Have you ever been so happy and over-joyed that you wanna see a million balloons rocketing into space? Maybe it’s your birthday, or wedding, an anniversary, a 1st place. Balloons are symbolic to fun. It’s symbolic to expressing joy, and goodness, and jolliness. Have you ever seen a balloon at a funeral? Or at a deathbed? You don’t see that.
StayAliveFriend is an attempt to shout back at those stigmas. We are dedicated to present hope and healing, and life, and meaning to your story, because we believe in stories. We exist to stare loneliness and depression, and cutting, and fear, and suicide in the face and tell them they’re no longer welcome in our stories. We have befriended hope.
We believe that your story deserves to be heard, and appreciated. Your story, broken as it may be, is worthy of a balloon, a yellow one. Your story of pain, cutting, addiction, rejection, it’s yours. And it’s worth listening to because it carries weight, and it needs to be celebrated, with balloons. Your story deserves a standing ovation from a million balloons rocketing into space.
September 9 and 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day and it is marked by yellow, because yellow speaks of hope. Yellow speaks of a second chance. Yellow says we’re all bright lights who sometimes forget to shine. StayAliveFriend will remind everyone of us who have struggled with any of those ugly elephants, and also those who are still battling depression, cutting, addiction, loneliness: YOU ARE YELLOW. YOU ARE BRIGHT AND SHINING. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
We will be teaming up with a church, Helderbaai Gemeente, in the Strand area in their annual Lentefees weekend. The Friday night will be an evening of music, with Glaskas and Die Seisoen Na Somer. StayAliveFriend will share our story, which is actually your story as well. The Saturday will be a day of fun and games, but it will also be the day where we’ll shout out to a friend, family member, stranger who’s battling depression, suicide, addiction. We will shout out to them with yellow helium-filled balloons, inscribed StayAliveFriend, together with the person’s name whom you’re shouting out to. We will be brave enough to walk around with it for the whole day, remembering our friends, remembering hope, healing, and most of all, remembering our shine. When the sun goes down, and the stars appear, we will release our balloons in memory of........HOPE, because we are all meant to shine
