09/28/2026
Hi ,
This is Susan , I'm the owner of Starv'n Marv'ns and the founder of the Bruised Reed foundation. Last week I posted an employee highlight and afterwards received a text from one of my servers named Marti ..she wants to share her story . Although our journey to love Marti is just beginning at Starv'n Marvin's , her story is powerful and needs to be told . Here is what she wrote....
Last year, I reached one of the darkest points of my life. After years of struggling with my mental health, I became so overwhelmed and hopeless that I attempted to end my life.
That’s part of my story, but it isn’t the end of my story.
For a long time, I struggled to trust people, trust systems, or even believe that there was a place for me in the world. I isolated myself. I was angry. I was hurting. And I couldn’t imagine that my life could become something different.
Today, I am still growing, still healing, and still learning who I am on the other side of survival.
Getting a second chance doesn’t mean everything suddenly becomes easy. Sometimes a second chance simply means waking up the next day and deciding to keep going. Sometimes it means allowing someone to believe in you before you fully know how to believe in yourself.
That’s one reason being part of this workplace means so much to me. This is a place built around the idea that people are more than the hardest chapters of their lives — whether those chapters include addiction, mental illness, incarceration, homelessness, trauma, or simply losing their way.
I am honored to share my story because somewhere there may be another person who feels as hopeless as I once did.
I want that person to know this:
Please don’t decide what the rest of your life will be based on one unbearable chapter.
I’m still here.
And I’m very grateful I stayed. Marti.
Marti's story is a call to get our priorities in order. We tend to complicate and distract ourselves with so many things that dont matter..we are called Love God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength and love each other more than we do ourselves. What a different world this world be if we truly did that. My intention is to show Marti that her life is precious, she is valuable and has purpose. Would you join me in prayer for her and anyone who believes they have lost hope.
Consider..hope is not something we can lose , because we can not lose something that comes from God ...what we lose is perspective.
