Founder's Story

It has been about seven years since a campfire explosion turned my life upside down and left me with severe burns to sixty percent of my body. Since then, I’ve had quite the lesson in adversity, resilience and mental illness. Many times I’d felt that I finally had my feet back under me only to realize that was far from my reality. From the highs of being discharged early from the Foothills Medical Center because of a speedy physical recovery to the lows that accompany mania and depression, the last seven years of my life have been quite the rollercoaster.

My experiences since the traumatic campfire accident have humbled my understanding of what it means to have good mental health. It’s a process, and it’s usually a long one. For me, it started with finding a therapist I connected with . . . someone I could trust. After seeing multiple psychologists with minimal results and experiencing a waning belief that the right person was out there for me, I found one that changed my life. My therapist, Jenn, started with education — an objective understanding of my situation, what had happened to me, how it affected my brain and nervous system and how it had affected many of my friends and family, not just me. I learned how to grieve, how to identify negative habits and how to build positive ones. Most importantly, I gained a holistic understanding of how trauma affects your body. I learned how to embrace uncomfortable feelings and learn from them, and most importantly, I learned how to heal. None of this would have been possible without Jenn’s expertise and the support systems in my community.

I had extensive physical injuries and my fair share of visible scarring from the burns I sustained, but it’s the scars no one can see that posed my biggest challenge. The mental aspect of healing can be hard to navigate and is also very expensive—two of my main motivators for founding the Ignited Minds Foundation. The trauma I endured coupled with the therapy I’ve received gave me an appreciation for a few things: I lived a privileged life with plenty of support from my family, friends and peers – support that only increased when my life got flipped upside down in June 2018; I went through a horribly traumatic experience, as many others unfortunately do; I endured episodes of mania and depression despite the strong foundation of my support systems; and, I realize that many people faced with traumatic adversity do not have the support systems or resources I had access to. And I want to change that.

The Ignited Minds Foundation exists to enhance youth’s knowledge of what therapy services may offer them by speaking candidly about mental illness, the hardships that accompany it and the role therapy plays in the challenging road to recovery. It exists to provide education about what trauma is, how it affects the body and how to heal from it by connecting professional resources to those that need it. Finally, it exists to provide financial assistance for youth who have endured trauma and are seeking mental health support, but cannot afford it, by eliminating this very common roadblock. Charity is community, and I believe in mine.

– Ryan