Clothing Line In Seminole Raises Mental Health Awareness, Offers Resources

A clothing line in Seminole aims to bring awareness to mental health resources. For the two friends behind it, the mission and message are deeply personal.

On a playground in her backyard, Haley Smith watches her three boys play, and that’s where she finds joy.

Joy has been difficult to come by since that day in February. It was the day her father took his life.

She said he loved large but took fights or setbacks hard. She knew he was prone to sadness.

“Trying to deal with him emotionally, it was a lot,” she said. “I was his emotional support.”

She never expected to find him on their family property in Seminole with a gun.

“He looked at me and said I love you, but I can’t do this anymore. I was like give me 5 more minutes,” she recalls. “Then he turned around and shot himself in the chest.”

The pain is felt deeply. It is also pain that is shared.

“9 times out of 10 he was smiling. He was happy,” Jonathan Welch said.

He speaks of his own father whom he describes as happy-go-lucky; a man that was in church every Sunday and Wednesday.

Jonathan recalls his father acting differently around Thanksgiving, but said he never talked about it with anyone.

“He was going around cheerful, but you could kind of see that there was something on his mind,” he said.

Then, Jonathan received a phone call from his mother in December.

“She said I need you to brace yourself for what I’m about to tell you,” he recalls. “She said your dad’s no longer with us, so I need you to get over here as soon as you can.”

Jonathan and Haley, old friends from a small town, were linked by similar grief, but a run-in at the gym would soon link them on purpose.

“I turned around and I was like Jon, I think we should get together and do something,” says Haley.

Jonathan was on board.

Haley’s love of clothing led to the idea for a clothing line. It involves four simple letters and one message, ‘Stay.’

“That is the only thing I told my dad to do. I was like just stay with me,” Haley said.

The line of t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies and jackets each displays a design incorporating 988, the mental health lifeline.

They brought in another friend, Jessie Leming, to make the final product.

It just so happens that when they asked her, she had already purchased materials.

“She was like I just went and bought all this stuff to do tee shirts,” Haley said. “Out of nowhere.”

Jonathan hopes the word will resonate.

“Staying here not only to me is the least selfish thing you can do, but it’s also what God intended,” he said.

The three friends now hope those four letters can save just one life.

“Here’s what happens when you don’t stay,” Haley said. “You have people who grieve and who don’t know what to do because you left.”

There are a million different reasons for the four simple letters.

To view the clothing line, click here.