Talking (Again) About Suicide

The above 4-minute video was John D. Schramm's first attempt to talk about the taboo subject of suicide. It is a beautiful testimony to choosing life and, at the same time, a call to break the silence -- the taboo of talking about suicide.

Over half a million people have seen John's video and it's been translated into 39 languages. He wanted to "start a conversation worth having about an idea worth spreading."

The following is what John learned:

• Breaking the silence is not an event, but a process. Through hundreds of emails and thousands of comments on various websites, it is clear that attempt survivors don't just break the silence one time, but over and over and over again. Or they don't, and live in the silence after once having a bad experience with sharing their secret with another.
• Tough questions don't have easy answers. John was a layperson with no training in the healing arts. He attempted to start a conversation, but then just listened as others were inspired to share their journey. Then John pointed them to resources that he knew.
• Conversations are a crucial, but slow path to change. In John's life, he's witnessed the self-inflicted deaths of several people he's loved and known. While he wanted their closest friends and family members to share their stories too, he found he was powerless to cause that. Instead, he simply remained open to the conversation, replied to each email or invitation to chat, and urged strugglers to find or build the network of committed listeners and further their own conversations.

This conversation, thankfully, has begun. The challenge now is to continue it and expose the taboo to conversation and openness. When that happens, suicide is no longer a taboo.

In the fall of 2010, my son took his life. Suicide is not new to either my professional or family experience, but the effect on me was devastating and involved a good two years of grief-sharing and processing.

Almost immediately after his death I posted a number of blogs on this site (October-November, 2010). It was my attempt to heal heal my own grief and help others through my experience. You may find them helpful.

"Perhaps no other life-threatening condition on the planet can be so positively impacted by honest, forthright and intimate conversations with friends, loved-ones, clients and colleagues. As we do this, we demystify suicide. We render it approachable by creating a net of understanding so strong and a willingness to intervene imbued with such resolve, that people can no longer fall through the cracks."

[Richard Heckler, Waking Up Alive ,1996].

When we break the silence, we take action to prevent the next loss. By sharing our thoughts and feelings we make ourselves vulnerable, but it is that vulnerability, that openness, that enables our own healing.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255

Military Veterans CLICK HERE Most every city or county offers suicide survivor groups,  they are a big help, too!

Almost a month has passed...

Last night I attended a "survivors of suicide" group at Dane County Mental Health. Heading there, I felt fairly solid... I was praying, processing, and, I thought, proceeding.

When I arrived I was warmly greeted and entered a room that soon filled up with about 15 people. As the group did a "check in" I felt that now-familiar deep feeling of grief starting to build up again.

By the time it was my turn I could hardly speak. "It's been nearly a month now..." was all I could gasp. My grief was still raw -- like a deep wound within me.

But thankfully I was in familiar territory. Everyone around me knew the pain I was feeling... some members of the group had been coming here for years... often after a child or grandchild had taken their life. Many of them were still experiencing the raw pain of a family suicide.

I feel like a person who has not only been shot, but been "machined gunned!" It has been a series of emotional wounds from my grandaughter Allison's death in a traffic accident three years ago, to Sabine's cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy and the stem cell transplant, my daughter Yumi's deployment to Afghanistan, Sabine's cancer flaring up earlier this summer and now Matt's suicide... How much more, Lord?  I am remembering your promise of not sending me more than I can bear...  I hold you to it, God!!

I don't want to feel like another Job (well, I don't because he seemed never to get angry at what was happening to him) but Job didn't have a suicide on top of everything else!  Maybe that would have made him angry!

My sense is that these events are going to take me a long time to recover. And, as I mentioned to Sabine this morning during our walk, I will not rule out one-on-one counselling on top of all the other prayer and support I feel from friends and family.  Anything to get through this.

Sabine tells me she thinks she is better able to handle this because she knows she has little time left and cannot afford to spend it in grief or anger.  Matt had a choice.  It was not an accident and his choice, no matter how we see it, has now brought peace to a most troubled life.

So, I try and practice my preaching: to pray, process, and proceed. But it is easier said than done. It is so easy to get stuck in anger (or as one person said last night, it's not anger, but RAGE!) and, yes, blame.  I can easily shift into the blame-game.  There is plenty of blame to go around but all it will do is drag me down into that pit.  The old saying is that you should never wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty yet the pig loves it!  Still blame has a sweet taste to it...

All of us who are struggling with a family suicide are surrounded and buffeted by all these feelings -- anger, rage, blame, sorrow, sadness, guilt, "what ifs," and deep, gnawing grief. We name it. We talk about it. Through this we are supported and loved. We lick our wounds... we go forward... even if ever so slowly.