DENVER — Dreambent Studios Tattoo, Jefferson Center for Mental Health, and eight other tattoo shops are partnering for a Hope;ink Semicolon Tattoo Event on Saturday.
The semicolon symbolizes the continuation of a sentence, and a continuation of life. This Saturday, nine shops across the Denver metro area will tattoo semicolons for a minimum donation of $50 to the Jefferson Center. Proceeds will support suicide prevention programs.
“It's more than just tattooing, you know,” said Eddie Mijares, co-owner of Dreambent Studios Tattoo.
The semicolons he’ll be tattooing on Saturday have two meanings.
“I was going to stop the sentence, or the story that I was sharing, but I decided to continue,” Mijares said. “So in the context of suicide, it's similar to that. It’s like ‘my story is not done.’”
For Mijares, it's personal.
“My daughter expressed at 12 and a half years old that she no longer wanted to be here,” Mijares said.
It taught Mijares that sometimes people just need a listening ear.
“Maybe I can get your world just a little bit, and maybe that's the factor that allows you to empty out your trash, so to speak,” Mijares said.
Amie Winters with Jefferson Center for Mental Health knows suicide has a lasting impression on everyone it touches. Her uncle John took his own life.
“I definitely felt very alone,” Winters said. “I had no one to talk to about it. And certainly people in my family, they didn't talk about it."
They hope these tattoos will be a never-ending nudge to continue the conversation.
“Our number one goal is to create an environment in which people can bring that conversation forth and not feel any which way about it,” Mijares said. “That it’s just what they are dealing with as a human condition.”