What we need to do as a community is to rewire ourselves to be who we truly are so that we can accept it

I want to thank all of those who showed me expressions of caring, compassion, and support. However, that is not at all what I want or need from you. I am getting very good care: professionals helping me as best as we know how to do, a husband who tries to support and care for me, and some family members and friends who also want to help me to heal.

What I would want from you is that you find the courage and willingness to come forward and to share your own pain.  We need more communities where individuals can come together to speak and to share the wholeness of their own truths and not hide behind having to present only a "good" image – even the good image of being a "caring" person. So I will try again to invite you to share your demons, your wounds, your ugliness, your less than admirable features here. I want my site to be a sanctuary where anyone who wants to come to it is free to talk about anything real.

I want this to become a forum those who are working up the will to risk joining me on the field that I am reserving for you. It's not easy to talk about what is real. Media and society have encoded us with hiding so many parts of ourselves, labeling them as “bad” and as features of ourselves that we should be ashamed of. That is so far from being true. What we need to do as a community is to rewire ourselves to be who we truly are so that we can accept it.  That is the only path forward that will permit us to live fulfilling lives. It is impossible to live a happy and healthy life when you fail to accept your own truths. While there may be some self satisfaction, some feeling that one is a good person through saying some soothing words to someone who is troubled, but that is a too limited contribution one to make to the discourse.  We flourish the best when we can be members of a community who not only care about each other but who also know and embrace each other’s darkness.  So once again I will thank those of you who have been kind to me, but I want more.  I want you to come join me.

I will feel so proud of those of you who acknowledge that you are trying to seek help and will speaking out about what the great majority of us are all enduring. Because of your bravery and selflessness to open up you will pave a way for a new generation to be open minded to an epidemic that has hindered us and our fellow neighbors.  It is an epidemic of silence about how flawed we all are.  It is an epidemic of false beliefs that the path to fulfillment is to keep up a false face and to make the attempt to portray the self in the most “glamorous,” “happy,” and “successful” light possible.

Join me instead in creating a community in which all of us can safely reveal our  hurts, our failures, our mistakes, our wounds – those shadow parts that are never, never posted or discussed on social media. I am letting you know that you are not alone and there are many of us who can come together in mutual caring here and professionals who also care and want to listen and help. There is hope for all. I want you to know that you matter and that you – yes I'm speaking to you – are worth it.