"First Half 2026: Not Reaching the Dream Side Yet, But Going Further Than Thought." ✨

If you ask what the first six months of this year are like, our answer is "crawl," and it may actually have been like that for the past three years. Many people who just know us may only see Second Life, see stickers, see drawings, see art booths, or see us selling things in Tikis, but the whole background starts with an accident that changed our lives forever.

In 2023, we have an accident involving a mental health problem that causes hypoxia, and then life that used to be normal becomes a whole new endeavor.

We can't walk, we can't talk, our hands can't shake, we can't write a book, our body loses balance, so many times just walking to the bathroom is a task that requires effort, we thought life would never come back, and the truth is, it never goes back, but it gradually becomes a new life, a life that requires learning everything again.

Over the past three years, we've been falling over and over again and getting better days.

There are worse days, days that feel like they're progressing, and days that look like everything's going back to the same place, sometimes we're afraid of the future, afraid of work, afraid of money, afraid that the building won't support ourselves, but even then, we're still trying to move on.

Little by little. One by one.

The first half of 2026 has many stories that may seem small to others.

But for us, it's huge. We've walked into Seven for the first time in three years. Many people may walk into Seven every day without feeling anything. But for us, it's evidence that the body is taking us forward, even slowly, even incompletely, but it's moving forward.

We met Elder Dam, who inspired a lot of people's mental health. We really hugged Elder Dam, talked, encouraged, and heard words that made us feel that "what we are doing is meaningful." Sometimes we only need someone who says, "Keep going," and that day Elder Dam was one of them.

We came back to painting when there was a time when our hands were barely able to hold the pen from someone who couldn't write a book.

But it's something we used to think we couldn't do anymore.

We've taken Second Life out to the art booth at Paragon.

Sales are not as many as we hope and admit that there are some disappointments, but in retrospect, what we remember more than sales are people who walk in and talk, people who tell their own stories, people who say they like what we do, and a small ribbon that says "Mental Health Matters," which we give away for free to people who come by, because Second Life is not just for sales, it is based on the belief that mental health should be talked about openly, and no one should fight alone.

Another thing we're most grateful for this year is the baby bear, an online friend who's been together since the early days, the days we didn't speak well.

The days when life is full of confusion, the days when we don't even know how much we can come back to life, from strangers on screen to our closest friends who have been together for three years, on good days and on bad days, sometimes the most important friendship may not start with the real person, but from the person who chooses to always be there, even from different places.

In retrospect, the first half of 2026 was not beautiful every day, there were days of crying, there were days of tiredness, there were days of discouragement, there were days of wanting to give up.

And there are days when we still have to fight ourselves, but if we had to conclude the first six months of this year with one sentence, we would have chosen this sentence.

"We haven't reached our dream side yet, but we've gone further than we thought." And as long as we can continue, no matter how slow, we'll take Second Life together. 🤍

# SecondLife # MentalHealthMatters # Mental health # Tales from survivors # Half-year review