Loud Mouth Brown Girl

I have a new church now.

It’s the church of Mental health. Everyone is welcome regardless of age, race, creed, nationality, size, orientation, and color. Regardless of any label that may separate you from someone else, you’re welcome in this community. Some folks believe in God, others don’t.

Some believe in many Gods, others don’t.

I believe you can and should definitely believe whatever helps you get through this nightmare of a life, because as I am learning at 40 years old, no one, not one person on this planet has it easy. Each of us has our struggles, but it’s absolutely how we deal with them that defines who we are going to become despite those struggles.

The church didn’t teach me that. The church taught me that anyone – even Grammy award winners, even lawyers, doctors, and teachers, can be brought low enough to use crack, heroin, meth, or any number of other drugs that will steal what’s left of their lives.

The church taught me that people with money absolutely do care, but the ones that care and the ones that are there for photo ops are easy to spot. It’s definitely different to meet a rich person who would rather have a meal with a poor person, or clean toilets just so they can say they were there.

It’s definitely different to have folks there get to know homeless people by name so that they can build friendships with people on different sides of the economic spectrum. That’s how it used to be, but it’s not like that anymore.

We scared the church because we treated our folks like humans, and we were in the press, we were making a name for ourselves, and they didn’t like that. We were the little church that could, and they stomped on our light because it wasn’t what they wanted.

To this day I will say that ableism and racism had a huge part to deal with the reason I was fired, but that’s that. I can’t change it. All I can do is take the lessons I learned at the church and use them as fuel to push me forward.

I spent my whole life learning to be of service to other people – I didn’t really like it at the time, but I miss it now. So I want to use Loud Mouth Brown Girl as my service project. I’m finally ready to make this project more than just about me and my journey.

This year, instead of doing Survivor’s Connection on the internet, I am going to do it in person. I am very excited about this next phase of Loud Mouth Brown Girl and the church of Mental Health because I finally get to contribute by creating a day that I hope will go down as something that changed someone’s life.

I am going to do an event for women, that will hopefully leave them feeling empowered, stronger, and more inspired than they have felt in a while, and yes, I am doing this for myself too because this year is all about new adventures.

For the longest time, I swam around trying to figure out where I fit, thinking I found my people only to realize that some people aren’t meant to be in my life forever – but the extension of having them at all was fucking fantastic.

I’m lucky – one of the truly lucky ones who was protected during my houseless days by a community of people from around the world. Now it’s time to make good on my promise by turning this website into the biggest mental health brand in the world that actually helps people, instead of just talking about helping people.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl