The "I Love You" Project

(Mental Health America)

The past few days have been the most challenging of my life. 

I've never really experienced grief before, so I was shocked and devastated when my childhood best friend took his own life last week.

This situation gave me the harsh realization that certain characteristics of eastern culture, such as emotional reservedness, can have terrible effects, particularly on mental health. Young Asian Americans should feel like they can openly speak to the adults in their lives, especially their immigrant parents. 
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​Therefore, DeclarASIAN will be rolling out the "I Love You" project in the very near future. We'll be asking Asian youth and their parents to say "I love you" to each other (a simple action that doesn't occur enough in eastern families) and to describe their experiences to us. We hope it'll be a positive and enlightening endeavor.

We'll be accepting submissions through our Instagram page, so keep an eye out for that soon. We wish you a very happy holiday!

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​Update 2/17/19: Our project is completed and it was tremendously successful! Thank you for your support and submissions.  Check out all our submissions below!

​Author: Claire Cao