Jamie Tworkowski / To Be Known & Loved: Surprise, Hope, Resilience, and Identity

As we're knit in the womb, a primal cry emerges from the very fact of our being, the very fact of our dependence, the fact of our contingency, the fact of our ultimate need: Do you love me? Jamie Tworkowski, the founder of To Write Love on Her Arms and bestselling author of If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For, joins Evan Rosa for a discussion about the hope and resilience and human identity that emerges from being known and loved; what it means to live a life worth living; his own struggle with mental illness and therapy; the connection between mystery, not knowing, and the sort of surprise that makes life worth another day.

In this episode, we talk in some detail about the beautiful and heartbreaking founding story that led Jamie to start To Write Love on Her Arms, which includes references to self-harm and contains an expletive, which in Jamie's words is "more about identity than profanity". And if you are or anyone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or if you need help even right now, call or text 988. 988 is the new nationwide number for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.

Show Notes

• jamietworkowski.com
• Follow Jamie Tworkowski on Twitter
• If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For
• Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
• To Write Love on Her Arms
• “Being loved looks like being known.”
• Rebecca Solnit’s 2020 article describing hope as a commitment to the future.
• “I've really come to believe that getting help, asking for help, recovery counseling for some people, sobriety, that it's not easy, but it's worth it.”
• Giving up the need for control.
• Clem Snide, “I Love the Unknown”
• Looking past the things we feel are missing.
• To Write Love On Her Arm: “that phrase at first, it was a, a goal for one person and pretty quickly because of this growing audience, it became a goal on a bigger scale.”
• “And I hope that other people, in this case the listener who might be struggling, I hope that you would stay for the surprises: to be surprised by life, by love, by joy, by God; that there would be moments that you will experience and, and as a result, be so glad that you chose to keep going, that you chose to stay.”

Production Notes

• This podcast featured author Jamie Tworkowski
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance and Episode Art by Luke Stringer
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give