Welcome to Happy, Brave, Loved.
Yesterday I sat on my computer and scrolled through the 'depression' tag on Tumblr. I was feeling ill at ease, and I wanted to see if anyone else was feeling the same way. I don't think anyone realizes until they see it complied into an easy, scrollable list just how many people these days are utterly and unequivocally sad. Hundreds of pages of self-harm, expressions of anguish and loneliness, cries for help and confusion about why exactly we're here to begin with. It affected me far more than I thought it would, and it caused me to want to make a change.
There are a lot of charities out there for mental health. They support research, they support therapy, they tell you to be strong and to be brave and that you'll make it through this. These are all good things to raise money for and to tell people, but that's not what I want to do with Happy, Brave, Loved. I want to make people happy. It's far less simple than it sounds, and I realize that wholeheartedly, but I feel like that's a missing piece in the support system today. You'll find plenty of people saying, "Look, the world is shit, you just have to be strong and push through it and wait for those good things to come along, and it'll have all been worth it."
I want to tell people that the world isn't shit, that the good things are already here, that the good people are out there and those good people want to love you just as much as you want to be loved by them. I want to tell people that there's nothing wrong with love, and I want to change the meaning of the word. You can love thousands of people you've never met before because love isn't just reserved for your husband, your wife or your family. Love is so much wider than that. Love is this innate joy you get from other people's joy, love is the desire to see happiness in every day life. Love is when you sit on a bench and you watch a woman smile at her child and you think, "I am so very happy at how good her life is at this moment."
I've always viewed love as a bigger, wider thing than movies portray it, stumbling couples unsure if they should say 'I love you' yet. I'm not afraid to say I love you. I do love you. If you're reading this, I love you. And that is what I want to spread through this world. So if we come together and we smile, maybe after a while we'll be smiling without realizing it, and maybe after some time it'll just come naturally and we won't feel weird smiling at all.
I want Happy, Brave, Loved to be more than just me talking about how I feel and what I want, I want the people to express themselves, use this blog as their canvas for happiness. Ask me anything, and submit your thoughts and feelings and images and passions; I won't restrict the form you display your happiness through, just as long as it's happiness and not negativity. I want you to come to this blog on your down days and be picked back up again.
Stay Happy, Brave, Loved and I hope to talk to all of you very soon.