Hi everyone! We have a new April Feature up!

On Saturday April 6th Eliza, Ally, and 10 teens from Norwalk and Fairfield completed an escape room at The Panic Room in Norwalk! It was really fun, and we finished with a few minutes to spare!! Stay tuned to see what next months free wellness activity for SMART Teen Norwalk will be!!

Until then, check out our feature here! 

New Blogs: Reality Check With Brian and Others! – Since April, we have had two new bloggers. Kelly started contributing to our weekly blog since April and Brian has been contributing to the forum since the start of May.

Kelly has been sharing with us what life is like in college and how she deals with anxiety, depression and OCD and Brian, our newest blogger will be keeping us up-to-date with current events in his blog: Reality Check. When he’s not blogging about mental health, Brian spends his free time thinking too much, getting distracted and deliberating about how he “should” spend his free time.  When he’s actually doing something, he enjoys learning, volunteering, the arts, spending time in Nature and “being productive”.  A self-described social justice junkie, Brian first had his consciousness raised to the issue of mental illness in 2011 after seeing the musical Next to Normal.  Behavioral healthcare program coordinator by day, Brian enjoys evenings and weekends living with his partner, their two kitties and a few plants in lovely East Hampton, CT.  Last week Brian shared his first piece, which touches on the issue of addiction and its root causes: Finding a Fix.

Also, on a monthly basis, professional blogger, Amy will also be contributing to the forum; she has had a very fascinating past and she hopes to grab our attention as she reveals some of the very traumatic experiences that has had. In her own words, “I’ve had to befriend my past, embrace my experience, and express what had happened to me.”

Amy’s Blog is called The Detourist and you can read her story HERE.

The New Schedule for each blog is as follows:
Mondays: Daily Life of a College Student – Kelly
Tuesdays: Everything Music – Kevin
Thursdays: Journal Black Gay immigrant – kevin
Fridays: Reality Check – Brian
Monthly: The The Detourist- Amy

Look out for all the new posts in the weeks ahead and feel free to share your concerns and gratitude in the Discussion Forum.

“Everyone’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Jamaicans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.”

This is a quote by the very historic American writer and playwright, James Baldwin… In the quote, I replaced the term, ‘Americans’ with ‘Jamaicans’.
Baldwin in my opinion was first and foremost a human being BUT in his time, he was merely BLACK and GAY. The sociopolitical stigma and prejudice that encompassed the topic of color and sexuality forced him to migrate to France in the 1940s. Though still evolving, France was one of the more liberal countries at the time (and currently is).

Referencing back to the quote above, bear in mind that 20th century America represented the ‘Egypt’ of Baldwin’s lifetime and it does make you wonder what life was really like in America in the 1940s.

Still yet, we can look to Jamaican society for a firsthand experience.

On the other hand, America today, for people like myself represents the ‘Canaan’ of what France was for Baldwin in the 1940s.

A man without roots, without a country to call home. James Baldwin used his experience to unveil what it looks like beyond being BLACK,
beyond being GAY and even more, beyond being an IMMIGRANT, a line of thought that is still unfathomable to many people in our lifetime;
in this day and age.

Baldwin superseded labels – in my opinion, Baldwin was neither BLACK nor GAY, nor was he an immigrant,
he was a human being who was denied his rights.

I’ve been inspired by James Baldwin.

What does prejudice look like in America from the perspective of a French lifestyle?
What does hope look like in France from the perspective of an American lifestyle?
These are questions Baldwin may have possibly asked himself.

The following poem is by Warsaw Shire [the poet behind Beyoncé’s recent album] – she explains what she thinks of home amidst prejudice and fighting shame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6t78c_5aR4