The number of teen suicides has been increasing, but at one local school, issues that can lead to suicide were discussed with students by a man who’s been there.
The event took place at Donelson Christian Academy where Brian Earley was on a mission that began when he was just a child.
“Five years ago, when I started to make a change, cause it took 38 years, to talk about the things that went on in my life. The scars, the abuse, the abandonment,” Earley said. “The fact that I had to grow up without the love of a mother, a father. In fact had to grow up to the point of always having to realize that my mom and dad, thought I was a mistake. Didn't want me... dropped me off on foster home steps and drove off. Thats an empty feeling man. It's very empty.”
Earley, was abused by his parents, and others. The pain was so bad, Earley tried suicide not once, but three times.
“This isn't fair that everybody else has the mom and dad, and they drop them off at the ballgame, and here I am, I have to wake up everyday saying my mom and dad don't even love me, could care less about if I was even here,” Earley said. “And three times it got too much for me. And three times I failed.”
But his life began to take a turn, when someone unexpected reached out.
“As Brandy reached out to me in 7th grade, as she became my friend, as her family took me in and took care of me and gave me the love that I had been missing my whole life, she said something that was very important, that I try to tell students,” Earley said. “She said, ‘I always knew that he was going to do something great, I just didn't foresee that it was going to be all this.’”
And all this is now his life's work: Think2Change.org.
“Five years ago, I had just got out of a bout of depression, where as everything I went through as a child, came back up at one time, and out of that, is where I thought, ‘Wait a minute, maybe I can use my scars to help students and turn it into a positive thing,’ so I just took it and run with it.”
To learn more about Earley's program, click here.
