Your Story Isn't Over {Project Semicolon}
Project Semicolon is a faith-based non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and love to those who are struggling with depression, suicide, addiction and self-injury. Project Semicolon exists to encourage, love and inspire.
A semicolon is used when an author could have chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.
When I was in New York for BlogHer, I decided to get a semicolon tattoo for the exact reasons above. In June, I wrote a post, openly talking about my husband committing suicide and I vowed to never be ashamed of it. I got this tattoo for him because I want to make sure his story never ends. He thought it was over and in some ways, yes, it is, but it's my mission to make sure 1.) Kaleb always knows stories about his dad and ALWAYS knows how much he loved him and 2.) I want to make suicide and mental illness less shameful. I want people to see my tattoo and ask, why a semicolon so I can tell them our story; so I can show them it's nothing we should shy away from talking about; to explain to them the story doesn't have to end here.
And that's my Semicolon Project story.
For the details: yes it's my only tattoo and yes, it hurt. This was my face the entire time.
I have to shout out to my girl Jen for going with me. We had to wait over an hour before they would start and I'm grateful I had a good friend with me. Plus, I needed a photographer to capture all the pains!
There's really no reason as to why it's not filled in other than after he drew on the stencil, I decided I kinda liked it as as just an outline. That and, it hurt. Lol
After it was all said and done and we were headed back to the hotel, we stopped to get some drinks and snacks. I was paying for my stuff and I was thinking to myself, "holy shit I'm inked on my wrist forever, I hope I don't regret this one day/I hope I did the right thing" and right as I was thinking that, Jen grabbed a Coke bottle and it had Charles name on it. She turned to me, showing me the bottle and said, "look, he's sending his love back!" I teared up. She didn't know I was questioning it or even thinking about it so when she out-of-the-blue grabbed that one and pointed it out, I knew I did the right thing. Yay for random names on Coke!
It only took Kaleb about 20 minutes to notice it when I got home and so of course, he wanted to be "stamped" as well. I really think when he's old enough to understand it all, he'll also be proud of me for standing up for what I believe in, and mostly for standing up for his dad.
