13 Reasons to Fly

Huge thank you to Angelia, her team, & all the youth at the Worcester Recovery Center! We had a great day speaking with staff about what they can do to help residents while taking care of themselves. We also had a discussion with parents on what we can do to Best support their struggling children. Most importantly, we had an activity with the youth and it gave me hope to hear some of their stories and get to connect with many of them. They made up their own 13 Reasons and we discussed how we are the future and we can shift stigma and shatter labels.I’m so happy with how today went: Thank you Worcester IRTP!

If you’d like to start a chapter or bring 13RTF to you, contact 13reasonstofly@gmail.com

To no surprise, successfest was a success!! It was inspiring to meet many wonderful young people! I cant’t express the strength of all the people I had the pleasure of meeting. I felt surrounded by so much love today, I hope we all get to take that back into our own lives!! So grateful to have had the opportunity to spread our message alongside many wonderful initiatives.

We fly because of initiatives like successfest

Beyond excited to announce that the video for 13 Reasons to Fly’s new video is now out! Thank you to everyone that made this possible (especially Maryanne Galvin). This is a dream come true- we hope to send this video out to programs, schools, and anyone that needs to hear it!

Contact us if you know someone that is intrested in receiving a DVD. 

Stay tuned!!

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!!