Although most of our displays during the tour are held on college campuses, we have a few stops that are just downtown in a city. This Monday we were able to set up the send silence packing display right outside of the Prudential Center in Boston.
City displays are different in a lot of ways. The largest difference is the crowd that moves through. While any display usually has a mix of students, staff, and community members, the cities provide an even wider and more evenly distributed group. You never know who might be passing through and interacting with the display at any given moment—we have tourists, students, business people, families, and just about anyone you could imagine. As different as this might appear at first, we’ve found that the reception is just as strong. City displays truly show us that this issue has a far reaching impact. We always mention that even though we primarily work with undergraduates, this issue affects all of us and the resources can be available for anyone, and our interactions in the city help us put those words into action.
Boston welcomed the display warmly, even if the weather didn’t. As we’ve discussed previously in our travels, we enjoy doing outdoor displays whenever possible. When we saw the forecast of 50% showers for Boston, we were a bit torn. We had the amazing Meg Hutchinson lined up to perform during the event, and we thought that her sound and the visual of the display would be such a great mix outside of the Prudential Center. We decided to risk the weather and do the display outdoors.
This started off great, we’re extremely happy with how the event ran throughout the uncertain weather. Every time a few drops came through, they’d stop almost as soon as they started. We continued to joke about the positive energy of all the volunteers keeping the rain away. As noon approached (which was when Meg was scheduled to perform), no amount of positive energy could keep the showers away.
Even though we got a bit wet, that didn’t stop us, Meg, or the fantastic community at Boston from continuing in the event. Meg played in the rain, Boston brought their umbrellas, and the show continued. I was personally quite moved to see passerby’s stop to interact with the display even in the rain. I think that really says something about how important this all really is.
After Meg finished performing, we decided to pack up and move the display indoors to our rain location at City Hall. Though we didn’t have enough time to set up the entire 1,100 backpacks there, we were able to set out the story bags and have a big final push during the final hours (this time while staying dry).
The city displays, as I mentioned, are both extremely different and curiously similar. I am incredibly proud to have the opportunity to work with this program, and seeing the way these communities come out to support us makes every bit of effort worth it—even in the rain.
As the exhibits ALWAYS are, Boston’s display was filled with powerful moments. Two of my favorites: There is a beautiful backpack in honor of Kara Tagget among the sea of 1,100. Her Mom, Sara, helped us kick off the tour in Maryland and has been a powerful advocate and supporter of the program. Kara’s friends visited her bag at her alma matter, Michigan State, and her cousins visited at another stop. In Boston, on Monday, her grandparents came to see her. Her grandpa walked up, “there she is! That’s her smile!”. They spent a long time with her bag and interacting with the program – they thanked us again and again and were so moved by our work. They signed the journal “Granny and Gramps”. I’m so glad we were able to bring Kara’s backpack and the program to Boston for them to see.
My other favorite part of city displays is that you get multi-generational and multi-lingual families interacting with the backpacks. One family arrived and spent a long time looking at the program and then they came up to me, huddled under their umbrellas, and their young daughter asked me one question after another. “This many in a year? One year? Which year?” I answered each question while her family eagerly looked on. Then, they gathered in a huddle and she translated everything I had just told her. I believe they were speaking Russian.
Volunteering at Send Silence Packing was the best thing I could’ve ever done with my day off from work. To put a physical object to represent a statistic is eye-opening. To hear the stories when people walk into the display, moving. My life has been forever changed the moment a young man approached me because I looked nice and he felt safe to talk me about how he had considered taking his life the night before, and how the display and the resources available touched him enough – that he didn’t want to become a number in that statistic – he now felt that he wasn’t alone and that help was available. If I had a car and didn’t have school, I would do the tour with Active Minds. Spending the day with a wonderful team, and knowing that you are making a difference and raising awareness is worth it. I now feel inspired to change my career path and change the world.
I think my favorite moment at Send Silence Packing in Boston was when a young man was passing through and asked if he could leave a donation. “OF COURSE!” I told him. I noticed that he hadn’t spent much time looking through the display, but after he dropped a few dollars into the fish bowl, he wrote in the tour journal and went on his way. I read what he wrote after he left- he encouraged others to reach out because that’s what saved his life. I wanted to run after him and give him a hug. This moment was so moving to me because he didn’t have to go through every backpack to understand the magnitude of the issue- he had already lived it, he already understood, and he was already on our side.
Another moment I remember well was when a man was passing through with his infant zipped up into his rain jacket. He was shielding the baby’s face from the rain and carrying a bag in the other hand. I walked up to him and offered him the flyer we were handing out that describes the display. He asked if I could just summarize it for him, so I explained the display and the mission behind it. When I was done he said, “So you want people to start talking about it?” “Yes,” I said. “Well, I think you managed that pretty effectively…. without giving me this piece of paper.” I smiled at him and then they were on their way, but not before taking another minute to read some of the backpacks
SSP has now made its way to several sites, which all prompt different aesthetic responses. However, there seem to be two things that never change and this was even true in Boston on a rainy, chilly, early spring day.
1) The looks on people’s faces
There is an initial shock that the display inspires on others’ faces. They hear about what they are looking at and their eyes grow a bit wider, there’s a clear tension in their faces, then their brows furrow. Depending on the level of tension created in each individual, many will proceed through the backpacks, bend down to skim through the stories. This inevitably brings hands to mouths in a gesture of sadness–and a slight twinge of pain when thinking about what is truly lost with the life of a college student. Folks look down at the backpacks for a long while, and often, they continue to look down as they ponder what they are seeing and what it all means. It affects each person differently based on their own experience, but eventually they look up. There is sadness in their eyes, but there is also an openness. Folks begin to look at those around them–ready to connect with someone about the issues being raised for them. Throughout this blog there are stories of those resulting connections–connections that are instantly so much deeper than any other fostered by two strangers on the street.
2) The language we all begin to use
It often seems like we’re all on our own. Sure, many of us recognize family and friends as integral parts of our lives. However, in our society so much pressure is placed on the individual that reaching out for support from others is seen as weakness or a burden. This is part of what fuels folks’ desire to seek help for any number of illnesses, including mental disorders, but I’m writing of a different type of isolation. The American Dream and American mythologies perpetuate an idea that we are all singularly responsible for our own success or failure. Thus, we move through our day-to-day lives singularly focused on what “I, alone” am responsible for doing, completing, catching, dreaming, etc. etc. What is different at SSP is how the language shifts. Folks run through their days thinking, “I need…” “I want…” “I am…” and as they encounter the display they take on the voices of those who have been lost and those who have gathered around them. As a result, the language becomes, “We need…” “We are…” “Together…” The magnificence of SSP is that it is a rarity that creates another rarity — a regular use of inclusive, community-inspired language.
For many of us in Boston, Meg Hutchinson tied together the sights, sounds, and feelings tied up in the display both through her music and words. Like so many others, Meg entered the plaza totally overwhelmed by the magnitude of the display and touched deeply by what it represented. She spoke over and over again of hearing the voices of all those represented by the backpacks–not only those we had lost but those who had been left behind. Through her music, Meg called us all together, fed the community we created that day, and pledged herself as an ally of the movement. In many ways, Meg tied our energy together and the Active Minds family left Boston tired, but with more strength than ever before.