To Write Love on Her Arms

Artwork: 

No one should ever have to feel alone. No one should ever have to feel helpless, unloved, or unlovable. Yet sadly, this is exactly how many people feel. Depression, addiction, self-harm, and suicide ideation are sobering truths that face us as a society everyday. To Write Love on Her Arms, a nonprofit campaign, was founded on the belief that a community of support can make a difference in the lives of all those who face these difficult challenges.

To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA) is a campaign committed to love, support, and awareness. TWLOHA began as a group of people helping a friend in need raise money for her treatment. In their journey to raise money, they asked their friends in two well-known bands, Switchfoot and Amberlin, to wear shirts promoting their cause. This small act of caring and concern planted the seed for a future movement of love, compassion, and hope. The friends began receiving letters from people all over the nation. People wrote to share their own personal stories of struggle while others wrote to ask how they could personally help their own friends in need.

The campaign’s name itself is a message of hope and a representation of life in which self-inflicted arm wounds are replaced with the literal written word “love”. The campaign is a way for people to communicate. It is a way to share thoughts, stories, and feelings, to support others, and to address a serious concern that is often kept quiet. The campaign is heavily rooted in social networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter, but TWLOHA has also grown into a movement of organized, passionate advocates that help spread the movement’s vision in local communities through community conferences, word-of-mouth, and wearing apparel to spread the message of love.

The TWLOHA’s website is a community in and of itself. The site offers facts regarding depression and addiction, information about how and where to seek help, and a multitude of ways to get involved or help promote the campaign. More than anything, this site is a place of hope. The TWLOHA movement has reached 40 nations and sparked important conversations all over the world. TWLOHA tries to create global solidarity for a very personal battle.

Once a year, TWLOHA dedicates a day or even a week in which they encourage everyone to write “love” on their arms as a message of awareness and support. This annual event is publicized through Facebook and Myspace. Other ways of promoting the campaign and advocating for this cause include wearing merchandise, attending national events sponsoring the campaign, attending fundraisers, or joining their street team.

The vision statement of TWLOHA says it best, “The vision is better endings. The vision is the restoration of broken families and broken relationships. The vision is people finding life, finding freedom, finding love. The vision is graduation, a Super Bowl, a wedding, a child, a sunrise.  The vision is people becoming incredible parents, people breaking cycles, making change.”

For more information regarding depression, addictions, and suicide:

Explore Yourself: Emotional Well Being

If you would like to find out more about TWLOHA, donate, or join the movement, please visit the website at www.twloha.com for more information.

Featured picture was taken from user Ohmann Alianne on www.flickr.com, which is permitted according to the Creative Commons liscence. The original picture can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ohmannalianne/3040289922/.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en