To Write Love on Her Arms is a nonprofit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and invest directly into treatment and recovery.
Our founder, Jamie Tworkowski, didn't set out to start a nonprofit organization. All he wanted to do was help a friend and tell her story. When Jamie met Renee Yohe, she was struggling with addiction, depression, self-injury, and suicidal thoughts. He wrote about the five days he spent with her before she entered a treatment center, and he sold T-shirts to help cover the cost. When she entered treatment, he posted the story on MySpace to give it a home. The name of the story was “To Write Love on Her Arms.”
The words and the life it represented shed light on the reality of contrast—pain and peace, addiction and sobriety, regret and freedom. Soon Jamie and his friends were answering messages from people around the world. They longed to lift the heavy weight of depression. They wanted to be free from addiction or self-injury, to stay alive and live fully. They were mourning those they’d lost to such struggles, and they reached out to ask what they could do to bring hope to their communities.
THE TITLE, “TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS,” ALSO REPRESENTED A GOAL—TO BELIEVE THAT A BETTER LIFE WAS POSSIBLE.