You Are Precious

October is Suicide Prevention Month

{{Note: Today’s topic is heavier than usual ~ please take tender care of yourself, and feel free to skip it if that would be best for you.}}

If you’ve ever considered ending your life, or gone through the anguish of losing a loved one to suicide, you know an intense pain that I daresay is like no other.

October is Suicide Prevention Month, and while there is no definite way to prevent anyone’s suicide except one’s own, it is worth taking a pause to think about.

In an earlier post, I shared how my life and vocation were impacted by the loss of my close friend Hannah to suicide. Like many survivors, for years I was haunted by the questions that would never be answered. What was it that pushed her to that final edge? Did returning to her family make things better or harder for her (or both)? Though I understood that her death wasn’t my fault, would it have made a difference if I’d returned that last phone call?

We often go through our days oblivious to the pain of the people in our lives, even those we love the most. Sometimes people announce their intentions, giving us a chance to intervene, and other times we have no idea. I’ve learned as a therapist that when in doubt, the thing to do is ask if a person has been thinking about suicide: it’s not going to plant the idea in their mind if isn’t already there, and if it is, they will likely experience relief at having their deep pain seen and taken seriously, and you can both seek the help and support they (and you) need.

There are many resources to help navigate this delicate terrain—NAMI has compiled many of them here—and if you memorize only one thing, 988 is the “911 for mental health” that you can call or text anytime you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis.

If all this seems far away from your own life and relationships, but you’d like to gain more of an understanding, I highly recommend Haroon Moghul’s book How to Be a Muslim: An American Story. My husband and I enjoyed hearing him speak at Chautauqua last summer, and I had no idea until flipping through his memoir that it was not only a story of growing up Muslim in America, but of learning he had bipolar disorder and at one point wanting to end his life. His writing is vivid, articulate, compelling, often hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful—one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.

Years ago, I heard the Rev. Linda Johnson give a sermon in which she compared life’s painful struggles to being in the waiting room of God’s hospital: we all have some sort of wound, and it’s the job of those of us who are doing better at any given moment to offer juice and graham crackers to the others, knowing tomorrow we givers might be the ones needing to receive.

The darkness of depression and despair is difficult to imagine unless you’ve experienced it viscerally. If you haven’t, consider yourself fortunate, and please offer what support you can to those who have.

And if you have, please know that you are precious and your life is sacred, regardless of how untrue that may seem. At the risk of sounding cliché, the world needs you and would not be the same with you in it. Whoever you think might be better off without you, in reality would almost certainly be devastated if you were gone. There is still a lot of beauty in this crazy world, and a lot of good, caring people. Let them help you. May you receive all that you need in this moment. May you be surprised by joy again someday, sooner than you think.