We are asking for your help! 

Donate to TurningPointCT.org today or on Giving Day (Thursday, February 28)!

TurningPointCT.org is Connecticut’s peer support community by and for teens and young adults. We’ve got your back!

Our website offers a safe space online to share your story, talk about your problems, get information, and connect with resources. Our staff runs SMART Recovery support groups for teens in Norwalk and Fairfield… with more to come! We connect with other young people at schools and colleges across the state through speaking events, workshops, and resource fairs.  Whatever you’re struggling with–mental illness, addiction, homelessness, bullying, family problems–we’ve been there too.

Help us raise $10,000 to support our small part-time staff of young adults in recovery to be able to keep reaching out to schools, making connections with young people, improving our online support, and running support groups! We want every young person to know that they are not alone.

Donate to TurningPointCT.org today or on February 28th–Fairfield County’s Giving Day.

Click this link to Donate today, and share this page with your friends and family so we can reach our goal.

Giving Day runs from 12:00am to 11:59pm on Thursday, February 28th. Help us to reach our goal of raising $10,000. 

Your donation may even help us get a bonus grant if you’re one of our first or one of our last donors on Giving Day! If we get at least 25 donations of $25 right after midnight when Giving Day starts, we can win an extra $1000. So think of us Wednesday night before you go to bed and just stay up a few minutes past midnight! If you miss that chance, then please donate Thursday night between 9pm and 11:59pm. If we get enough donations during that time period, we may even win a $2,500 bonus!

Whether you can give as much as possible, or you know people who care about mental health who can donate, we need your help. Click the link to give what you can, share this page, and ask your friends to give what they can.

Together we will raise $10,000 to support young people struggling with their mental wellness! 

Click the picture to donate!

(If you want to learn more about Fairfield County’s Giving Day overall, click here.)

I found this posted on the work dashboard and figured to share it with you all!

“Advice for my followers: self love addition
You do not have to think every part of yourself is perfect, you can want to change something. But if you find yourself wanting to change it so bad you would starve, hurt, or do something unhealthy, I want you to know that it is not healthy and you should seek help. Those feelings are irrational and can go away with care.

In addition, if your reason to change something is “because people will think it’s ugly.” Or “my s/o wouldn’t like the way I look.” Then yet again it is not healthy and not a good reason to change yourself. They should appreciate you, and if you ever feel degraded or ugly because of them leave.
Everyone is cringy. Every part of your life will be cringy in a different way, that’s just the way it is. You know what that is? Growth. So wear a ridiculous shirt, dye your hair neon yellow because it speaks to you, do your make up like everyday is your big concert. Enjoy life.

Take time every week for a little self love and self care. I don’t mean take a day and go to the spa. I mean do a cheap drugstore face mask, paint your nails, read a book, go on a walk, draw even for just 10 minutes. Or just take a couple dishes out of your room, sweep, take a nap, study for ten minutes, go on a walk even for just a minute or two.

Recovery isn’t gorgeous. It won’t just be eating non fat vegan foods. It won’t always look beautiful, it won’t always feel good. But in the end it’s worth it. Recovery can be eating a salad every day with one meal, or it can be eating three pieces of pizza and freaking out a bit but you still did it and hot damn are you proud.

The truth? Not everyone you meet will love you, someone people are just bad, and some people will just never be drawn to you. Neither of those makes you any less worthy of love and affection.

Self deprecating humor will never get you anywhere. Saying “I’m literal trash.” And “I hope I die lol.” May be a joke at first, but it becomes a real train of though that you are teaching your self, and someday, a little kid will here you say something like that and think it’s okay to do the same thing.
Replace self deprecating humor with overly confident behavior. “I AM THE BEST PERSON EVER!” Is okay to say, it’s funny, it builds confidence and honestly it’s fun.

And last but not least. Every time you start to say something hateful to yourself “I’m so fat, and ugly and worthless.” Or “I deserve to die.” Please take a minute and imagine that you are saying that, you just said that to a little kid. How would you feel? If that little kid was you, when you were younger, what would you tell them? I know I would start with telling him he’s good enough.

We’re back and this time we are talking our experience with medication and asking the question, are our youth being overmedicated?

Listen to Ally, Olivia, Eliza, and Michael

share their experiences with medication for behavioral health issues as teens and young adults. In this podcast episode, we talk about both our struggles and successes with medication and how we are influenced by it today.

Join in on the convo right here and share your thoughts — are we overmedicating our youth? What has your experience been like? https://turningpointct.org/lets-talk/topic/podcast-medication/

Sometimes I feel like I am standing in the middle of a crowded place with people shuffling past me. I am yelling out, but no one can hear me. And if they can hear me, they’re pretending that they can’t. It’s the hardest thing watching pieces of your world crumble while the rest of the world just marches on. Sometimes I feel stuck here. Sometimes I feel like I can’t escape.

So, where do I go from here? I’m sitting on the floor in this crowded place and I’m being stepped on and shuffled over. How do I convince myself that I can push through and move on?

My saving grace today is knowing that there’s no possible way this feeling can last forever. It’s just not feasible. I have to make room in my life for failures and mistakes and mishaps. That’s something I have preached to students I’ve had in the past.

“Mistakes make you human!”

“Messing up is how we learn!”

“No one in the world is perfect- not even me!”

If I can convince 28 ten-year-olds of this truth, I can convince myself.

Me to myself today, and me to you EVERY DAY: The world needs you. You are part of the greatness of this planet. We each bring an incredible gift to the table.

Today is a step back. Yesterday was a step back, too. Tomorrow might even be a step back. But it’s okay. Because there are good days coming. The world is not going to crumble on me. MY world is not going to crumble on me. The rainbow only comes at the end of the storm.

Watch Blogger Ally talk about her story of addiction and mental health recovery and how she is celebrating Recovery Month! Join the conversation about Recovery Month on our forum and read her blog!

Watch the video & other shared videos: https://turningpointct.org/category/media/videos/

Share your video!

Super Advocate Open Mic Night at Toivo

Come share your POETRY, SPOKEN WORD, SHORT PROSE & ART!

Come to experience the power of spoken word, and other expressive arts, performed by emerging adults from across the state.

WHERE:
399 Franklin Avenue
Hartford, Connecticut

WHEN:
Friday, July 29, 2016

4:00PM-7:00PM

Get your Flyer HERE!!!

At the very least, a part of being ‘out’ is giving people very sensitive information about yourself that they can use in whatever way they want.

Being ‘out’ implies vulnerability but that’s not the end and be-all. What makes you vulnerable could be your strength, and I have grasped the idea that this is something that you have to nurture over time – as you learn and grow.

Since being out, as naive as this might sound, one of the hardest things that I have had to acknowledge is that not everyone will accept me for who I am. “Why not?” … The rainbow socks that I wear under my pants are been frowned upon by someone sitting next to me on a train. It instills a feeling that smothers my heart, tightens my lungs and diffuses emotions of anxiety and fear throughout my body.

It serves no justice that I have to feel guilty or wrong because of who I am. And I do feel at times that I may have betrayed myself by not embracing my truth or standing up to my demon.

There is that perfect place that I want to get to, where ‘normal’ is within the realm of being gay, being OK with it and not caring too much about what others think.

But until then, I am still sorting out this very sensitive aspect of my life everyday… ‘euphemism for a kind of misery that is still true about society and being LGBT’.