Three years ago, I wrote this newspaper article following Charles‘ death. I’ve referred to it several times before.
Charles died by suicide June 5, 2015 and I started writing it in August of that same year. We were moving at the same time since the house sold four days before his death.
It took six months to write 1,200 words. Earlier versions were … Read more...
Names have been removed to protect the identity of the sender of the above message but these are the kinds of messages I get in response to both my story and yours. That’s why I need and want your emotionally naked stories. That’s why they are important.
Stories about managing a life with a loved one who suffers from substance abuse, how you cope after a loved one’s suicide or suicide attempt, how you manage thoughts of suicide or a mental illness, a memorial about your loved one that suffered from mental illness/addiction, your grief after loss of a loved one … Read more...
I’m not going to debate the picture in Virginia Governor Ralph Northram’s yearbook. But it got me to thinking about prejudice in general which goes way beyond race.
It’s prejudice I’ve been fighting for the last nine years for the topics of both substance use disorder and mental illness.
Every time we say “commit suicide” we are making a prejudiced remark that those who die by suicide are criminals. Here in Virginia, we’ve been unsuccessful in eradicating the ancient 1600s law that suicide is a crime despite that government agencies and scientific studies having declared it a public health issue.… Read more...
A history of one or more suicide attempts is the strongest predictor for future suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and completed suicide. Almost two thirds of those who die by suicide had a previous attempt which makes it a serious risk factor.
Charles had a previous attempt that I didn’t know to classify as one. He had told me that he took a bunch of pills and didn’t know why he did it and he was both surprised and glad he woke up the next morning.
Was that a suicide attempt? It was.
I asked mental health professionals about it to … Read more...
Your friend has confided in you their darkest and most personal feelings. It took everything for them to tell you they are thinking of suicide and now they have asked you not to tell anyone which leaves you in a horrible dilemma.
You wonder, “Should I tell someone my friend is thinking of suicide?”
Yes.
Will your friend be mad?
Maybe.
But you’d rather have your friend mad than dead. I’ve had to call campus police for someone I cared about and in this case, it was an emergency. The student I had been on the phone with was drunk, … Read more...
It’s 2016 and I’m just starting off on my morning run. Good God it’s cold. It’s one of those days when my eyelashes freeze. I’m covered up completely and the only thing you can see is my eyes.
I don’t run or walk listening to music or podcasts– just me and my thoughts. And I get an idea which is what happens when I leave my brain some room to think and create. If I constantly have noise … Read more...
This was not easy for me to put out there. I hope, going forward, it is easier.
Here is my Powerful Mental Health Video page
by Renee
About 12 years ago, my life shattered into pieces. My sister and her boyfriend killed themselves in my dad’s car. The same Nissan Altima that I gleefully drove at age 16, earning a speeding ticket on Powhite Parkway.
When my mom called with the news of my sister’s death, I slumped on to the floor in a jumble of gasps and hot tears. All I could say was “no, no, no” over and over again. I pounded my fists on the carpet, my vision blurred. From … Read more...
I am in a rejection business on two sides. On the one hand I have been trying to secure some paid speaking engagements. And the other is trying to get a book published.
From the speaking angle, I’m often “not right for their event,” “time isn’t good,” “not a good fit,” and “I think it’s fine to talk about all this. Just not around my audience,” and my favorite, “can you make your story more positive?” If I played some of these scenes back on video, they’d see it in themselves. They would cringe and say, “What was I thinking?” … Read more...
Myth: There is really nothing you can do to help someone who’s truly suicidal
Fact: The understanding, support, and hope that you offer can be a suicidal person’s most important lifeline
I was at a big event and a famous mental health advocate said, “There is really nothing you can do to help someone who’s determined to kill themselves.” I was shocked. While it’s true you don’t have control over what another human being does, it’s rarely true that someone is so “determined” to kill themselves that your intervention has no chance of preventing it.
There are people that plan … Read more...
by Tamara Harvey Braswell and Lloyd Braswell
Where was God when my 19-year-old son Logan died from severe bleeding and broken bones hours after he slammed his truck into a tree? I think God went on vacation that summer morning and left no miracles behind, at least not for Logan and me. Against my will, my soul was deposited on the grief trail, a journey no parent should ever have to experience…but many of us do.
Even the most perfect of parents and best of kids draw the short stick in life and bad things happen. I used to have … Read more...
Trees of Hope 2019
Date: Sat, 04/27/2019
Time: 6:00 pm – 9:30 pm
Location: Lewis Ginter Botanical Garde
Tickets: $50 each
Every year, the nonprofit for which I’ve been part of for nine years now has an event called Trees of Hope. It’s a youth concert with some short presentations about the work we do.
This fundraiser supports a program called OnRamp that pays for youth psychological evaluations and gap funding for treatment when insurance, medicaid, or other government programs don’t pay. We call it OnRamp Family Funding because you can’t access a highway without an onramp. And … Read more...
I subscribe to AFSP, American Foundation of Suicide Prevention, emails and I got one the other day on Project 2025. They have a goal of reducing suicide by twenty percent by 2025–a bold and ambitious goal given that suicide rates went up more than 30% in half of states in the U.S. since 1999.
They’ve earmarked four areas to focus on and since I do a lot with healthcare systems, I clicked on that and holy toledo my friend Dr. Lisa Horowitz was the star of the video. She and I are co-presenting with Jeff Bridge at the … Read more...
So I was called for jury duty. Again. They apparently randomly choose prospective jurors. I’ve lived in the city three years and have been called twice to serve although I have not officially been on a jury yet. None of my neighbors have been asked once. Random my @$$.
I don’t know that I can say much about the case I was polled for even though I was not chosen. When they asked me the question if I believed a police officer might not tell the truth, it took me back to the time when a rookie police officer did … Read more...