MHI: WORDS TO FILL THE WELL by Jennifer Brozek

Trigger Warning: This piece 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 organization’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.

WORDS TO FILL THE WELL
Jennifer Brozek

It starts with bad news, a bad thought, a bad argument. It takes hold of one’s hope and holds it hostage. The mind spirals down a dark well of evil moods and eviler assumptions, theories, suppositions, conspiracies. It is a never-ending well of pain with no way out.

Except one: Words.

Read words.

A story that draws you in, shows you the face of horror, revels in your terror, then without pretense, allows you to win. To face the bad guy, the bad thought, the bad news, and come out victorious. A story to show that, against all odds, you can overcome all obstacles. All things are possible—if for only a little while between the pages of a book.

You can become that same light with words.

Written words.

A poem, a story, a novella, a novel that traverses perilous lands and dangerous thoughts where horror exists but hope, too, exists. Write. Write your way to the light and become a beacon for another in need, another who has found themselves at the bottom of a deep and dark well with no hope of making it home. Show them the candle in the darkness. Show them the way out.

Be the story that walks between the reader and all the empty places they must go.

Write, and be the words we all need to hear.