<link> I found out about this last year. My daughter then had a friend who suffered greatly from depression, and while on the phone with my daughter, she passed out never to wake back up. My daughter, 3000 miles away, was devastated. But not like her family. Not like what she was going through - the feelings of isolation and despair just too great.

This is a grassroots movement that encourages people - whoever and wherever you are - to do something small that does have an unknowable impact. Write the word "love" on your arm. Maybe where someone else would trace a razor blade. And during this day - November 13 - let it be seen on your arm. At work. In the grocery store. At the bank. At the gym.

It may touch someone, somewhere who will get it. It may inspire someone to ask you what it is. It may remind you to remember someone you don't even know... who just didn't know how much they were loved. It might give hope to even one person.

Simple things.

Good morning A&S. You seem to get involved in a lot of these "One person can make a difference" affairs. I think that is awesome. Just my opinion anyway ;)

Yeah :) I think that at the bottom of it all that is my philosophy of life. I have this one life to live, and that's about all I really control, so what can I do to make a difference in my own sphere of living.

Thanks!

I got involved with community food banks a couple of years ago, and volunteering time serving in "soup kitchens" on holidays. It was tought to get information on that, believe it or not.

I work for a couple of volunteer organizations, and I also live in a fairly small town. And still our biggest issues are around communication, and how do we let people know what we need... or to let people know that our services are available.

I find the Internet ubiquitous. To me, logging on and logging in are as natural as anything. But it's humbling to be reminded that this mode of communication is actually NOT as common or as natural to the people who need the information. Face to face, hand to hand, voice to ear is still the best way ... at least if one is trying to get things like volunteer work out into the public eye.

Boy do I know what you mean!! I have also discovered that the internet is only effective if what you are looking for is online (duh). I have found two friends I was in Asia with over the internet......three of them I can find no trace online. When I was looking for a food bank to help out at, I went to the website of the city I live in. I ended up going to the police department to find one.

Doesn't the military keep records of vets? I would think that you could go to some grand database and find anyone that ever served in any branch of the armed forces. Is that not true?

Wow, the Police Department. Duh! I never considered going there for that info. But you're right, they probably would be plugged in to the needs and services. That's a head-smacker for me.

I would think the military has all those records, I think they keep them in Murfreesboro, Tenn. I have no idea how to access them, and I am not so sure they would just give the info out to anyone. Funny story.....I was looking for a good friend of mine from army days. He had a common first name, but it was spelled funny. He had lived in California. I looked his name up om the white pages and couldn't find him. Then I remembered he told me that when his mom and dad got divorced she had moved to Oregon, so I looked him up in Oregon. I found his address and phone number. I wrote him a letter and told him if he wanted, to call or write. He called the day he got my letter and we talked for a couple of hours. Kind of jarred loose some memories.

I find those memories that are jarred loose both disquieting as well as oddly comforting.

I've had a similar experience on Facebook. Periodically I do these searches on names and places I remember people being from and mutual friends.

Last week I found a very dear college friend who I haven't seen since 1981. We're getting together in two weeks. I'm thrilled about that!

Having experienced something like your daughter and also having experienced feeling like I had no one in this world and wanting to just leave it, I believe we can and should do whatever we can to help any who might also feel that way.

It's sad to me that so many do not realize that all those terrible times happen to most of us and that we also have feelings of wanting to end it. I talked and talked to my children so they knew they could come to me when and if they ever felt that way. It happened to my youngest son in senior high and luckily he came to me about it. I called the 'teacher's' [who was also a pillar in the community] son and told him he better make things right or I was going to the police and principle and then we were going to have a big sit down with both his parents. Needless to say I scared him and he made it right but by that time he had ruined what should have been some of the best times in my son's life. Some kids can be so damn cruel out of noting more than jealousy.

I remember when I was young my brother telling me if you want to kill yourself do not slice your wrist on the bottom side but that you should slice it on the top of the wrist that way you'll die faster and before they can get to you. I really despised him for telling me that. I never tried it but it was always there in my mind when things got really bad.

I will gladly write love on my wrist [top and bottom].

SG

I think it's worth the effort for me to remember how cruel kids can be, and to just simply put some other kind of energy into the world. I'm grateful my kids made it into (young) adulthood. I feel pretty sure they know they can always come home, and so I think that gives them a sense of having a kind of safety net.

Until my forties I lived without that feeling of a net, although I imagine there was one there. I just couldn't see it or feel it.

Thanks SG, and do pass the word along.

I've written about my grandmother here before, back on the old fray... Throughout my childhood and well into my adulthood she was one of the strongest, liveliest women I knew. But when my mom was growing up her mom went through some years of severe depression. Given the response to mental health issues then, the impulse to deny it and hide it away, it's kind of remarkable that she pulled through it. Several years before her death she slipped back into it, becoming such a different person that I was shocked by it. Doubly shocking because in my memory she was the happiest, most positive person I ever knew. I hadn't really understood what my mother told me about her mom's condition until I saw it for myself. She literally gave up and we could do nothing other than watch her descend. Oh we saw doctors and tried different drug and therapy regimens but nothing touched it. I'm certain her depression killed her. It simply sapped her will to live. Depression is a terrible thing. This kind of gesture doesn't seem likely to help someone as deeply in the throes of despair as my grandmother, but it might do something even more important: raise awareness and prompt someone to intervene.

Yes, this is a gesture. And I think you're right, it is not the kind of thing that would cure someone or even heal them. But from my own experience I know that there are small things that people did that reached out, and each of those made some small imprint on an otherwise impenetrable depression.

As I have watched my kids grow up, and seen the various things they and their friends have been through, I know that young people are more prone to notice very small things (gestures, facial expressions, intonations) and these small things are often the two-edged sword in that they both wound and help.

I'm not saying that people have to monitor their every eye-roll and take responsibility for others' pain. But I do think that a small positive gesture by a stranger can penetrate sometimes where even a family member's deep, sincere love cannot. I don't know why.

It is the same with alcoholism and addiction. Often the family member wants to help, and truly loves the person. But it is the hand reaching out from a stranger, someone who has walked that path, that can do more for them. As a parent of children who are walking a recovery road it could hurt if I took that personally. But instead I choose to believe that I can be that "stranger" to someone else. And maybe if someone who I don't even notice sees a Sharpie mark on my arm, he or she may pause.

And sometimes that's enough for someone else to reach them.

It's my hope anyway.

Thank you for sharing about your grandmother. Depression is not something that respects the love of family connections, and it can strike anyone.

I hope I didn't give you the impression I was minimizing the potential effectiveness of this effort. I was specifically speaking about my grandmother's case. Her depression was chemical, visceral, fundamental. Nothing we or the doctors could do would touch it. I think you're also right about the effect of a gesture from a stranger. Similar gestures from family are frequently so laden with context that it's hard to know or trust the underlying intent (and in some families the intent really is suspect.

Oh no!! I didn't feel like you were minimizing anything! I think for those of us who have lost someone in the throes of depression we recognize that sometimes love or anything else is just unable to help.

No worries, skitch.