It gets better. (And so will this blog. I hope.)

I've been wanting to write so many things this past month. So much has inspired me and friends have pointed me towards a multitude of fabulousness.  If I could have the words go directly from my brain onto the screen, I would be a blogging machine.

Part of the problem is that when I go to research something, I get so excited about it that I spend all the time I had set aside to write reading and following the virtual yellow brick road to ever more interesting destinations.

But one this caught my attention this week that  I couldn't ignore. The "It Gets Better" video campaign started by Dan Savage.  Preventing suicide of teens, particularly queer teens, has been an important soapbox of mine. When I meet people who are in the closest, while I respect the many reasons for it, I can't help thinking of how much pain and suffering could be prevented if everybody would just live out loud and proud. Don't hide your differences, whatever they are. You don't know for who you could be an inspiration. You may never know. But just by living out, you could be changing the world for someone.

It gets better.

See the videos

Such a simple statement and yet so powerful to hear it over and over.

By now most of us have heard of the spate of suicides that prompted Dan Savage to start the 'It gets better' movement. It wasn't meant to be a movement. It was just a reaching out.

"I posted something to my blog about Billy Lucas — who might not have even been gay, he wasn't out if he was gay, and not all kids who experience anti-gay bullying are gay — but he was bullied for being gay. ... And I was reading about him and about Justin Aaberg [another teenager who committed suicide after being bullied at school] in Minnesota, and the reaction as an openly gay adult, always, when you read these stories is, 'I wish I could've talked to this kid for five minutes, so I could've told him it gets better,' " Savage told MTV News on Thursday (September 30). "And it occurred to me, when I was really turning over the Billy Lucas case in my mind, that I could talk to these kids. ... I could use social media, I could go on YouTube, I could make a digital video and I could post it, and I could directly address them and tell them, 'It gets better.'

So he did. And then Ellen Degeneris did. And a bunch of other people and it went viral. And hopefully some kids who need to hear it are hearing it. And not just queer kids. This applies to anyone who is getting bullied, anyone who feels different from everyone else around them.

I realize this applies to most of teens in middle school and high school. I think that's the point. I think it's important. As the mom of teens, I marvel at my daughters and how they fit into school in a way I never seemed to. I still struggle with the image of myself I saw in other people's eyes in middle school – a world 30 years and more in the past. I wish I had had video after video of people who had been where I was and come out the other side to tell me – it gets better.

What a wonderful use of social media. A thing that started out small and became a movement at the speed of twitter. Can anyone send me examples of other social movements that depend on the internet like that? I'm fascinated by them.

Kiva.org, where people can make microloans to individual to help get themselves out of poverty – not possible without the internet. Vitta.org is a microlending site that helps put kids through school.

Small acts add up to world-changing power. It gives me hope and adds to my need to find the cause that I am passionate about. Can a person be passionate about 'causes' in general? Do I need to pick an area? Can I be excited about the power of social media and social business to empower people? Is it weird to be excited about the way the most successful ventures are collaborative and user-generated?

Here is a list of some sites to check out:

9 Ways to Do Good With 5 minutes or $25

The Trevor Project - Suicide hotline and prevention for GLBT teens