Humanity is like a powerhouse of shortcomings  because they seek out only flaws to highlight their own worth, yet they are made perfected when viewed from the eyes of God, who—far removed from human perceptions—sees all that He created us to be. 

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When your mental health hits rockbottom, it can be one of the most paralyzing, debilitating, and terrifying (harrowing) experiences of your life. The causes are a cacophony combination of old and recent wounds so loud and painful, they bring you to your knees and slaughter you at your weakest so you lie flailing on the cold hard floor begging for grace and mercy. That’s when you realize that you haven't lost everything, you have…hope—a tiny flicker perhaps but that’s all you need to find your feet to pull yourself up and begin to fight in the greatest war for your life. For every battle that you win, it is an immense victory and for every battle that you loose, hope pushes you forward to try again and again. Hope manifests itself in many gifted mediums—writing, art, music, listening, talking, creating, etc—and seeks to translate our deepest yearnings and passion to recover our equilibrium and restore a safe place for healing.

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I started Translations of Hope as a small project cause in 2018 to bring different languages of poetry to help Madpropslive's Food and Thought initiative run and hosted by Jared Pressner @forget_it42 to feed the hungry on a global scale (We Together Love). It was amazing to see how many languages people knew, and how many people wanted to participate in it. However, due to the number of submissions that kept coming in, I had to pull back to understand how it wanted to transform in order to expand its vision and reach the world from a stronger solidified foundation. Almost immediately, two of my poetic colleagues, Julie Onoh and Lucija Hranjec encouraged me to start a community. Lucija went a step further and created a logo for me to use which motivated me to create a logo based on her thoughtful and most generous gift. It was a stunning journey because almost immediately I was thrilled when a group of dedicated mental health advocates volunteered to help us to create a community during the pandemic that reached out to those struggling by bringing kindness, a beacon of light and encouraging the voiceless to speak.

 

Special thanks goes to Miriam Otto, Ismet Diab, Talitha Doss, Shruti Jaykumar, Nishadi Thantrige, Balaji V, Priscilla Dias, Ash Laperle, Timi Jolaoso & Arun Chandra. Together, we evolved into a community that got integrated with Ink Gladiators Press and these truly amazing hearts helped to bring Hope to those struggling with mental health as well as awareness of its crippling nature to those who held falsely related notions about it. If you wish to view their podcasts, lives and curations, you can find them at this link. Even though we eventually made the decision to dissolve it as a community because some of the members had to move on to other ventures, I want to especially thank Miriam Otto, Ismet Diab and Shruti Jaykumar for still being willing to go on because through all of you, I realized how important it was to keep spreading awareness about it. With IGP, Magical Jar was published as a group chapbook and it gave me the motivation to plan to have one anthology themed book related to MH every year.