In a world where hope is unstable, and disappointment common, The Badass That Hope Built™ project aims to help restore hope to the hopeless.

 

A WEAPON OF MASS INSPIRATION

Born from my latest album The Holy Hell of Hope, The Badass That Hope Built™ is a robust multimedia campaign that utilizes music, film, art, writing and digital media to inspire others to reframe the crushing failures and agonizing disappointments of their lives in order to be reborn again into the innocence and magic of fearlessly dreaming, loving and believing in the possibility of an awesome life, all over again.  

 

It has taken almost four years since the launching of my original funding campaign for this project (then titled The ReMixed Life) for me to recognize this work - as my Aunt just reminded me - is in many ways a culmination of my life's work.  While I'd seen The White Noise Project, The ReMixed Mind, The Dover Hairston Project, my celebrated advice column for Ebony Magazine, my private counseling practice and multiple albums as separate entities, the reality is each - born from my own personal hardships, curiosities, life lessons and triumphs - are a reflection of my lifelong passionate commitment to see the painful as purposeful.  I call it "crossfading" and I've been doing it for my entire life.  First out of necessity given the traumatic circumstances of my childhood, then by choice as I felt a deep call to help other adults who were in the midst of giving up on themselves, their lives, their dreams.

 

So it is with this conviction that I set out in late 2011 to create a project that would inspire hope and offer a blueprint for high-voltage transformation. If I would’ve had any clues about the nightmares that hung in the distance, I would’ve likely given up on the very thing my project sought to restore:  hope.   Read the back story on the suicide that changed it all.

 

WITHOUT HOPE, WE ALL DIE

Contrary to popular belief, young people are not the only “at-risk” population on the planet. Every single day substance abuse, divorce, death, depression, chronic illness, war, poverty and so much more tags adults, who I believe are worth saving too.  In fact, it is the experience of moving zealously with child-like wonder into adulthood - where we are often mowed down by the unforgiving reality of what is versus what was hoped for - that so often delivers us to the edge of hopelessness. We navigate through an ocean of miscalculations becoming less hopeful that anything can be done to heal our broken hearts; hearts that have been pierced by sorrow, hardened by being made of a fool of, paralyzed by fear, scorched by loneliness, literally worn lifeless from dreams we loved that didn’t love us back. It’s heart-breaking to consider, yet uncomfortably true for too many of us.

 

THE GROWING CRISIS

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported in 2000 that depression is the fourth most burdensome disease in the world, with more than 120 million people suffering from it worldwide. By 2020 it is expected that depression will be the leading global disease burden. In the United States alone, estimates for those diagnosed with the disease range from 17 to 21 million people a year.

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also reports that it is individuals in the 40 to 59-year-old range who are more likely to be diagnosed with depression. And according to the Journal of Employee Assistance, 90 percent of those who are diagnosed will go on to attempt or succeed in committing suicide.

 

90 percent!

 

Sadly, recent data from the CDC showed that the suicide rate in the U.S. increased dramatically from 2008 to 2010. Shane Looper, pastor of Lockwood Community Church in Branch County, Michigan points out in the Taunton Gazette that in spite of experts who refer to the 2008 economic downturn to justify this disturbing trend, “people do not end their lives because they’ve lost a job. People end their lives because they’ve lost their hope.”

 

Further, Pastor Looper writes, “hopelessness spreads faster than a cold virus in a kindergarten classroom. People who don’t even know they’ve caught it nevertheless suffer its devastating consequences. It’s true they don’t say to themselves, "I live in an existentially meaningless world." What they say is, "I just can’t take it anymore."

 

Hopelessness, it is the epidemic of our time.

 

REACHING THE FRONT LINES

Between 2013 and 2018, The Badass That Hope Built™ movement will introduce multiple creative projects that offer stunning portraits of monster resilience in order to evoke the imagination, fire up optimism and reanimate hope in the lives of those who need it most. These projects include:

 

• a multi-installment release of The Holy Hell of Hope album, including music videos (see I'm Still Here)

• an unscripted filmed conversation series (companion to The Holy Hell of Hope CD)

• a full-color coffee table book of essays

• The Badass That Hope Built™ visual mixtape film screenings

• a 7-city performance tour

• Conversessions™ and moderated salons

• an inspirational web and mobile app with targeted social media campaign

 

The Badass That Hope Built™ campaign will launch various outreach initiatives by partnering with national and local organizations that focus on mental illness, suicide, victims of crime, addiction, domestic violence, poverty, grief and loss in order to reach the front lines of those most often impacted by hopelessness.  Join me!  Support the project here.