the predatory bird

Tag: Ben Raemers

  • Why So Sad? x Actions REALized

    Photo by Ari Landon Morris

    To date, over the course of the Good Egg 1 & 2, and the 2019 Why So Sad? Mission, we’ve raised around $13,000 for SAMH, Grassroots Suicide Prevention and the Johns Hopkins research into treatment of major depression. For this next phase, we’ll be helping out Rob, Susie and Lucy push forward with their work in 2020 at The Ben Raemers Foundation.

    To that end, Real Skateboards have been kind enough to partner up on a run of boards that we’ve made based on 1) the art that Jon Horner so skillfully provided, 2) a top graphic collage comprised of a decent selection of the photos that you all sent in over the course of the campaign; and a little inscription: Read on…

  • Shralp for Ben: Carl Harling’s Mission for the Ben Raemers Foundation

    Carl Harling riding his bike with his board strapped to the basket on a mission for mental health in memory of Ben Raemers
    Carl Harling riding his bike with his board strapped to the basket on a mission for mental health in memory of Ben Raemers

    Details of the ongoing Why So Sad? mission for mental health can be found here.

    Read on for a conversation with Carl Harling who is riding his bike and skating his way down the west coast in memory of Ben Raemers and in aid of the Ben Raemers Foundation… Read on…

  • Why So Sad? 2019 Mission for Mental Health

    In memory of my sister, Katrina, and pro-skater Ben Raemers, I plan on riding my bike 100 miles and finally — in my early 40s — doing my first proper Sad Plant. All money raised gets split between three good organizations doing some of the best work to reduce depression and provide access to tools, knowledge and services to improve our mental health. Read on…

  • Why So Sad? Three Options to Support the 2019 let’s-end-depression-and-suicide cycle-skate mission.

    Hello and thanks for visiting this page. In case you have no idea what’s going on, this page is dedicated to my sister, Katrina, as well as pro-skater Ben Raemers, both of whom lost their lives to suicide. For the last three years I’ve been doing an annual mission to raise funds and awareness around the issues of mental health and emotional well-being. And I’ve been attempting to drive a more open dialogue around the subjects of depression and suicide.

    This year I am collecting Sad Plants. I mean, there’ll be more to it than just that but for the sake of retaining some semblance of mystery I’ll leave it at that for now. Read on…

  • Ben Raemers: Some thoughts on depression and its worst-case conclusion

    Ben Raemers was the sweetest, funnest kid I ever toured with. I only traveled with Ben a couple of times, first through Europe and then through the Pacific North West. Now, in light of his recent death, I realize that there was a subtle anxiety in him that only in hindsight I see was the surface ripple of something profoundly painful. Having experienced episodes of darkness in my own life, I can’t help but interpret that as an indication that somewhere deep inside him was a dark, agonizing, Mariana Trench, from which he was desperately trying to escape. That constant struggle is exhausting but I remain convinced that there are concrete methods out there with which we can defuse these mental short-circuits — these false narratives that get stuck on loop in our heads. And, I have to say, I feel lucky that although I have suffered through periods of depression at times in my life, I have each time been able to find that invisible side-door through which to escape back onto a more optimistic path through this labyrinth we call life; and I have not been stuck in the awful, crippling loop of long-term or truly chronic depression.

    The spark to start writing this post came when I picked up my old notebook from the weeks that directly followed my (more…)