Starting life-saving conversations: Hansel Herschend
“This scene is a community of people who want to help each other. All the pieces are in place to heal it, because the people in the scene are all there for the same reason. That's a good stepping stone to continue to be able to heal.”
— Hansel Herschend
Hansel Herschend lives in Ozark, Missouri, hundreds of miles from where his life began in Cuba.
Hansel’s family immigrated from Cuba to the United States when he was 9 years old, throwing him into the overwhelming process of learning a new culture. But throughout the process, music was a constant.
“The only music I really listened to in Cuba was a lot of Spanish music,” he recalls. “Then I came to this country, and I started listening to classic rock. Then I fell in love with My Chemical Romance. That was kind of my first big introduction to rock music in general.”
A love for music came naturally to young Hansel. In Cuba, music is a constant cultural undercurrent. Hansel understood music to be a social binding agent, a way to hold relationships and communities together.
He says, “Being from Cuba, music was such a big part of our community and our neighborhood. I saw how music changes how people see each other, how it can bring people together.”
Generosity was another value embedded in the Herschend family culture. The family had a giving trust put into place by Hansel’s grandfather. Family members were all responsible for identifying causes that they believed to be worth investing in. For a long time, Hansel wasn’t sure where to designate his part of the resources.
Ultimately, it was that constant thread of music that led him to the right cause.
“Michael of Vampires Everywhere did a story on his Instagram talking about HeartSupport,” Hansel explains. “I've always been a pretty big advocate for mental health and suicide prevention due to things in my personal life. This sounded like something that I would definitely want to be a part of. And thanks to what my grandfather put in place, I was able to give.”
Vampires Everywhere
Those experiences in his personal life were seasons of deep difficulty with mental health. The experience of immigrating from another culture as a child is not an easy one.
“Everything's extremely new, and I think that takes a toll on a person. Just the weight of things and the change of everything,” Hansel admits.
Hansel struggled with depression over the years as his family fought to build a life in the States. As a teenager, he watched many of his friends struggle too, even losing a few to suicide. He began to understand that mental health was a life-and-death priority and that healing would have to include open conversations.
“I think part of the reason that suicide happens is because there isn't an open dialogue about that kind of stuff in the world that we live now,” the music fan muses. “I think anything that can help to start a dialogue is good.”
And that is exactly what HeartSupport does: host a dialogue. Hansel quickly found that his investment of HeartSupport came with the surprising side effect of more open and honest conversations in his own family.
“Starting with HeartSupport has started a dialogue within my own family about mental health. I've had very open conversations with my grandparents and my parents about it. And it's something that we would touch on from time to time within the family before, but ever since working with HeartSupport, it's opened it up so much more,” Hansel says with gratitude. “It's good to see that more people are talking about it. Way back when, people though, ‘That person's going to therapy, they're crazy.’ Now we can say, ‘No, they just need help, and they need somebody to talk to.”
Hansel Herschend, HeartSupport donor
Those conversations have slowly shifted the way the older generations of the Herschend family view mental health. As he continues to give, Hansel continues to lean into courageous vulnerability with his grandparents.
He says, “That generation, they're in their eighties and nineties. They definitely have seen some stigma. Having a conversation with them is really, really nice. After those conversations, they view you differently. They're like, ‘We didn't know you felt this way. We didn't know that this was what was going on.”
While his family is being changed by HeartSupport, so is the world. Hansel was part of supporting HeartSupport’s presence at Furnace Fest, where he got to witness firsthand the profound impact of the support the nonprofit is offering to music listeners. Hansel found the pairing of his passions — mental health and music — to be deeply rewarding.
“Never in a million years did I think that I would be able to do anything like this, to help people and be a part of people's life in that way,” he says earnestly.
Even as he celebrates what his investment in HeartSupport has already achieved, Hansel knows there is more work to be done. His parents have become interested in participating as well. At the end of the day, Hansel wants the whole world to experience the catharsis of honesty that he’s found through HeartSupport.
“As I'm speaking about mental health more with my family, I want that for everybody,” Hansel says. “I want that openness. Even if it's just as common as people being together and somebody saying, ‘Hey man, I'm feeling a little down today.’ And then people immediately being like, ‘What's going on? Let's have this conversation.” Mental health can be a conversation that you have around your dinner table every day.”
Because of Hansel, more and more of those conversations are happening.
He concludes, “I've dealt with it, and I felt like I couldn't talk to people about it because I didn't have that support. Going through high school, we're trying to understand our feelings, and not having somebody to talk to during all that is difficult. Even if you do have somebody to talk to, sometimes they don't fully understand what it is that you're saying. So I think it's important to have support to navigate those feelings. It’s good to have somebody who can help you figure out how it is that you're feeling.”
HeartSupport exists to make sure everyone has someone like that, a listening ear to process even the hardest of feelings. If you want to join Hansel Herschend in empowering more of these conversations, you can make a tax-deductible donation today and help heal the scene.
