Sara Lowery, a keynote speaker on mental health from New Hampshire, visited the Liberal Arts Campus on Feb. 25 at 12 p.m. in the T-1200 room.
Lowery travels around the country and gives speeches at colleges, to help students with their mental health issues.
On the afternoon of Feb. 5, Lowery spoke on a variety of topics involving mental health, her personal mental health issues, how she managed these issues and how students should view their lives.
Lowery has experienced multiple hardships in her life, three happening at one time: the death of her boyfriend, accusations of being racist at work and discovering that she has ovarian cancer.
She shared a time when she wanted to kill herself because she could not figure out why her life’s experiences had turned out as they did.
“Life was good, so I couldn’t figure out what was wrong,” Lowery said.
According to Lowery, a major inspiration for her was the following quote, “Note to Self: You gotta do this for you. This is for you. This isn’t about anybody. Live for you. Honor you. Never lose sight of that.”
During Lowery’s speech, the quote was displayed on the screen as she explained its meaning.
Lowery encouraged students who are feeling unsure about their purpose in education to “Envision graduation day.”
Lowery concluded her speech with advice for students when they feel like giving up.
“If there’s one thing I want you guys to get from this speech is that it’s okay to not be okay,” Lowery said.
Attendee Kyra Childress talked about what she thought of Lowery’s speech.
“I thought the speech was very interesting and it was very informative, for me.” Childress said.
“The one thing that I learned from this speech was that hashtags could be used to build a community.” Childress added.
LBCC student John Warden gave his opinion of Lowery’s speech.
“The speech was very relatable for me, as a student,” Warden said.
“If I were to just improve one aspect about the speech, it would be a better promotion because I barely found out about it this morning.”