How to Write and Send Us Your Written Story

Tell Your Story — Change a Life, Change Our Society

 

Just be yourself and tell your personal story, with as many details as you feel comfortable sharing. Say something about your dark times, and then share about how things got better. What did you do to regain hope and move your own life forward? What support did you get? How do you achieve wellness, and what does it mean to you? If you've been a mental health activist and that has been part of your recovery, you can mention that as well. Use any style of writing you like (poetry is fine, too!).

You can make a difference in this person's life.

Every day, there are countless people in despair who have been labeled as mentally ill and believe that they'll never get better, often because someone told them this. Imagine you are speaking through the camera to them, or to just one person. It could be a teenager, a boss, a worker, a musician, male or female, they could be any kind of person from any walk of life, someone you know or someone you just met, but someone you want to offer your story to, to give them hope.

Your story can help someone in a similar situation to survive and to thrive, and together our stories can change our whole society’s dominant narrative about mental health — from hopelessness and chronic illness to wellness, resiliency, and hope!

 

Technical Guidelines

  1. Length — In general we think people will read more stories if they are short, no more than three (3) pages or 1,000 words.
  2. Come up with a title — This is the headline.  Try to pick a positive main point to highlight, for example: "I Created an Environment I Love to Live In"
  3. Choose your byline — When we credit you for your writing, should we use first name only, first & last name, or first & last name and location? Let us know how to give credit to you.
  4. Break your story into paragraphs —
 It will be easier for your readers to follow your story if it's in paragraphs, each with between 2-8 sentences.
  5. Consider including an image — A visual makes your writing more attractive.  You could include a photograph of yourself (if you feel comfortable), some original artwork/photography, or any kind of image that you feel represents your story.
  6. Save as .doc or .txt —Please send us your story in one of these two formats.  You can specify the format in your word processing program when you save under File> Save As>.

 

Sending It In

You can email your story to us at igb@mindfreedom.org, or just use this form. We'll let you know in a few days if/when we've added it to this website.

 

You can also send us a video telling your story.