I’ve spent a lot of time supporting mental health, particularly for students. While my own mental health struggles were most acute in high school thanks to routine bullying for being overweight, having long hair, and being a “nerd,” the biggest mental health challenge I faced was finding a suicide note on my little brother’s computer while I was home during one of my holiday breaks in college.

I had no idea what to do, but with the help of my older brother I found a child psychologist who told me the most counterintuitive advice I had ever heard: I needed to confront my little brother about whether or not he had a plan to take his own life.

I had always thought that people struggling with mental health were too fragile to be asked direct questions or too overwhelmed to open up about what they were going through. But the truth is, the silence around mental health issues is part of what gives them strength. We’ve been taught not to show vulnerability or weakness and so we suffer in silence alone.

But that’s what we’re hoping to change with 988 Clothing. It’s time we all started speaking up about the struggles we regularly face. It’s time we acknowledge together the rising difficulties we are encountering. It’s time we open up to ourselves and each other about what is holding us back or worse holding us down. It’s time to literally wear not just our heart, but our anxieties on our sleeves.

Over the past couple of years many incredible organizations, speakers, celebrities, and groups have started the conversation around our collective mental health. Now it’s up to us to keep the conversation going and shine a light on the things we’ve been too worried to talk about. Together we will make a difference for us all.

I started 988 with the hopes that everyone, including myself, could become more comfortable talking about their mental health struggles. Even though there has been progress in supporting peoples’ mental health, most of us still believe these struggles should be hidden from view. It’s a problem that just further exacerbates our issues. And it’s a problem I am a part of.

Being vulnerable is one of the hardest things to do, because it opens you up to so much scrutiny. We wonder, if we speak openly about our troubles, who will judge us, in what ways, and for what pieces of ourselves. We hide our true feelings and insecurities because we don’t want to show weakness. Sometimes we feel we can’t show weakness. We don’t want to burden those around us with troubles that aren’t “big enough” or “serious enough.”

But I don’t want to be a part of the problem anymore. I have struggled with my own mental health and reaching out to others has never been easy for me. I have suffered through anxiety for years, bouts of depression, and am currently in treatment for an eating disorder.

I started 988 Clothing to keep the conversation going for myself and for everyone else who is quietly struggling to keep up with everything: school, friendships, expectations, relationships, and our growing mental health struggles. My hope with 988 is to show people it’s okay to openly talk about your mental health struggles and that reaching out to people for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. It’s a lesson I’m still learning, but one I’m no longer willing to learn in silence.

Communication is one of the, if not the, most important qualities in a functioning society. Yet, it proves time and time again to be one of the most challenging actions to pursue. Growing up as a kid with ADHD, exploding with enough energy to make an elephant bounce off the walls, emotional awareness was the least of my worries. As I became older, however, these emotions became more and more vital to my day-to-day life. From the age of 13 to now, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about my emotions and how they truly affect me and how I communicate with others. Alongside that, I began to realize that so much of my communication of myself, my ideals, and even my emotions was happening through my clothing.

I wanted to communicate with my clothing in a way other people weren’t. And while I hadn’t connected the dots between my growing appreciation of communicating my emotional health and communicating who I am through my clothing, when the opportunity to start 988 Clothing came up I realized I could combine two things that play a huge role in my life.

Open communication is one of the most important ways we can connect with each other. Whether it be between a friend, parent, classmate, teacher, or colleague, communication can be the catalyst to a healthy and open relationship. And when we use that open communication around mental health, we all come out healthier, stronger, and more supported. With 988 I hope to highlight, through our fashion, the everyday struggles many people, especially those my age, face. I hope to encourage others to be supportive and open when it comes to these things, provide an opportunity for those who may not normally feel free to talk, and to help us all keep the conversation going about mental health.

The first time I ever thought about taking my own life was in 7th grade. I was overwhelmed by school, my family, and especially the math homework I was trying my hardest to complete, but could not, for the life of me, understand. I figured that if I was no longer alive, I would no longer have to deal with any of these struggles and I would be free. But I never told anyone.

Looking back it seems like such a trivial problem to get so worked up about, just answer the questions, they’re as easy as 1 + 1 = 2 and 4 + 4 = 8. But now, I realize the real problem in the situation. It was not my inability to understand math, my family nagging me about this and that, or even putting too much pressure on my young 12 year old self. It was the fact that I didn’t even realize that these thoughts were so damaging to me.

Talks of mental health were virtually non-existent in my school, instead our time was often filled with random assemblies that no one seemed to care about, and boring standardized testing. At home, mental health was also never mentioned. I felt alone in my pain and sadness. I felt that dying was my only way out. I had no idea that there were people I could reach out to for help, and that I actually did have other options.

I started 988 Clothing to bring awareness to the serious issues we face. I want people to understand that these pressures and struggles are normal and are not topics to be pushed aside and ignored. They are the things that need to be talked about the most, topics where we must keep the conversation going in order to move us all forward.