Hard work truly does pay off and for Southeast Missouri State University's To Write Love On Her Arms [TWLOHA] chapter along with Student Activities Council, the near to impossible goal of having the founder of TWLOHA Jamie Tworkowski come and speak with Southeast students was finally met on Tuesday Nov. 5.

TWLOHA is a non-profit organization that aims to bring awareness to many issues that young people face including depression, self-injury, addiction, and suicide. Through the sales of T-shirts and other merchandise TWLOHA raises both money and awareness for these issues and the people afflicted by them.

Once attendees arrived the lights dimmed and a video began to play. The YouTube video gave a glimpse of what the story of TWLOHA was and the origins behind it that had helped it become what it is today. After the video played Tworkowski introduced not only himself, but actress Julia Jones from the Twilight movie series. Jones then proceeded to speak about her struggles and what had helped her get through it.

"I realized it doesn't matter who you are everybody goes through stuff sometimes, everybody has issues, everybody gets happy and sad," Jones said.

"I think we live in this world that you can't walk down the street without seeing a billboard of a beautiful person smiling and looking like their having the time of their lives and they have no problems and we think that's what I want to be. It's sad, it's a trap. I can't think of anyone who hasn't fallen into it, including myself."

After Jones' remarks Tworkowski again took the stage, but this time he told his story and explained in more detail how he had met the woman known to many simply as Renee in his now widely recognized essay entitled "To Write Love on Her Arms". In the essay Tworkowski writes about a 19-year-old woman named Renee who had faced many hardships and was in return relying on pills, cocaine, and alcohol to cope. With the help of his friends Tworkowski was able to help save Renee's life.

"I don't think I've ever had an invitation like that one in terms of when my friend had invited me to come meet her [Renee]. Something just felt important about it. When we had the opportunity to spend that time with her I think it just really seemed like the right thing to do," Tworkowski said. I mean she didn't have a place to go and so she lived with us for five days."

Prior to his meeting with Renee, Tworkowski had a profitable job, but after meeting Renee he realized he wanted to help others just like her and so began his journey of making TWLOHA the movement that it is today. In 2006 Tworkowski created a lot of buzz by posting his essay "To Write Love on Her Arms" through the social media site MySpace, which was popular back then.

After the posting Tworkowski received numerous messages from other users detailing their struggles and how they could relate to Renee's story so easily.

"At first it was about helping this girl [Renee], but we learned really quickly that we could do more than help just one girl and tell one story," Tworkowski said. "We were selling T-shirts to raise money for her [Renee's] treatment and we suddenly realized we had the opportunity to do a lot more and that gave birth to the organization."

If interested in joining Southeast's TWLOHA chapter meetings are held from 8 - 9 p.m. every Tuesday in the UC. For more information about TWLOHA visit twloha.com.