MILWAUKEE — People have used social media challenges to bring awareness to a variety of causes.
"The original context of the challenge is to do 22 push-ups a day for 22 days," says JMatt, a Milwaukee resident using pushups to promote suicide prevention.
Five-and-a-half years later, JMatt is still doing those push-ups every day.
"For those who don't know, 22 push-ups a day for the formerly 22 veterans that die by suicide each day," says JMatt. "While I'm not a veteran myself, I am someone who has struggled with thoughts of suicide my whole life. And when I start the push-up challenge it gave me a platform to openly talk about suicide, but not just that my experiences as a whole with mental health."
For JMatt the push-ups turned into a type of self-care and it just made sense to keep going.
"When people encourage me to do the math, like how many push-ups has it been if you do 22 times how many days. Then I'm like 'oh that's 44,000 push-ups.' That is a lot of push-ups," says JMatt.
Hitting day 2,000 on June 26, JMatt promotes mental health resources in every post.
"The crisis text line where you can text the word hello to 741741 and then there is a national suicide prevention hotline, that's 1-800-273-8255," says JMatt.
But you don't have to do anything for thousands of days straight to make sure those around you are okay.
"A really simple thing you can do to support others and yourself is a simple text to a friend. If you have someone in your family or your friendships or you just generally have someone that you need to check in on, do it," says JMatt.
One action of love could save a life.
