Self-Talk

     For this project, I wanted to discuss mental health. Throughout my life and especially in my art career, my depression, trauma, social anxiety, and negative parts of myself have fueled and shaped my work. However, where it has given me strength, it has also torn me and tried to destroy me, and there were several that I knew who didn’t survive that process.

     This project is not only in honor of them but to bring attention to the mental health crisis. To show how a few simple words have the power and meaning to tear you down or build you back up. Not everyone shows their darkest selves or the words they speak to themselves. That is okay. What is not okay is when society encourages those words. I chose a project on mental health because it is a sensitive topic. After all, it is so personal, and because there were so many people I knew who were fighting this battle all they needed was someone to say “No. You are not this, you are more, you are brighter, you are better than what you think you are. Even the worst person in the world has a light to shine and a purpose to give.”

     If this video could help one person say hey I was just like them, or for them to participate in it and see the lighter positive reinforcement that others see, it would have done its job. And maybe it could also help you, the audience, learn to be a little kinder, a little more compassionate, and to tell the people you care about what they mean while they’re here. Because the point of the project is you don’t know. You don’t know who is struggling with mental health or is teetering on the edge of that cliff.