Dear Stranger: the story behind Letters to Strangers

I didn’t write this letter, but a dear stranger did. And though it’s been many years since, I still hold onto it deep in my heart. It’s the sort of textual hug I wish I could’ve felt while growing up — the sort of miracle I now hope to give others.

I was 13 years old when I received my bipolar disorder diagnosis, and 14 for uveitis — an eye disease that rendered me blind whenever an episode struck. Throughout high school I clung to hospitals like Sunday prayers and at one point was in a coma with a 110°F (43°C) fever. This, combined with a series of suicide attempts, convinced me that I’d outlasted my luck. That maybe I didn’t deserve the air that I breathed. But on my very final attempt, my little brother found me. I made a vow right then: no matter how dark my world got, I would never drag him down with me.

I wanted to heal. But as a low-income first-generation Chinese-American immigrant with parents who didn’t speak English, I didn’t know how to navigate mental healthcare, especially when more than 86% of therapists in the U.S. identify as White. So I turned to writing. As I wrote letters to strangers, I began to discover my own voice. Questioning why I could give so much empathy and kindness to people I’d never met, yet couldn’t do the same for myself. Over time, I learned that writing is humanity distilled into ink.

That’s why I founded Letters to Strangers (L2S) when I was a sophomore (second-year) in high school. 50% of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14; 75% by age 24. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in the world among young people. Yet there are few mental health organizations that specifically serve youth, and practically none that are youth for youth on a large-scale, especially when minorities are involved. This is where L2S comes in: my try at living this second chance at life right.

I’m 21, almost 22 now, and these days Letters to Strangers is the largest global youth-for-youth mental health non-profit destigmatizing mental illness and increasing access to affordable, quality treatment. We’ve impacted over 35,000 people with Chapters in over 20 countries around the world.

We operate mainly as follows: 1) therapy-informed anonymous letter-writing exchanges, where Chapters on campuses and in communities meet to discuss their letters afterward. 2) Science-based peer education curricula, which includes our comprehensive 80000-word, illustrated youth-for-youth mental health guidebook — the first of its kind. 3) Grassroots policy-driven advocacy, spearheaded by student task forces pushing for mental health services and awareness. Our impact comes from an incredible network of changemakers, from the first student mental health task force at Rutgers University Honors College to the first mental health professional ever brought to speak at our Karachi, Pakistan high school Chapter; from the first community-run Mental Health Resource Center in Liberia with our Monrovia Chapter to a short film series with actors from the Screen Actors Guild of New York.

In addition, we facilitate mental health workshops to over 2000 students in person every year, with a perfect average rating. Thousands more are educated online. Over 2000 letters are exchanged in person every year by our network and hundreds more every month with non-affiliated individuals through our custom online exchange portal. More recently, in the few months since the launch of our guidebook, schools from around the world have already purchased it as potential curricula material — and we have sold out of our first — and now almost second — print run.

Many days I wake up in awe of my luck. How did I survive to experience these miracles today? Yet if nothing else, this has taught me that writing is humanity distilled into ink. That we are all worthwhile. And it is through this advocacy that I finally discovered the cause of my uveitis — a disease that blinded me for years and dozens of specialists and hundreds of tests could not answer for: stress- and trauma-triggered psychosomatic, physical symptoms of my psychological distress. In one go I learned both the importance of healing the mind and how everything matters even when stigma tries to tell us otherwise.

If suicide is ever to become history and not a statistic, we must tune in to the students worldwide who shared how one letter, one human connection can and has saved their life. Mental health is more than sorrow, more than scapegoats — frenzied diagnoses aren’t always the antidote.

Of course, I could never have done this alone. And I’m not alone, no matter what my mind tries to tell me sometimes. In Letters to Strangers, we all become Global Changemakers. They say to be part of Global Changemakers is to have found your tribe — and these are my people. They supported me as a 2019 Global Changemaker. As a 2020 mentor. In just a little over a year, the magic of this community has blessed me with some of the most wonderful, genuine, and empathetic friendships I could’ve ever imagined.

Just a few years ago, I almost became a statistic. In this one year with GCM I’ve learned that joy tastes like the delicious vegetarian cooking at the Global Youth Summit, that love sounds like a dozen languages mingling at once. That peace is the realization that no one walks this earth alone. Mental health, youth activism, this unapologetic fight for change — it’s all the persisting of hope. So this is my call: join me. Together we empower humanity.

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To get involved with Letters to Strangers, check out how you can Start a Chapter of your own, sign up for our COVID-19 Letters Collective, or join in other ways on our website here! You can also submit an anonymous letter to our online letter exchange platform, where you’ll receive one back from a stranger.

Global Changemakers has an unshakeable mission of supporting youth to create positive change in their communities. A global pioneer in supporting youth-led development, they have trained youth from over 180 countries and provided grants to over 360 youth-led projects, which have had a combined impact on over 6,2 million people. www.global-changemakers.net

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article belong to the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or Global Changemakers.