Filma Fall Fundraiser: “It will be okay” pins
Hey all – it’s been a while. Like many of you we’ve been riding the 2020 wave and what a ride it has been. And, like many of you, WE’RE STILL HERE and we’ve got some things to fill you in on, well one thing in particular… but it’s a very important thing. We’re raising raising funds to stay artists and spreading some hope at the same time.
Don’t wanna read that much? Here’s the summary:
Filma’s having a fund raiser and we will be selling “it will be okay” pins via our online shop for 15 dollars. We’re expecting the sale link to go live the first week of October.
“It will be okay”
Origin Story
For me, as someone who lives with complex PTSD, I’ve had some significant low points in my life, too many of them in fact. During one of them a few years ago, right before I gave up alcohol for good, I realized that I was someone who needed a reminder. You see, for me, one of my recurring issues that I often forget that hope is an option and well, living within a system of despair is hardly palatable. Once again I’d found myself wondering if suicide was the right option for me; I wanted to manifest a new direction to my story.
I came up with the idea to create a sticker that simply said, “it will be okay” – a simple message of hope that would illuminate anyone’s darkest hour. I wanted the message to be small and versatile, the kind of reminder you could place anywhere; the kind of reminder that could surprise you when you’ve seemingly lost yourself to your own demons. And so, with the help of my friend, we created the ‘it will be okay’ sticker and ordered several hundred of them.
Upon receiving the stickers and hiding them in nooks and crannies all over my home, we also started taking requests from members of our online communities. Anyone who requested a sticker would be sent one, free of charge. Envelope after envelop, thousands of stickers went all over the world and began to do their work. And one by one, folks would reach out to me to let me know how this little reminder reminded them when they needed it most. My simple little reminder was impactful to not only myself but to others.
I repeated this process of creating stickers and sending them out for years. I have no idea how many are out there now, but I do know how helpful they have been to a large number of people. I know how helpful they’ve been to me as the semicolon on the back of my neck will never let me forget.
Recently one of our new members, Psy, pitched the idea of creating pins for a fall fund raiser, the goal: to make ends meet and survive as artists into next year. Psy then drafted several fantastic designs, including the “it will be okay” pin we’re talking about right now. We instantly knew which design we wanted and Psy got to work, thank goodness she did. We now have our first shipment of the “it will be okay” pins and we couldn’t be more thrilled with how they’ve turned out.
Raising Awareness and Ourselves
We’re really excited about these pins; we’ve been preparing for over a month for their arrival updating our website and preparing the infrastructure to do something we’ve never really done… fund raise. This is all very new to us, but kind of fun all the same; we can’t say that some of the challenges brought to us by COVID required us to grow in unexpected ways.
To make things more exciting, we’re going to give back. For, at least the first hundred pins (but probably more), we’ll be shipping with these special stamps:
These stamps donate money towards ptsd awareness and recovery – not much, just a few cents but it all adds up. You can read more about them here. You can ship with them too if you like and join our efforts, just visit the USPS site and order some for yourself.
EDIT October 3 2020 — Soooooooooooooooooo we got shipping wrong and we can’t use stamps. We still have these amazing stamps, but we’re going to be saving them for another project. We’re still going to figure out how to give some proceeds back, so stay tuned, we’ll sort that out and get back to you.
Pins online soon
So yea, expect the shop link to go live for these in about a week (the first full week of october). We’re still preparing the online shop and getting our shipping-selves prepared but we’re almost there.
When they do go online, do us a favor and spread the word. This is how we’re gonna keep the lights on, and we’re going to help some folks with PTSD all the same; folks like me.
Want to know first thing when they’re posted? Follow Filma and we’ll keep you in the loop!
Or you can just check the shop in about a week’s time, either way, we hope you find this message as useful as we do.
Stronger Together
I know, as you know, that what we’re living isn’t just any old story – it’s our story. Our story, the deepest most intense story we’ve ever heard of, can be really fucking difficult at times. We stand with you, our community, to remind you that we will make it through. We will stand together and help each other out, and we assure you…
it will be okay.
Thanks for reading and thank you for your support – we’ll see you soon.