PostSecret / In Response.

This was posted on PostSecret.com yesterday:

In response:
First, to the person who shared the secret and sent the card, thank you for what you shared. A lot of people feel less alone today because of your words. A lot of people can relate, because they live there too. They live with the jokes that aren’t funny and the pain misunderstood. Thank you for speaking up, for pushing back.

Thank you for your support. Thanks for believing in this work we do, this message we’re attempting to share. TWLOHA is a conversation and a journey and a story and my guess is that you believe because what is ours is also yours. It seems as people that we find a home in things that feel true. In moments and places where understanding somehow happens. There might be something magic in the possibility that we are not alone, that it wasn’t meant to go that way. If you find any of those things in this, then please know that it’s that thing we always say: that we’re in this all together. Life and pain and dreams and stories. Even spread across a planet, we’re not so different. We need other people. We need hope and help and reminders that things do move and shake and change.

Thanks for writing what a million people feel. That the jokes aren’t funny. That a person’s pain isnot a punch line. Not something to laugh about. Thanks for saying that ignorance isn’t bliss – it’s ugly.

It seems that you are on to the possibility that you deserve better, that you deserve to be put back together instead of torn apart. Wrapped in things that are true instead of lies. Shown pictures of hope instead of failure.

We do pray that the jokes would fade to silence, or perhaps a better minor miracle, that the ones that hunt for humor would find even better things – things like kindness and compassion. Grace and understanding. That they might learn and even learn to care. And we hope for those things because we hear the stories where it’s happening. We hear the stories of people starting to believe better things, people getting help, friends learning what it means to be a friend…

We’ll leave it with this…
If you struggle with self-injury, you are not “a cutter”. You are a person. You are not only your pain. You are not only wounds and scars. You are also better things. You are possibility and promise, hope and healing, daydreams, favorite books and favorite songs. You are the people that you love and the people who love you. You are hope and change and things worth fighting for. This is all your story and your story isn’t over.

Peace to you tonight.
jamie

PS: Before and as i wrote this, i reflected on Molly Jenson’s song “Do You Only Love the Ones Who Look Like You”, which features Jon Foreman of Switchfoot. You can hear the song on our MySpace or you can go say hello to Molly.