May is Mental Health Awareness Month and one Palm Beach County business owner wants to be a beacon of hope for those who may be suffering in silence. He’s doing it in an eye-catching way.
Jon Majak wants to make people feel seen every time they drive by one of his signs. Five hundred green signs, which represent Mental Health Awareness, are placed throughout Palm Beach County.
They have messages that say, “Don’t give up, your life matters” and “You are loved more than you know. Keep Going.”
“I just felt that I want to reach as many people as possible,” Majak said. The words come from his heart and his experience.
“I found myself in a really bad spot in 2018 where I spent 15 months in complete darkness,” Majak said. “Complete darkness is a suicidal trance, and I couldn’t understand why I lost connection with reality, and it was mind-blowing that it was happening to me. After my son was born, my wife almost lost her life, and during that time it was a mental struggle trying to keep it all together, fight for the family.”
He had to reflect on the root cause of these feelings.
“What I’ve come to realize is we’ve all heard of heartbreak, but people don’t realize that your mind can break too,” Majak said. “During that time it was all that toxic stress mixed with that traumatic moment. That’s all it took for that bend to break, and I spent the next 15 months fighting for it.”
Broken and at rock bottom, Majak said he was looking for his own signs to “Keep going,” that never came.
“During that time, I was just driving, looking for answers, I don’t know what I was looking for, but I thought there would be a physical sign. I thought someone would say, ‘It’s OK,’ but that’s the struggle with mental health is there are no physical signs anywhere. I’d say there’s got to be some sort of sign and there never was. So somehow, someway I feel like this assignment was given to me to place signs throughout the area to spread awareness,” Majak said.
Majak is turning his pain into purpose, spreading that message of hope, healing and letting people know they are not alone in the silent battles they may be facing. He didn’t know what to expect when he started placing the signs around the community but said the response has been overwhelming.
“People [were] saying the same thing over and over, ‘This is the sign I needed,’ my goodness,” he said.
The signs have a QR code linking to Majak’s social media page. It’s been flooded with messages of thanks.
“I was just expecting to make a little noise and try my best but to see it come full circle,” Majak said. “There aren’t enough words.”
The response is proof that we all need a little help sometimes. And that’s Majak’s sign that it’s all worth it.
“If somebody is watching this my hope is this message reached you for a reason. You are watching this or listening to this and you are saying I needed that, I needed that sign,” he added. “I drive around thinking if just one person’s life is changed, this mission is worth it. I just hope people know how precious life is and how fast it can be taken from you.”