13 Reasons to Fly

Hi everyone! We just wanted to share an upcoming opportunity to spread the love and gain a little hope. Friday March 16th, join 13 Reasons to Fly and other mental health awareness organizations in bringing hope & resources to hundreds. We will be doing a workshop to spread our message that afternoon.

This event is a forum for young adults, young adult allies, parents, DMH staff, and community providers to network, share available resources and creative opportunities, and ultimately recognize and celebrate HOPE.

If you are interested in registering for this free event, or are looking for information, click Here. please reach out with any questions! We hope to see you there:)

However you celebrate today, (or even if you don’t) remember YOU are loved. While it’s so important to spread love to others, it needs to start from within! Remember that today is a day to not only spend with your loved ones but to spend with YOU & to do things that promote Self-Love and anything that’ll make you feel happy! Because as always, you are worth it & are so deserving of your own love 🎀❤️

Today marks the first time we brought our message into a non hospital setting! It is also the first place of worship we’ve gone to! Huge thank you to my church family for all their support and especially to the youth for opening up & allowing this message in! It was great to finally bring this back to my own town!

If interested in bringing 13 Reasons to Fly to your place of worship, please email 13reasonstofly@gmail.com !

We are so grateful to have opened our first out of state chapter this weekend! We traveled to Utica, New York to The House of Good Shepherd. So thankful for this amazing crew! They had welcoming, hardworking staff and inspiring youth! This was our first real interaction with a school and we are excited to see what’s to come. This was an uplifting experience and we learned how our message needs to be heard on so many different levels. Can’t wait to come back:)

We are very excited to announce a new initiative 13 Reasons to Fly is spearheading called the My Body Project. The goal of the My Body Project is to increase self confidence of individuals as well as promoting positive body image through social media. Often times, we use social media to compare ourselves to others or to degrade ourselves because we don’t look like ______. Why don’t we change that? It’s not easy, and self esteem is complex but we have the power to make a change. We have the power to spread body positivity. It’s time we stop expecting perfection out of ourselves. It’s time we lift each other up and celebrate our differences!! The My Body Project is founded to do just that.

To show how real and important this is to me, I will be honest about where I was inspired to start this. I was at the Doctors recently, discussing my eating disorder, and my doctor referenced how society certainly doesn’t help any of these issues. Obviously, this wasn’t the first time I’d thought about this; I actually often think about the way society works and how mental illness is effected negatively because of the expectations the world places on us. But, we have the power to shift those expectations. Why don’t we turn our insecurities into something beautiful. I will be doing this with you all, through my recovery and treatment of my ED, I will lean on the My Body Project to try and accept and celebrate the imperfect way I am and the way I look. Approximately 10 million people suffer from an eating disorder. While we can’t make this go away, we can start to help.

How this is going to work: I ask that all of you follow the My Body Project page and follow the steps there. Through this process, you will be prompted to challenge negative thoughts, celebrate your imperfections, and promote body positivity on social media.

Just like recovery, this initiative is new and a work in progress. Please be patient as we figure out what works, what doesn’t and how to get this started! Also, while it makes it more real that I am going through this with you all it does add some challenges!

You are beautiful just the way you are! It’s time we start believing this and spreading this!!