This website is part of MentalHealthAwarenessEducation.com and was started in 2016 as a blog of over 2k blog posts of my grief journey after losing my son, Charles, to suicide.
This page is a guide for those who want to find specific information for themselves, a friend, or a loved one since there is so much here and hard to find.
Use this menu to jump to the right section:
Suicide | Grief | Addiction | Mental Health | Charles
by Kate
Kate was brought up in a cult that didn’t allow medical intervention. She is a person with lived experience who has had suicidal thoughts. For Kate, a big contributing factor to this is her strict upbringing and the conflict that comes that resulted from severing ties with a religion that holds you hostage but also is the only life you’ve ever known.
Do: Listen. Let them voice their emotions. Ask if they would like to make a list of the things that they need, both large and small. Do something on it right away. It will make them feel both cared … Read more...
Stigma kills.
Words matter.
Knowledge is power.
Through education and conversation we CAN change how the world views mental illness and suicide. Will you start by sharing this and helping others learn why every word matters?… Read more...
by Jan
Dear Mom,
I am so hurt and destroyed by your actions, especially in the last few years.
I don’t understand when one of your children tells you how they feel and how destroyed they are that you can be so cold and heartless. I spent my whole life feeling not good enough and never ever being able to make you happy. When I tried so hard. I just wanted you to say one time something was good or “good job” or to feel like I finally did something right.
Raymond would never do what was asked of … Read more...
Charles thought we’d given up on him.
There is no putting lipstick on that thought to make it pretty. And denying it won’t make it not true. I drowned in guilt over this for years. And it has resurfaced after a dream in which the phone rang incessantly and I woke up in a cold sweat that something awful had happened.
It had of course. In 2015, my son had taken his life. Why was this coming up now?
Right after he died, I was obsessed about that last phone call.
But it wasn’t the last phone call. There was … Read more...
Trigger Warning: Strong emotional content and suicide method referenced. If you are in crisis, text “help” to 741-741 or call 988
by Dave Snell
About five years ago I read a speech Wil Wheaton gave concerning his dealings with Chronic Depression and Generalized Anxiety. More importantly, it was about how he is not ashamed of admitting that he lives with those diagnoses. What troubled me though was he only focused on a couple of particular types of mental illness. Like cancer, there are many types of mental illness, but we seem to focus on a few of them. I have … Read more...
shared by guest author, Kevin Hines
An excerpt from CHAPTER 6 of Kevin Hines’ NEW book:
THE ART OF BEING BROKEN, HOW STORYTELLING SAVES LIVES
My first three psychiatric hospital stays were involuntary.
I was forced in against my will. However, the last seven stays up until 2019 were voluntary. I walked into the emergency rooms, head held high, turned to the intake nurse (with a loved one present) and said, “I need to be here, or I won’t be here. I am thinking of suicide.” Each stay was vastly different while simultaneously feeling the same. The difference festered … Read more...
by Andrea Giannini
My name is Andrea and I am an addict in recovery. My addictions were speed, narcotics, and alcohol. Because of my addictions, I’ve lost friends, significant others, housing, and my dignity. But since getting clean and sober, I have gained family, home, companions, and Mercy.
My mother gave me this rescue pitbull puppy which was named Angel. After realizing that the rescue dog rescued me, I renamed her Mercy.
My clean/sober date is January 29, 2014, and I received Mercy on … Read more...
Late last year, I spoke to a class of high school students locally. The teacher said she had been a friend of Charles’s which shocked me. How did she get to be the teacher? Wasn’t she too young? I couldn’t speak for a few seconds. The teacher even shared old pictures I had not seen.
You see I have Charles frozen at age 20.
All those who went to school with him are kind of frozen in my mind, too. I do see his friends, I get that they’ve graduated from college, some have married and his best friend had … Read more...
Almost everyone can mark the day their innocence walked out the door and harsh reality took its place. It’s that day when your vision of what the world is, where it’s going, and how you are moving through it changes course. Can you remember yours?
Awareness had been stalking me for weeks but had successfully been shoved out of the spotlight by denial, leaving it panting at the periphery of my conscience, anxious to break in and give me news I didn’t want to hear.
My naive mind didn’t want the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place but … Read more...
And success is made up of a bunch of lessons learned from failures.
The screw-ups, break-ups, surgeries, traumas, illnesses, natural disasters, losses, and accidents, are all woven into the tapestry called life. They are not events we want to happen but they do. And the best way to come back after any one of them is to learn and grow from it, not bury the feelings that go with these experiences.
Because if your feelings are covered up and buried, you get stuck in a really raw place for a lot longer than you need to.
In this episode, Marci Nettles and Anne Moss Rogers have a conversation about Suicide, losing a loved one to suicide, and HOW to travel through the grief with the pain.
Anne Moss shares her personal story of losing her younger son, Charles, to suicide and the aftermath for herself and her family… How she turned this Tragedy into a Triumphant Purpose in Living to Prevent Suicide. Other mental health podcasts Anne Moss has been on for grief, addiction, mental health, coping are here.
This free 20-page eBook is for a parent, guardian, foster parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc. It focuses on how you manage the conversations and turmoil of emotions you are experiencing after a child you love has confessed he is suicidal, has attempted suicide, or is coming home after an inpatient hospital stay for suicide risk or attempt. How you react and support does help. Find … Read more...
A trigger is an event, sound, sight, smell, or touch, that elicits an emotional response or prompts the memory of a trauma or unpleasant event.
A red flag is a warning sign of danger ahead.
A friend of mine, Alissa says that whenever she burns something on the stove it reminds her of a time when her mother cooked crack cocaine on the stove, a period in her life when she and her sisters went hungry, felt unloved, and neglected. While it has taken years, she has learned to appreciate that she endured this journey, is no longer in this … Read more...
Let’s face it, when it comes to communicating with your kids, you’d probably rather talk about sex than suicide. But as a mom who lost a son to suicide in 2015, it’s a conversation you need to have with a young person – even if everything looks okay on the outside.
My son Charles was the funniest, most popular kid in school and the last person you’d ever expect to take his life. When I looked back later after learning more, I saw obvious signs … Read more...
