Before the tears have dried on your cheek, the next bruise on your arms, the next atrocity is on the television screen, promise me you will not turn away from what we must face.

Is it difficult? Absolutely. Especially when we see the same betrayals occurring over and over again. Yet one of the greatest acts of courage is not an external one, but internal. It is learning to trust (again). We will begin with ourselves.

In this moment, we renew our commitment to finding a cure for self-harm by directly addressing the origins of self-hate.

Touch your skin. Is it shaking? Do not judge yourself for feeling fearful. For the fear one feels facing the unknown is quiet natural. What is fear but emotion, and what is emotion but a reminder we are human.

Draw a through line between your life and wounds and others. Not only across a community, but across time. Look at how many of us there are. When a pain exceeds a person and enters the realm of millions, then our wounds are not a problem but a symptom.

Without the knowledge there are so many echoes of our lived experience, we will continue to sit in silence believing our wounds are abnormal versus systemic. As such, somehow they will always be beyond ‘repair’.

If there are those who actively deny a space for us to speak about our pain, let them know that a community which habitually avoids speaking on doubts, dreams or other substantive dialogues is one that still has its trainer wheels on.

Speak your truth & your life. It is a micro-step to ending a culture of shame that keeps depression, chemical imbalance, and suicide silent.

We are not ugly because we are wounded. What is ugly are those who inflict scars on innocence. Beautiful is we who endured what was inflicted and are reclaiming our self, our sanity, and our future. This is what it means to wage beauty, to embrace ourselves in personal and structural ways that transform a world of wounds into one
that is nurturing.

For we have vastly limited the definition of healing, loved ones. It is not merely the absence of pain, it is the presence of pleasure.