Mental illness is a serious disease that many people struggle and fight with every day of their lives. The Semicolon Project aims to help those people overcome what’s eating away at them and regain their lives.
Traditionally, a semicolon is a punctuation mark used to signify the end of a sentence element but continue on into another sentence without ending the last. So this wonderful group of people took that notion and forged it for their own causes. The semicolon now represents the time when someone is ready to take the next step in overcoming their mental illness. They’re not yet over what has happened to them in the past, but they are ready to move forward and start a new part in their lives.
Project Semicolon wants to raise awareness for suicide, depression, addiction, and self-harm not just in the U.S., but around the world. Their vision is to show people that there is someone out there who cares about them, that drugs and alcohol are not an escape from their lives, and that it’s time to put their blades down and let someone help them recover. They are not mental health professionals, they simply aim to spread love and hope and to show people that there is someone out there who cares about their struggle and wants to help them.
I think this is a wonderful mission precisely because they are not professionals. It can be overwhelming to someone who suffers from any of these illnesses to have to talk to a professional who only talks down to them. When you see that there are real people out there who genuinely care, you’re more willing to take that first huge step and put down that bottle, or put down that blade, or to look around and think that you have something to live for.
The Semicolon Project is giving people a chance to live again – to realize their potential and to turn around and find hope in what they think is a bleak existence. The Semicolon Project is showing people that their lives can – and should – continue on after recovery from such traumatic incidents and that they are the writers of their own lives. It is time for these writers to continue on, and to prove that there is a life to live ahead of them.
”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.” (Source)
