Why The Semi Colon?

If you’ve spent any time around MAAD, you’ve probably noticed one symbol appearing again and again.

The semicolon. 

It’s part of our logo, it appears across our clothing, our content and throughout everything we’re building, but it’s much more than a design choice.

In writing, a semicolon is used when an author could have ended a sentence, but chose to continue it. Over time, that simple piece of punctuation has taken on a much deeper meaning within the mental health community, becoming a symbol of continuation, hope and the decision to keep going when life has felt incredibly difficult.

That’s why it means so much to us, mental health struggles don’t always look the way we expect them to. Sometimes they’re visible, sometimes they’re hidden behind work, family life, friendships, humour and the words, “I’m fine.”

There can be chapters of our lives that feel overwhelming. Times when anxiety takes over, depression makes everything feel heavier or we simply can’t see how things are going to get better.

The semicolon doesn’t pretend those chapters didn’t happen, it represents the fact that the story can continue beyond them. For some people, the symbol represents surviving an incredibly dark period in their own life. For others, it’s worn in memory of somebody they’ve lost. It can represent living with anxiety or depression, supporting somebody you love, or simply believing that nobody should ever feel they have to struggle alone.

Just like Wear Your Why, its meaning can be deeply personal, you don’t have to explain it, you don’t have to tell anyone your story and you don’t need to have reached crisis point for the semicolon to mean something to you.

For us, that’s part of what makes the symbol so powerful, it’s small and it’s simple. But when somebody recognises it, there’s an unspoken understanding that can exist between two people and sometimes that can start a conversation.

That’s why the semicolon sits at the heart of MAAD.

We don’t use it because we believe every difficult story has a simple ending, or because talking suddenly makes everything okay. We use it as a reminder that there can be another sentence, another conversation, another day, another chapter.

Our stories are all different, and the reasons we keep going are different too. But whatever your reason, your story is still being written.

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