Today we are sitting down with Darren Anderson, founder of the Love My Mind Initiative. Darren founded Love My Mind after losing his brother Mark to suicide amidst his battle with alcoholism, in order to provide a voice, support, education and resources to those who struggle with mental health. Darren vulnerably shares about the events of, and leading up to the day Mark passed, the immediate role he took on as the glue for his family and how it resulted in him forgetting to process and grieve himself. He shares about the heaviness he felt from the male stigma of having to hold everything together, how he felt like stone inside and the beautiful Sunday morning the grief suddenly poured out of him. 

Darren shares about his childhood growing up with an intimidating “old school” father, being raised not allowed to show a lot of emotions as a male, and the spiral his brother went into after their dad passed away. He tells us what he realized when he stopped looking at Mark’s alcohol addiction and started looking at the depression that had overcome him, we talk about the shame and guilt that comes with battling addictions, how people become good at hiding what is really going one inside, the red flags we see- and the ones we often miss. Darren shares how the idea of founding Love My Mind came to him, the journey of how it started as a grieving tool and has become a national brand, and the tools, resources and funding they are providing to people in order to eliminate the wait lists to get help. 

We talk about the power of community in pushing forward for mental health, the shocking statistics about youth’s mental health and suicide rates, the importance of continued conversations and how to TRULY listen, putting support systems in place and USING them, and WHY they put supports in place for the support people. The vision of Love My Mind is to facilitate more conversations, bring awareness, offer support, and connect with key people surrounding the stigmas of mental health so we may raise each other up and step out of the darkness together. 

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