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Maybe you've seen the shirts. Or the groups. Or the signature banners. All emblazoned with the seemingly awkward slogan, To Write Love On Her Arms, they might have incited some curiosity--or even a raised eyebrow. But their goal is simple and worthy, and no, TWLOHA is not a band.

In fact, TWLOHA's purpose extends far beyond the t-shirts and the mottoes...to love.                    Love. So many meanings, so many attachments and false beliefs connect with the word. Somewhere in the midst of the whirlwind of explanations, we can lose sight of its real definition: action. A selfless, giving, unreserved action, performed from the heart solely for the good of someone else.

To Write Love On Her Arms, as silly as the name may sound, is an organization whose goal is just that: to love people and let them know they are loved. They are a "non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide [and] exist to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery." TWLOHA, as the organization's lengthy name is commonly abbreviated, is about telling people that where they is not necessarily where they will always stay, and that hope, healing, light, and rescue are truly possible.

The story began as an attempt to help a friend. When founder Jamie Tworkowski met 19-year-old Renee Yohe, cocaine was fresh in her system and she had been turned down at the treatment center, named as too high a risk. She was a broken picture of a girl, losing a constantly revolving battle of depression and addiction, wandering in an all too familiar fog of drugs and alcohol. She had known self-injury, attempted suicide, and had real, constant pain for most of her life. Tworkowski and some friends, for several days, became her hospital, "her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms." They eventually created a t-shirt to sell in an effort to raise money for her rehab treatment, put it all together on a myspace page, and To Write Love On Her Arms was born.

 Members of rock bands Switchfoot and Anberlin began wearing the shirts at concerts, and messages began to pour in. People began to talk, many for the first time, about the hard issues and pain they dealt with everyday. They were people struggling, trying to cope, people who had lost loved ones to suicide, people who were losing themselves. "We learned quickly that the story we were telling represented people everywhere. It seemed we had stumbled upon a bigger story, and a conversation that needed to be had."

TWLOHA deals with issues that affect many people, but that are rarely talked about. They "are not American issues, not white issues or "emo" issues. [They] are issues of humanity, problems of pain that affect millions of people around the world." Depression and self-injury are very vague topics to many people, and most simply do not understand either, but the facts are startling. Statistics relate that 19 million people in America alone struggle with depression, two out of three people who struggle with depression never seek help, depression is the leading cause of suicide, and suicide is the third-leading cause of death among those 18-24 years old. TWLOHA is a medium through which vital conversations are sparked, and a movement that tells people how much they and their life are worth. Suicide and self-injury are difficult things to discuss and admit, and TWLOHA serves to open avenues to hope and help and healing. Beyond treatment, To Write Love On Her Arms is based on the idea "that we were never meant to do life alone." It is the belief that "everyone can relate to pain, that all of us live with questions, and all of us get stuck in moments. You need to know that you're not alone in the places you feel stuck. You need to know that your story is important and that you're part of a bigger story. You need to know that your life matters."

TWLOHA is not without controversy, and has been subject to some scorn from those who claim it serves merely to encourage the problems it deals with. It is a false accusation, but the line is a fine one. Such issues need greatly to be discussed and brought to light, but never encouraged or condoned. TWLOHA effectively suggests that there are better things than the vices that pull us down, and inspires us to get off the floor and move for more. If discussions are more about the despair than about moving beyond it to redemption, they stray from TWLOHA's true purpose.

There is nothing magical about this organization. It is a community, a conversation. It does not create hope for others, but reminds them that hope does exist, and that the darkness will never render light and rescue intangible. TWLOHA is humans speaking and struggling and hurting, together. It points us toward answers, reminds us that we truly are alive even when we feel nothing, and tells of a horizon that is closer than we realize. TWLOHA is not the answer. It's raising the questions, pointing towards the God who is the answer.

In the end, To Write Love On Her Arms is a movement, asking us to consider and remember how much love is a verb. That it is a giving of ourselves, it is us seeing a larger world and loving others as Christ loved us. We live in a broken world, populated by broken people, but we were meant to love and speak truth. We are called to keeping moving, loving, crying, laughing, and singing. We are to reach out to others and to offer the option of hope and healing in the midst of darkness. We will continue, over and over, to fall, and sometimes break, in our short lives. But God loves, God is, and there is something more to life when we move beyond the boxes that contain us and become bright mirrors reflecting the love and grace and truth of Christ onto the many hopeless and broken in this world, and write love on their arms.

 

 

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