A year ago I was a lost, tired, and unmotivated teenager who constantly ignored her own worsening anxiety until it finally created a barrier that she couldn’t cross. 

I felt as if I couldn’t talk to anyone because it felt as though nobody cared until you were at rock bottom. It felt as though nobody cared until the barrier that overpowered you and you lost yourself completely in the waves of life. It felt as if nobody cared until you finally announced that you had an actual diagnosis and then suddenly it’s “why couldn’t we tell sooner”?

Why do we act as though stories only matter if the narrator is or was already a victim? Why do we often differentiate storytellers and “truthtellers” even when it’s in the context of real-life experiences?  Why do we shame people for being vulnerable and then share tears with them after it’s too late? 

A year ago I was a lost, tired, and unmotivated teenager who constantly ignored my own worsening anxiety until it finally created a barrier that I couldn’t cross. I broke down that barrier, though, and came out the other side with one goal in mind: to spread the message that everyone’s story matters, no matter if they have a diagnosed mental illness or not. Everyone has a story worthy of sharing, contrary to popular belief, and my life goal is to share as many stories as I can. 

In ancient times, stories would be spread throughout by word of mouth. In 2021, we have no excuse with all this technology. With that in mind, my friends and I formed an organization back in September of 2020 called Revive, which focuses on reducing the stigma around mental health by sharing real stories from all over the world and dismantling the notion that vulnerability is a weakness. Vulnerability is anything but a weakness. 

I guess you can call us storytellers. We have an amazing team of interviewers who come up with relevant questions for each interviewee. Our questions aren’t the usual “what’s your favorite food and why?”. No. We try to go as deep as we can without pushing personal boundaries. Everyone has struggled with their mental health before, but only some are able to confidently display their emotional bruises and this is frankly due to the stigma. In order to normalize the conversation around mental health, we need to talk more about it, and in order to talk more about it, we all need to recognize that all of our stories matter. 

Storytelling is a powerful force of change. So far, we’ve had the amazing privilege of sharing almost 100 stories from all over the world. We recruit anyone and everyone; you don’t have to have a movie-script of a life to be recognized and featured. 

For more information, visit revivementalhealth.org. To share your story today, shoot an email to interviews@revivementalhealth.org. 

Our stories are what make us human. Never be ashamed of your own.