Who am I?
Hi, my name is Isabella, I’m a 17 year old girl with OCD from London, and I am incredibly passionate about self love and mental health awareness.
Inaccurate socialised beliefs upon what is beautiful or not have been festering for years, and so when I began researching how drastic the issue of societal conditions of worth has become, I felt the need to do something, anything I could, to combat the problem. Not only are socialised opinions of beauty problematic but additionally the stigma surrounding mental illnesses. The world has come so impressively far in acceptance and reducing stigma around mental health, however, there is still the very apparent internalised belief that appearance is correlational with worth. Harmful inaccuracies such as this, once embedded and learned as truths among generations and generations of people, will ultimately, until challenged (which, thank goodness, is occurring far more frequently now) continue to harm people's view of self and mental health. I truly believe that...
Everyone deserves to love themselves unconditionally and know in their heart that they are worthy of happiness; if I can do anything to help reach that aim - I will.
To read more about why I wanted to create this non profit organisation, continue to scroll please x
I need to do it.
That was what was running through my mind when I began creating this idea of an organisation. Just those five words. It wasn’t a specific moment or sudden shocking turn of events which led to my eureka moment of wanting to found a non profit such as this one, but instead, the building of knowledge compiled over many years, that so many people have had their heart broken by how they view themselves, physically and mentally.
At some point in our lives our views changed from being a care free little child who didn’t judge themselves more than anyone else ever would and who didn’t speak to themselves as though they were their worst enemy - when and why did those views change? I kept asking myself that, time and time again and honestly, I still couldn’t give you a solid answer but I can still try and make a difference amongst that reality.
I want children to be able to grow up knowing that their acceptance regarding body shapes and mental illness is brilliant, despite what they may subconsciously learn through varied sources of discrimination, their worth has nothing to do with their body, in fact their body - everyone's body - is the least interesting things about them.
I truly believe that student led access to an outlet which tells children that society may not always be telling the truth in regards to what is beautiful or not, tells them that it’s okay to not be happy all the time, an outlet which tells them that they are beautiful and loved and worthy - I think it may just help combat self criticism, even if for only for one person, and that is something I am willing to put time and energy into.
Isabella x