Project Semicolon Starts a Tattoo Trend

July 12, 2015 / Lon Hetrick / 3 Comments

You may have heard about a growing trend via USA Today or Huffington Post that is raising awareness of mental health issues: people are getting tattooed with a semicolon.

Why a semicolon?

According Amy Bleuel, founder of the faith-based Project Semicolon,

A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life…

Amen to that, Amy.

I can’t begin to count that ways that living in this world makes us want to put a period at the end of today. But I hear a reason for hope for today and tomorrow. I listen to a promise given to whoever will utterly depend on God,

I will never leave you nor forsake you.—Hebrews 13:5

This is what we call the gospel. It’s the good news we didn’t expect and don’t deserve. It’s the love of God He lavished on us through His Son, unexpectedly, undeservedly.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners [and needy, and broken, and desperate], Christ died for us.—Romans 5:8

Let God hold your days, each one. And at the end of them, at the end you don’t choose, you will find His promise true.

Dawn and I are staking our live on it. Millions through history have done the same.

Life is hard;

You feel alone;

You feel you have failed;

Someone abandoned you;

You were abused; betrayed; exploited;

The chemicals in your brain won’t come into balance;

You can’t escape that memory; that moment;

;

But God…

Selah.

There is real hope for you, from God, in Christ, today.

You can read more about Amy’s life and hope here: Why Me God? Why My Testimony? – A Story of Hope in The Midst of Despair

Why I Choose to Live, Not Die

August 25, 2014August 25, 2014 / Dawn Hetrick / 4 Comments

Since the sad news that Robin Williams took his own life, I have seen some heated debate over two related issues: whether the suicidal have a choice, and whether suicide is selfish. I may be coming late to the party, but I needed time to sort through what was being said to articulate my feelings on these questions.

As a woman who lives with mental illness, I have faced the specter of suicide myself. I have experienced the pain of mind that makes death seem like beautiful freedom. But I refused freedom at the cost of life, and I may have to refuse it again.

Continue reading →

Surviving When Suicide Seems Like a Friend

July 15, 2013July 17, 2013 / Lon Hetrick / 6 Comments

A few months ago I posted 10 Useful Things You Can Do When Someone You Love Wants to Dig a Hole–And Die In It about Dawn’s struggle with depression.

In that post I shared the story of how Dawn came to the point in her life where she began to see suicide as a solution, not a problem. Here’s an excerpt describing how she felt about suicide at that difficult time in 2002:

“One day during all this, Dawn told me how she fantasized about digging a hole in the back yard, about how she would lie down in the hole. She told me how warm and welcome it would feel to lie down in that hole, and die.”