Hello Dear Reader,
A rare mid-week letter for you today. I hope you don’t mind me in your inbox yet again, and will read this one to the end. It’s important to me. I wrote this a bit spontaneously on Saturday and didn’t want to wait until Sunday to send it.
September is Suicide Prevention Month, and this post is about some work I did about the stigma surrounding depression and suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, you can find help here.
Later in this post, I am going to ask you to consider donating to my fundraising campaign to connect people with mental health resources. Surprise: I am also going to do so now! In honor of Suicide Prevention Month, I am joining forces with To Write Love on Her Arms to meet critical mental health needs. Too often, people who struggle with their mental health start to believe in a world bettered by their absence. We want to make sure everyone who needs to hear it gets this message: Please Stay Alive.
If you’d like to donate—and any amount helps connect people with treatment—you can do so here.
When I was a little younger, I was a zealous mental health advocate. As it so often happens with the loudest of champions, the impetus for my advocacy was close to home: Someone I knew struggled with depression and attempted suicide.1
In the Summer of 2015, I drove from Michigan to Florida with a complete and Canadian stranger in my cruise control-less car to do an internship with the nonprofit To Write Love On Her Arms. There, I responded to emails and designed social media graphics for the blog like this one:
I could write an entire and far too sappy newsletter about this experience. It changed my life and influences my creative practice to this day.
In 2016, I graduated from Central Michigan University and mounted an exhibit of my capstone project. With an earnestness I am convinced is only available to 21-year-olds, I called it Stigma: An examination of what mental illness stigma is, how it permeates our society, and what we need to do about it.
Tired of seeing infographics printed on poster board year after year, I made the heart of my project a book.2 In this book were statistics, but I also included some brief essays and typographical design to convey my message.
On the gallery wall, I posted an homage (read: rip-off) to Stefan Sagmeister in which I wrote a message about stigma on my body and photographed myself, appearing nude—or “stripped”—in the cold, snowy woods.3
I created an interactive poster, in which viewers could write what they wish the world understood about mental illness. In hindsight, I might be most proud of this piece of my project. Here are some of the things that people wrote:
Mental illness is just like a heart disease. It’s okay to get help, it can happen to everyone, you are not crazy, you just need a little help. There is no “it’s all in your head.”
You’re not in this alone <3
That people who suffer from severe panic attacks cringe when you joke about having one.
Sometimes just listening can make a world of difference.
We need to commit time, energy, and money to treatment—like any other illness!
Many people hide it, so treat everyone with care and RESPECT.
It hurts just as much (or worse) as a physical illness. Be kind.
Sometimes a hug isn’t enough.
It sucks to have it. Just remember that it’s okay to get help. You are going to get through this. YOU ROCK!!!
It’s okay to talk about and say the word “suicide.” It’s good, in fact. Talking about it is probably not going to make someone kill themselves—it will likely be the opposite.
You’re going to want to die sometimes but that’s okay. It does get better.
Love, without expectations.
I also designed some give-away ephemera including stickers, printed on a desktop printer with god-awful registration, that said “fuck stigma.” They went, as they say, like hotcakes.
This project, and my work with TWLOHA before it, are indelible influences on my self and creative practice. I still have an idealistic striving toward “meaning” in my work that has directly translated to my career path through newspaper, books, and the public library. The interactive, interdisciplinary approach to my capstone project was an early manifestation of my current concept of a “creative practice.” But these days, I don’t do much mental health advocacy.
Why not?
I am older now. I am tired. I have one kid, and another arriving soon. I have a full-time job and freelance side business and this newsletter. In a fun little plot twist, I also have my own struggle with anxiety and depression. Oh—and did I mention? I’m so fucking tired.
And back then, I was so much more empathetic to the pain of others.
I realized this a few weeks ago, when I attended a celebration of life for someone I didn’t know that died by suicide. My tears taught me about myself. Sitting in the high school auditorium where this stranger had performed in countless musicals, there was nowhere to direct my attention but to his life, his suicide, and the grief of those he left behind.
I wept then, and still feel the reverberations of the loss of this life I never knew. I think this celebration of life pierced an armor I didn’t know I had built. I haven’t felt this deeply for someone else in years.
Is this what it means to grow older? To shy from the world and all of its pain? To calcify your skin so that you might insulate your own, more-than-enough pain? To become cynical about the whole “saving people” project altogether? Do we allow ourselves to get busy as an acceptable way to stop giving a shit?
I don’t know. Maybe. But I would like to give a shit again.
Suicide Prevention Month is more than halfway over, but it is still September. And people still kill themselves. So in honor of those we have lost to depression—and those who still need aid—I’ve created this fundraiser with TWLOHA to help people find treatment. If any of this resonates with you, I hope you’ll consider joining me in making a donation.
For R., and W., and everyone else.
Thank you for reading.
Until next time,
—Nathaniel
P.S. Can I tell you something? I kind of hate that this post is about me. It makes me uncomfortable. But I’m betting—hoping—that writing about myself and my work will help generate funding for treatment.
Thanks again. I mean it.
They are, thankfully, still here.
Are we surprised?
I was wearing basketball shorts hiked uncomfortably up my thighs.
Thank you for embracing the discomfort of sharing this. I'm really glad you have, and I'm absolutely here to read and support it.
To your last statement - I definitely didn't get the vibe that this post is about you. It's about speaking up and showing vulnerability - especially to be a male advocate with the crazy high statistics of male suicide.
It's brave to start a conversation and share your story. And every voice matters - including your own. And I think that your story is making a difference. Thank you for helping others feel seen.🙏