Fight Depression, Write Love
November 19, 2009 • By Brandon Hyman,
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Jacki Christian, a high school junior, traveled five hours from Wise to JMU Monday night. Christian’s goal: to listen to and meet Jamie Tworkowski.
Tworkowski is the founder of the nonprofit organization To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) that helps young people dealing with depression and self-injury. Christian follows the organization’s Web site regularly and jumped at the chance to meet Tworkowski when she saw he was visiting JMU.
Christian was glad to see that Tworkowski was “really humble,” and continues to support his message.
“I live in a small town where everyone knows everybody, and you don’t talk about these issues,” Christian said.
Christian was not the only one who thought it was important to discuss youth problems. Tworkowski’s presentation began with the showing of an NBC story about the organization’s start and its impact. Dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, the self-described introvert, Tworkowski, didn’t project an immediate presence when he entered, but both he and the crowd relaxed after he joked about his day of interviews plagued by a dying cell phone. The mood darkened slightly as Tworkowski told of the organization’s beginnings.
He met a girl named Renee Yohe through a mutual friend while attending the University of Central Florida. She had been living off campus in a friend’s rented house when Tworkowski received a call from his friend to visit Yohe who was struggling with drugs and had attempted suicide. Tworkowski and his friend wanted to take her to get help and give her a place to stay, but she wanted to stay where she was for one more night.
“Everyone eventually falls asleep around sunrise, and [Yohe]’s the last one awake, and she ends up taking a razor blade… and writes the word ‘F— UP’ across her left forearm,” Tworkowski told students. “When my friend Renee looked at her 19 years on the planet, this word represented… how stuck she felt and I think the sense of regret, the sense of failure.”
Tworkowski and his friends helped Yohe get medical attention, and he wrote a story entitled “To Write Love on Her Arms” as simple inspiration, sent it to his friends and posted it on MySpace. He began selling T-shirts at concerts as a way to raise money. It “wasn’t my intent to start something big. There wasn’t a booth, there weren’t any conversations, there wasn’t a charity. It was just a way to help our friend get through treatment,” Tworkowski said. TWLOHA began to grow after bands like Switchfoot and Anberlin wore their shirts and publicized the group.
The project’s demands increased rapidly and left Tworkowski with some choices: “I decided I needed to leave my job at Hurley. [People] said ‘You’re gonna quit a six-figure job to run a MySpace page? Good luck with that.’ At Hurley… a lot of it felt hollow, a lot of it felt empty, and I wondered what it would be like to get to bring my heart to work.”
Since its days on MySpace in 2006, TWLOHA has responded to nearly 100,000 e-mails from people in more than 100 different countries who struggle with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.
“We’ve learned that these are not American issues, these are not white people issues or emo issues,” Tworkowski said. “Maybe this is just part of being human.”
As Tworkowski prepared to leave, he opened up the room for questions, and the few that posed them were hesitant to ask. Those reluctant to ask questions in front of the crowd formed a mass around Tworkowski after the event so he could sign autographs and talk. Several shared personal stories and expressed gratitude, prompting hugs, as UPB members helped clear the Ballroom.
UPB brought Tworkowski to speak because of TWLOHA’s familiarity to students, and the fact that it would draw students’ interest and provide them with more information, according to UPB’s director of special events, sophomore Drew Midgette. Tworkowski’s visit also showcased sophomore Olivia Light, who is bringing a chapter of TWLOHA to JMU.
After being introduced to TWLOHA at an event, Light became really involved with the movement and went to a three day conference and received a packet to start a chapter. “I just thought it was a great idea that friends could make such a difference; being there is what mattered.” Light hopes to raise awareness with meetings and by being an open resource to students, much like the organizations that currently exist on campus to help with similar issues.
at an event, Light became really involved with the movement and went to a three-day conference and received a packet to start a chapter. “I just thought it was a great idea that friends could make such a difference; being there is what mattered.” Light hopes to raise awareness with meetings and serve as an open resource to students, much like organizations on campus to help with similar issues.
Katie Baird, the graduate assistant with the Counseling and Student Development Center hopes students take TWLOHA’s message and become more aware of the people around them who can help. Tworkowski stressed the importance of providing a tool and a platform for people to receive help rather than simply caring about the brand.
Baird agrees with Tworkowski that “suicide is preventable,” and that friends simply need to speak up and say, “What can we do to get you help… that you deserve?”
Agreeing with Light’s desires for TWLOHA to branch out and speak at high schools and middle schools as well as colleges, Tworkowski said, “To me, to prevent suicide you start way upstream. How much better would it be if that person years before had friends that they were honest with or stepped into counseling when they needed it? If we can connect with young people, then that’s great.”
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This is a great story. It’s inspiring to hear about people like jamie tworkowski. This piece is extraordinarily well written and I think you give proper attention to an issue which touches so many, despite their reluctance to admit it.
“Maybe this is just part of being human.”
I love reading stories like this. I know how it is to live in the small town that there is problems, but nobody wants to talk about it. If we would open our hearts and arms to others to listen to others then it would make a huge impact on teens lives. This organization has helped a lot of students at my school and got them to talk about their issues. thanks TWLOHA.
Choose TWLOHA as your charity and vote!