MHI: A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS by Jason R Frei

Trigger Warning: This post addresses mental health

The HWA is pleased to launch its Mental Health Initiative, a coordinated roll-out of events, resources, and activities intended to promote positive mental health, foster the concept of hope, and challenge the stigma of mental illness in the horror genre. The initiative, run by the organisation’s Wellness Committee, launches in June, and includes the following blog posts from Of Horror and Hope, a downloadable anthology of poems, flash fiction, and personal reflections on mental health by HWA members.

A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
by Jason R Frei

I am a social worker and a writer of horror. I work with children and adolescents in a school setting. For many of these students, their nightmares and horrors are real life events that affect them on a day-to-day basis. They feel the cold dread of waking up to a new day, not knowing if it will be worse than the day before. They fear coming to school. Their antagonists are pop quizzes, bullies, raging hormones, the uncertainty of a global pandemic. To some of them, home is a four-letter word that defines horror.
In my office, they talk about these fears, these horror stories that do not live on pages in a book. We write their narratives down or speak them in the ages-old tradition of storytelling. Battles are fought with the demons of addiction, the monstrosities called parents, and the memories of things done wrong and never right.
By recounting their stories, no matter how dark or dismal, they learn to accept what has happened to them. They gain some perspective. The horrors wrought upon them do not make them who they are. There is a choice to be made—hero or villain. A choice to let the story dictate their lives, or a choice to let their lives finish the story however they see fit.
In these instances, I am nothing more than a reader and an editor. I listen to what has happened and I give feedback on how to shape the story to make it better. I instill hope, that one day, the story may be completed to their satisfaction and that other readers will gain some understanding from it—that the reader will connect with it. And when the story is over, they will laugh and cry and want for more to be told.