Sonder: Youth Mental Health Stories of Struggle & Strength | Page 5

Sonder. You mean there’s a word that’s partly compassion,
partly listening to all the details, partly finding fascination in
all of it, all at once? This collection is your invitation to reflect,
to be curious, and to appreciate all of human experiencing,
not only the happy and positive stuff. Light casts shadows
after all, but this doesn’t make the sun stop shining.
The Mental Health Youth Action Board (YAB) at the Children’s Hospital Colorado was
created to empower youth, to advocate for the de-stigmatization of mental health,
and to provide a youth voice to the adults working at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Community feedback tells us that the silence around mental health is no longer
serving us, though the way forward is not always clear.
We have found that the telling of stories is one very powerful way forward. In creating
this collection, we looked for elements of survival, strength, and hope within youths’
experience of mental health. Youths themselves were involved in the selection and
editing of pieces, so we hope to have created a slice of the future that is arriving.
One of the biggest fears we hear from youth-serving professionals is that in
discussing these topics, we are suggesting to young people that they feel these hard
feelings, ones which our culture has dealt with in the past by surrounding it with
silence or stigma. If only that strategy worked. If only youth weren’t already feeling
all the feelings and talking about them, with or without their supporting adults.
If in fact you are triggered by any of the creations herein, we are providing a page of
therapy resources. If you are a youth, please talk with your parents or a supportive
adult how you might find therapy services. We hope you have at least a couple people
to talk with, really talk with, in all the different ways of talking.
Therapy is one way of talking, and this book is yet another way, so we ask that you
welcome it like a friend, like a member of your community. Please read and know
that intensity, struggle and strength are everyday things. Sometimes we’re happy,
sometimes we’re not. Either way, what we’ve got is each other, and our breathing,
feeling selves. Let’s make something beautiful of it.
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