamp class at the OM collective to raise funds for TWLOHA.
Now I am reaching out to you. With all my heart I desire to raise $550 towards this cause. I chose this number because it is connected to the one we lost. More than anything I want to honor and celebrate him by giving hope to those who feel lost and are suffering. I desire hope for them. This is a huge number and I will tell you….I need your help to make it happen. Click the pic below to RSVP to our event.
If you can’t make it or 6am is “like way to early” for ya, then please consider clicking the donation button below and contributing towards our April 2nd event, and this cause.
I also believe there is a great need to drop the stigma associated with depression and hopelessness. Amy will be doing just that at a Movement Meet-up at Bull Run Coffee Bar on Monday, April 1st at 7:00pm. If you are suffering, feel hopeless, or want to connect on how you can help others who do, we will be there to spend time with you sharing rescources, ideas, and…well, hope. With full hearts and love we are here for you, no judgement. We’ve been there too.
If you are an individual who has a hard time imagining why someone could feel so hopeless, or be unwilling to reach out I’d like you to close your eyes with me….feel into the memory of the lowest note of your life, your deepest sadness, your greatest suffering, your wrenching loss. Once you have that feeling…string that note into another, and another, and another. Now you’ve felt that way for a year, two, years….longer. The pain and heartache is too much to bear. There is nowhere to go. And you fear judgement, criticism or worse by sharing your pain because in your head you believe you “should be able to get over it”. That is the feeling of hopeless. There is nowhere to go from there, the abyss has swallowed you and darkness pervades.
But when you are encouraged to reach out in your suffering, notes of hope sneak in. When you encourage someone who you know is suffering, notes of hope sneak in. Here in lies the possibility that these notes bring in the sun, just enough. Just a crack. One ounce of hope is enough to save lives. Where there is hope there is celebration.
I celebrate you my friend. For all you meant to my hubby. For your solid presence, your full heart, your sensitive soul. I know you are at peace.
With hope, LVA-
Leave a Reply