The courage to be ourselves, the courage to own our truth, the courage to fight for justice, the courage to admit imperfection, the courage to have emotions, the courage to say we're sorry, the courage to express our joy, the courage to show people who we truly are.

Our souls crave our courage.

WHO:

Hi, my name is Seraphina, and I'm the founder of This Place is Yours. I'm a writer, editor, project-starter and serial empathiser who has worked across newspapers, magazines and the digital space. In 2009 I founded the "blogazine" Side Street, Sydney, and in 2010 I founded the online store Final Episode. You can find me at seraphinaswords.com.

I came up with the idea for This Place is Yours after I finished working at Oyster magazine, but it was a very different project back then. Originally it was going to focus solely on creativity and people's connection to place, but then the woman who raised me, my grandmother, passed away, and I kind of lost the plot. It was not the first time - I was severely depressed from the ages of 10 to 16 and again at the age of 18, and then it came back with a vengeance at 25. I'm from California and had been working in the fashion industry, so I had no real friends, and the only one I did confide in essentially told me to call her when I felt better. It was the loneliest time in my life, and I felt so socially isolated in my depression. After a few months, I began to daydream about my own death.

But one evening, I stumbled across a blog by someone who also had depression, and the internet suddenly became this magical meeting point for connection. I found the courage to write about my own struggle, and the cathartic effect was immediate. But it was the countless emails that came pouring in afterward from people who also felt alone in their pain that brought This Place is Yours to life.

The process of storytelling helped me come to terms with what I was going through, and it also helped me understand myself better. In the past few years I have devoured personal narratives by people who have also had mental health struggles - in particular, the memoir Your Voice in My Head by Emma Forrest and the documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive by Stephen Fry have really transformed the way I have dealt with my struggle. This Place is Yours is a space for everyone else to discover the very same gifts that storytelling and creativity have given me, while at the same time finding the knowledge and inspiration that makes life beautiful.

I attended The School for Social Entrepreneurs to help me launch this project, and it is currently a not for profit incorporated association in New South Wales. Our board of directors includes some of the most incredible minds within the creative and not for profit industries, and we've set up some amazing relationships within the mental health sector.

In January, I will begin a PhD scholarship in partnership with the Institute for Culture & Society at UWS & the Young & Well CRC to evaluate This Place is Yours.

This project is particularly alive for me right now, as I am struggling to come to terms with the psychological and emotional abuse and intense bullying from my childhood, and there are some pretty dramatic things happening in my life. I am passionate about society's need to speak out about abuse, be it sexual, physical or mental.So storytelling is once again saving my life, and I am so grateful that I am not alone in this battle. I want everyone to know that no matter what their story is, they are not alone, either. 

How much time do you have? Perhaps you should come over with a bottle of tequila, but here's a start...

Suicide is the leading cause of death for people under 44, one in five people suffer from a mental health condition, and the detrimental effects of social isolation are everywhere.From abuse to addiction to violence to suicide, the internalisation of pain can be blamed for many of society's biggest problems. And so we need to express it.

Research backs me up. Through the art of story, mass murderers have become Nobel Peace Prize laureates, rape victims have come to terms with their pain and children who are about to drop out of school wind up leading it as class president.

Maya Angelou once said “there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you”, and the fact is, the rest of the world is longing to hear it.

Whatever your stories are, whether in the present or in the past, and whatever your struggles have been - be it grief, heartbreak, addiction, illness, or anything else - I am convinced that sharing them will help you and others who have faced similar battles. And when you express your love and joy and hope, I know this will inspire others in their own lives.

The more that we can express our pain, the more that we can express our love.

This is a media project where you are the contributor, and so This Place is Yours is yours – it's for you to tell your stories, to interact with those of others, to experience the cathartic power of creativity, to have conversations that matter, to connect and to heal, while at the same time opening up the dungeons within which stigma and isolation live and cultivating society's greatest asset - empathy.

We all experience pain, and instead of allowing it to separate us and break us and thereby define us, we can let it connect us. We are not alone in our pain, and we never have to be.

We worship at the altar of This American Life and Oprah, if you need some references.

You can read more about the why behind the project here.

This project is here so a sad girl's day can go from this:

To this:

(artwork by Melanie Lee whose own project is here.)

HOW:

It's a big vision, yes. So we're fundraising.

We're developing a launch mook (a publication that's somewhere magazine and book) as our first fundraising endeavour. It will remain on sale at $50 after the campaign is over so that we can build and grow this very important work. We need to pay for the printing costs for that, plus the development and annoying startup fees (which include insurance & registration), plus production. All up, it costs a lot, but we're putting in some cash ourselves - ideally we'd go over our goal so we don't have to! The $12,000 we're raising on Pozible will help get our social enterprise off the ground, and if we can reach our goal we'll be able to organise our first event for March, 2013.

We would appreciate your support SO much, so please, give to this project if you like it. For $50 you'll be a part of the movement for a more open society, a member of this organisation, and you'll also get the very delectable mook with stories about compassion, grief, love, hope, sadness and inspiration (and more). It's going to possibly be the prettiest thing ever, with some pretty orgasmic art & design too. And if you have deeper pockets, then you can grab some signed prints from Cybele Malinowski, photographer Extraordinaire.

We are getting the mook printed on 100% environmentally friendly paper through a 100% environmentally friendly and local printer. It's got full green credentials and smells amazing! The paper looks like french vanilla.

So anything you give to this crowd-funding pitch will help us achieve this mission, and then after that we're going to continue to raise money through awesome events and publications and artwork.

We're also applying for project grants from Australia Council and Arts NSW (to name but a few) and of course looking for business and corporate sponsorship. But we're planning that our own initiatives – the events, the content creation and the pretty projects, ala the mook– will sustain us as an organisation.

The first story we have completed for the mook is about Edgar's Mission, a sanctuary for rescued farm animals in Kilmore, Victoria, and its beautiful founder Pam Ahern. This kind of story is part of the "inspiration" section of the project. You can view it here (this is flash too!):

http://thisplaceisyours.com/mook

You also have the option of grabbing one to five prints of the photos below, all of which will be signed by the incredibly talented Cybele Malinowski.