what does ydhl mean?

ydhl is an acronym. it stands for you deserve healthy love.
it stands for anyone trying to be the best partner they can be.
it stands for young people- and old- who have not yet entered the world of dating.
it stands for people in relationships and friendships, striving to make them happy and beautiful.
it stands for the ones who choose singleness, no matter what the reason may be.
it stands for survivors of unhealthy love.
ydhl stands for you. and for what you deserve.
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how it began/how it's going

Here's how YDHL really came to be- and what it is becoming.

If you are reading this, you may know the prologue. I was 19, there was a bad dude and a bad experience. But what happened after the fact, of course, is far more important. I decided to write down the entire experience that that relationship granted me, and fearfully published it. When I did, I was blessed with support from places and people I didn't know could even happen. It gave me new connections and years later I still hear from people who tell me that "my blog post" changed their life. It wasn't like I became a new york times bestseller, but it was more positive attention than I ever thought I would get. And I chased it. (here is the link to my blog post.)

Ever since I was young and trying to figure out my purpose, I always wanted to change people's lives. I craved moments of people looking at me in the eyes, telling me that my words made them happier. Stronger. Braver. Not because I wanted to be a savior, but because I wanted vulnerability and connection. I wanted to show the world it's okay to share your story. Stories are what connect us. And suddenly, I had this thing that I knew other people dealt with. It was something I knew would never go away completely, something I knew I could heal from but also had changed me entirely. And it was something I knew people were suffering from right that second. Every second. It was something people didn't talk enough about or understand. I wanted to change that.
When I first got the idea for you deserve healthy love, randomly two days before my mission, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do besides support survivors, amplify their stories, and spread a message far and wide. A message that could be read from afar by anyone looking at it. A message that could alter lives like it did mine. I wrote down a little plan and then left for a mission. 

When I came back, I hit the ground running. I had thought about the idea the whole 18 months I was away, and spent that whole time sketching designs and taking notes on what I wanted YDHL to be. In fact, the first YDHL shirt was embroidered by hand while I was on my mission. I continued feeling led spiritually, and when I was inspired about YDHL, it felt directly from heaven. I always got random ideas, sometimes in the middle of the night, and just had to work on them right away. YDHL was the epitome of my flow state.

However, business creation, especially as a college student, is hard. In the beginning, I wanted to do it all on my own. But as I kept getting the message out, people were coming out of the woodwork like crazy trying to help me and get the right contacts for me. So many people willing to help for nothing in return. Experts in business, tech, friends, family, the world.
From these connections, I got a screen printer, web designer, and multiple opportunities to sell at market booths and talk about my message. Beautiful design, impact, and advertising ideas were laid out to me in my mind, step by step and without a single detail going unnoticed. Magically, it was like the movies in my mind became tangible and kept coming to life. Articles were written about YDHL, and I would be asked for interviews. Although the outcome was never incredible financially, I felt overjoyed hearing other people say "you deserve healthy love." Explaining to people what YDHL means. Having women come up to me crying, grateful that they read that message today. Hearing stories, forming friendships, building confidence back up within the lives of so many who have been mistreated and manipulated in the past. Seeing people wearing something I created in public. I didn't care if I was in the hole, I didn't care if I spent more money than I made. The clothes were nothing, simply the stationery in which the actual message was written.

As YDHL started to boom and make a name for itself, my actual job was pivoting. I worked in water conservation, but my boss quit and my new boss was a woman I had already discussed the impact plans of YDHL with at length. She gave us a lot of space to create our own projects, almost like mini nonprofits we could test to see if they worked. Hence, the Reclaim Project was born. I finally felt like I was thriving in my career because I was getting paid to talk to survivors and listen to their stories. Suddenly, I was involved with so many survivors and co-creators in the community and ended up on a podcast talking about my own healing journey. I learned terrible things about the realities of domestic violence and how much difficulty survivors face outside just being abused. There were a lot of hard and heavy days. Difficult data, difficult stories, difficult conversations. But with it all, my coworkers and I got a good idea of how we could create something that made change for survivors. So I wrote a guided journal, and Ellie created a group program. Henry somehow created a policy idea on his own, which always made me burst into tears. Through navigating university accessibility, he created a policy plan which gives survivors in universities options to flourish academically if their abuser is still on campus, near their classes, or affecting their grades and financial support.

Henry had no idea that I could barely survive, much less pay attention, in my classes in the building my abuser worked in. He had no idea that I promptly lost my scholarship after the relationship. He didn't know that for a long period of time, being on campus made me physically sick and I had to blackout to get to where I needed to be. Or my constant conversations with my parents about the cost of transferring schools. He didn't know about one of our girls in the group who had to constantly withdraw from classes and was just trying to graduate despite having a stalker constantly trying to ruin her chances of doing so. But he just knew. I know my coworkers are led by a force much higher than us. God is still whispering in our ears.

Late last year, I lost everything. My private life ended up being altered in a way that I never expected. Reclaim was on its way to success, but the whole purpose of YDHL seemed to be falling apart. I felt like an impostor, not sure if there was any way for me to push YDHL any further. Would it just be some small college project I created when I was a kid? It felt like it. It felt like I was always putting it on the backburner because more important things were stealing my time and my own life was in complete shambles. How do I create a clothing business when I couldn't care less about clothing? How do I heal hearts when my own is completely shattered? How do I push for healthy love when I don't feel like I seem to practice it in my own life, no matter how many people tell me I embody it? I avoided and avoided and avoided because YDHL reminded me of something that hurt uncontrollably. The idea of the business came from my trauma of course, but the motivation for it came from something that brought me fresher, even worse pain. The peak of the business happened at one of the lowest and most self-conscious periods of my life. And what I had left was some empty vessel that I didn't even know what to do with. People would ask me how the business was going, and I really didn't know what to tell them. My go-to answer became "I'm working on changing things up, and more will happen once I graduate. I don't have a lot of time." But I had no clue what that even meant.

Then I would get advice from men who seemed to understand entrepreneurship better than me, telling me I should do this and do that and talk to this person and post these reels and sign up for this seminar etc etc etc and I honestly felt like screaming. I knew what I had to do. I just had an extreme mental block that nobody knew about, and I was going to keep it that way. No one could know that I maybe came out on top once, but definitely didn't stay there. I had to learn that overcoming something horrible once doesn't mean you're off the hook for life. Even though I knew with a surety that I would never be treated that way again, I ended up having unique experiences that changed my perception of myself in a very bad way. I am currently rebuilding my confidence and listening to the people who see me for who I truly am. I am not letting my own negative thoughts stop me from keeping other people safe from unhealthy relationships. It has to end. I have to push my insecurities away, and I have to do what I am called to do. And I have found that as I do this, the insecurities do disappear. Evil is quieted as good overflows.

Reclaim became my focus and the joy of my life. Because I had to work on it to feed and support myself, there was no avoiding it. I re-ran the program with women my age and created a program guide that focused on finding identity again and practicing emotional resilience. The guided journal became an app, currently being tested. I received grants from centers at BYU that were supportive of the work and wanted to help. In fact, it seemed like the whole world wanted to help. They want to see Reclaim succeed. I do too. Every time I worked, I felt a joy that wasn't comparable to anything else. I felt like I was doing my part. Every time I lost confidence, someone was there to tell me I was meant to do this work. I know, with every piece of my soul, that YDHL was a droplet of light placed in my mind by God. He knows that moving forward and healing to me looks like lifting and protecting others. That is my mission. That is YDHL's mission.

I love You Deserve Healthy Love with my entire being. This business saved my life. It protects me from the chaos of the world. When I suffer, I avoid things that are right for me. I will not avoid YDHL any longer.
Have I been saying it for four years? Yes. But I will say it again.
This is only the beginning.

I wrote specific names of experts and organizations I wanted to work with on my original document in 2022, who happen to be people I work with now. I watched the sketches and design ideas I had come to life, but more importantly, I watched them save lives. Miracles happen, dreams come true, and I know that future plans for YDHL are going to happen. The path is clear. Reclaim is made specifically to help survivors heal from abuse, but it obviously doesn't stop abuse from happening. My hope with YDHL is that it does. YDHL is a preventative project, focused on education and building healthy relationships. Don't worry- we will always have the shirts and bracelets (and tote bags and stickers). But the real mission is about the people.

My hope is to create a prevention education program that I can share with young people to help them avoid dangerous dating situations that they may not learn about in health class. I want to speak to schools across the country and eventually the world. Unhealthy relationships are universal, and they are everywhere. Learning how to be a good partner AND find a good partner at a young age is crucial in making healthy love the new norm and making manipulative and abusive behavior so taboo and disturbing it couldn't even happen. YDHL is all about stomping out abuse before it even can start.
I’ve been calling it a movement for a while now, and nobody really knows what that means. But here it is. Here is where it begins. This is where my passion lies. I want to engender healthy love into everything I do, everything I say, and everything I am.

From this point forward, I will be working on this program and sharing parts of it with all of you. Any purchase from YDHL will directly fund these efforts to share YDHL with the world - so we can truly make healthy relationships the norm. Together.
I’ll continue to share developments as they come up while a beautiful, purposeful, and real version of YDHL comes out into the world.
Thank you for your consistent support, care, and courage. Your love and desire to make the world better is so obvious to me, and it inspires me every day. Love ya so healthy.
Kelli