Singer and entertainer Marie
Osmond recently released her new book, The Key is Love: My Mother’s
Wisdom and Daughter’s Gratitude. In the book, Osmond talks about
lessons she learned from her mother, as well as the trials she has faced in her
own life as a parent. Of these trials, Osmond writes intimately about the death
of her son, Michael, who died by suicide just over three years ago. She shares
that she had struggled with postpartum depression herself, which helped her
understand Michael’s death, despite the pain it brought her.
“[When you have depression,] you think that your life is better or everybody’s life is better off without you in it, and that is a lie, “Osmond. “There’s nothing better without the people you love in it.“
Throughout the book, Osmond highlights the importance of love to get through difficult situations. As she says, the piece of maternal wisdom she is most grateful for is "to love yourself."
You can find this book in the Alliance of Hope Bookstore.
by Liz Cammin
There are a lot of statistics that point to suicide as being a mental health crisis.
That a lot of people who do this have untreated mental illnesses. However, the treatments for many of these illnesses seem to sadly fall short. I have read here time and time again of people being pulled back from the brink over and over just to complete it in the end. My friend sought help. She went to the hospital. They did not help her. What they did was not enough.
Which leads me to think, that suicide may be a crisis of the soul. It has to be. I don't know that a crisis of the soul can be treated with medication, therapy or hospitalization. I think that many of these things simply don't work because we're not treating the right part of a person.
How do you treat something that is above and beyond the brain? I'm not sure where that treatment lies, but I have a feeling it has to do with how we treat one another and how connected we feel to others. I think once that connection is lost ... once a person loses hope, I don't think that has to do with the brain. I think it has to do with the soul.
What else could affect a person so deeply? Again, treating the brain seems to miss the mark.
Thoughts?
by Susan Andersen
It was 9 months on January 13th since Ian left us. The 'whys" are now
whispers, the crashing waves of overwhelming grief and sadness further apart.
Although for the past few days I have been very depressed and even asked God to
"pick me" as the next one to die, I am beginning to look inward.
In Iris Bolton's book My Son, My Son, she describes a gift that came out of her son's death. Her life and calling were redefined over the years after his suicide. And so I begin my journey of introspection merging the memories of the past with the present and the future in order to discover my Gift from Ian.
Ian was honorable, kind, loving, caring and funny. His laugh was infectious. I will spend time looking back, but also talking with family and friends listening to how he made a difference in their lives. I am fortunate that one of his friends started a Facebook page and many of his friends have posted there. I will look at these postings, pictures and videos. I will absorb all of this information into my being in order to discover my Gift.
My son is gone and there is a huge hole in my heart. Overtime I hope to fill it with the Gift.
It was on January 13, 2003 that our daughter, Karla, found a hidden .22 caliber rifle and shot herself with what the coroner called a “perforating gunshot wound to the chest.” She was 26, charming, beautiful, intelligent, creative, three classes away from her BA in English literature with a bright future ahead. And she was dead.
Sometimes, that’s what bipolar disorder does. Like cancer, bipolar disorder can be fatal.
I was shocked, but not surprised, when a Shiloh, IL police officer knocked on our door and told us that “Karla Smith has died.” That’s all he knew, but I knew immediately that, on that fateful, dreary Monday in January, she died by suicide in Tulsa. The previous Friday she was released (against our wishes) from a Behavioral Treatment center in Tulsa where she had spent 10 days recovering from a severe episode of depression.
She needed more time in treatment but for reasons we still don’t know, they released her. There are many regrets that accompany a suicide. My biggest regret is not flying to Tulsa that weekend to be with her as she began her aggressive outpatient program. She sounded “ok” on the phone, so I didn’t go.
Could I have prevented her death if I had gone? I don’t know but I wish I had tried.
But that sense of regret is just one of the overwhelming emotions that often shadow the suicide of a loved one. It took time and difficult grief work to cope with all those new and intense feelings but we have learned that it is possible to get through those uniquely painful times and live a happy, healthy life again.
One of the things that helped me, my wife, Fran and our son, Kevin (Karla’s twin) cope with her death was born the night of her wake. There were hundreds of people from many parts of the country who attended the wake and they all knew how she died because we wrote the obituary in a way that indicated she died by suicide. Halfway through the long reception line, the three of us commented how many people said that their mother/brother/cousin/uncle either had a mental illness or who died by suicide. We knew then that we had to do something to help others who had experiences similar to ours.
It took us two years to decide what we would do, receive our non-profit status and begin to launch our services. We formed the Karla Smith Foundation (KSF) (www.KarlaSmithFoundation.org) with the mission to provide hope for a balanced life to the family and friends of anyone with a mental illness or who lost a loved one to suicide. We implement our mission through education, support and advocacy. We offer support groups, conferences, workshops, presentations, resources, website, and one on one coaching.
In 2005, our first support group had 2 people. We now have 5 full time or part time staff members. We sponsor 11 groups in 3 states, with more planned in the next few months. We offer peer to peer, mentoring opportunities, family connect activities, a program for veterans with PTSD, programs that focus on the parents of children and adolescents with mental health issues, and college campus based groups. We are soon to launch a program aimed at middle school and high school students, administrators and parents.
In order to specify our mission and philosophy, as well as to educate and encourage family and friends of anyone with a mental health problem or who lost a loved one to suicide, we wrote three books. The Tattered Tapestry: A Family’s Search for Peace with Bipolar Disorder tells the Smith family story of Karla’s illness and death. A Balanced Life: Nine Strategies for Coping with the Mental Health Problems of a Loved One offers practical help for families trying to deal with the mental illness of a member. The Unique Grief of Suicide: Questions and Hope provides hope for people grieving a suicide.
These three books, and the other materials and programs KSF provides, illustrate the practical approach, compassion, and resources we have so far created to support other families and friends who experience the mental illness and/or suicide of a loved one.
One of the things we learned while developing and offering the services of KSF is that helping others is gratifying in itself. The need is great. The help is needed. We do what we can. Want to join us?
Tom Smith retired as Director of Pastoral Services for the Diocese of Belleville and is a co-founder and President of the Karla Smith Foundation (www.KarlaSmithFoundation.org) whose mission is to provide hope for a balanced life for the family and friends of anyone with a mental illness or who lost a loved one to suicide. He joins his family and staff in offering support, education, and awareness programs which implement this mission.
He is also the author of seven books, the most recent of which is The Unique Grief of Suicide: Questions and Hope, multiple magazine articles, and a variety of columns. He enjoys sports, especially those teams that have St. Louis in their names, and his two young grandsons.
He can be reached at tom.smith@KarlaSmithFoundation.org.
As suicide survivors, we all know that suicide leaves in its wake so many unanswered questions. Why this time of the day? Why this day of the year? Why this method? Why...?
Author Eric Marcus is the first to admit he can't answer all the questions. What he does do in his newly revised and updated book, Why Suicide? is take on some of the most challenging questions, the ones that tend to haunt survivors. (Was it my fault? Could I have stopped her?) Marcus's responses seamlessly blend research, expert opinions, and the voices of those who have attempted suicide or lost a loved one to suicide.
The language is straight-forward without sensationalism and each page is filled with empathy, kindness, and a deep understanding. For instance, Marcus is quick to provide reassurance for those feeling guilty about a loved one's death. After explaining that suicide is rarely the result of any one event, he describes it as "the perfect storm at the worst possible time."
Perhaps he is able to write with such deep compassion because Marcus himself is a suicide survivor. His father took an overdose of pills when Marcus was just 12 years old. His father ultimately lingered in the hospital for a few days before passing away. The death certificate listed pneumonia as the cause of death, thus allowing some family members to remain in denial about the suicide.
The book is written with several different audiences in mind. There is material here for people who have attempted suicide, people with a loved one who has attempted suicide, people interested in suicide prevention, suicide survivors, and people who are interested in the subject matter for other reasons. Although each chapter of the book contains valuable information, readers of this blog may want to skip directly to Chapter 7 which is written specifically for suicide survivors. Here, Marcus catalogues the wide range of emotions common to survivors and offers hope for healing and finding peace.
If you're new to the whole subject of suicide and want bite-sized chunks of accurate, easy-to-understand information, Why Suicide? (available in the Alliance of Hope Bookstore) is probably one of the best resources you can find.
by Anne Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti
The next thing is to explain that the body of the loved one (not the loved one) will be cremated, using the words “Uncle John’s body”, not “Uncle John”. Explain that the remains of the body will be returned in a container called an urn and that the urn is not very big. From this point, provide information based on the questions the child will ask. Ask each child if he or she has any questions. If the child asks how the body gets smaller or what it’s like, say, “Cremation is a process that makes the body kind of like sand.” If the child asks how, say, “The process uses heat.” If the child asks, “Is it fire?”, answer by telling them again that the body is no longer alive and that it is just left behind, like a fallen leaf. When you are sure the child understands, you can say, “Yes, the way that cremation happens is with heat or fire.”
The key to explaining cremation is to be lead by the child to reveal the level of detail he or she needs to understand. Using non-dramatic words to describe the process is also important. If the child seems shocked, explain that bodies are cremated every day – that we believe it is an honorable way to take care of the body after someone has died. Most kids accept the idea fairly easily when they get a careful explanation.
Anne Hatcher Berenberg, PhD and Vicki Scalzitti co-authored the book 10 Steps for Parenting Your Grieving Children. Anne is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in work with children, adolescents, and their parents in Northfield, IL. Vicki is Manager of Children's Bereavement Services at Rainbow Hospice in Mt. Prospect, IL. Please stop by and visittheir website.
by Gloria Heller
She was standing by a day lily bed. I went out the back and down the steps, but she was not there when I got down them. I had to look down to go down the stairs as they were steep, so did not see where she had gone. One of my little dogs had gone out with me and began to dig in the day lilies where I had seen the woman. So, I got down and dug with her.
We uncovered a braid, black hair, woven with beads in it, rolled up in some
kind of brown hide. Definitely Native American looking. It was a puzzle to me
and my house mate. I had heard of a Choctaw group in the area and made
arrangements to take the hair braid to them to see what it was.
It was an Apache hair totem. The place was looked into and it was found that
the peach trees on the place were a type called Apache peaches. Those are a
very small peach found in canyons in parts of Texas where the Apaches hid
during the wars on them. The peaches enabled the people to survive. When they
lost, some of the seeds were taken with people leaving to plant elsewhere as
the cavalry burned out the trees as they found them as part of the war
strategy. They are a very small red peach, very sweet. I met an Indian woman
who took many seeds to start elsewhere.
Once I found the hair the woman never appeared again. The Choctaws said it was
because she did not need to. … This event, and others less clearly
defined, does reaffirm my belief that continuity is real. And this has helped
me. Maybe it will someone else.
My sis understands a whole lot of the physics of the universe and I do not so
much. She said there is a word for what cannot be explained. That word is
"magic".
So, we go on. And draw strength from wherever we can.
by MissingHim
At some point along this journey, the unrelenting guilt I felt after my
husband's suicide "collapsed" into regret. I thought about that for a
while, the distinction between the two. And then I read some posts about forgiveness.
One member talked about forgiveness as being for her rather than the people she
was trying to forgive.
That gave me a lot to think about, too. I didn't have to
deal with other people outwardly blaming me for what happened, but there was
plenty of blame that I heaped on myself, deserved or not.
At some point, however, I "evolved" (for lack of a better word).
Maybe all of the emotions just wore themselves out. Maybe I grew stronger. But
the horrible self-blame and the anger gave way to a need to forgive not only my
husband but also myself. I am not sure I have mastered that last part, but it's
easier now to see that I was holding myself accountable for being human, for
not being perfect. I think that was my last defense against accepting my loss.
If I gave up that struggle, I would have to accept the harsh reality that he
was gone, and that hurt too much.
by Sandy Walden
How about you? What do you do when someone reaches out to you with a particular worry or need? What tools or resources do you have that you utilize for their benefit? When the shoe is on the other foot, do you find it easy to call upon these same resources to address your needs? If so, terrific! If not, how can you change that situation?
A very wise woman that I know talks often about establishing a circle of support. This is so very important for all of us. This circle is crucial in times of extreme need, however it's very valuable to remember that this circle of support is there as time goes on and our needs change. Perhaps the people in your circle change to accommodate the shift in your life, which makes sense to me. Contacting these people, knowing that they will respect my story and treat it as confidential is very powerful for me. They make sharing safe. One tool in my box is this circle of support.
I've got other tools that I can utilize; prayer, exercise, laughter, writing, Reiki, hypnosis, coaching, reading, etc.
What tools do you have in your toolbox? Are you remembering to open that box up when you have needs? Perhaps you are more able to utilize a particular tool with the assistance of a friend, clergy member or counselor. If that's the case, I urge you to pick up the phone and reach out to others, trusting them to embrace you with the same sort of love and compassion that you offer.
I really like the toolbox analogy. Feels constructive, reminds me that I am more powerful that I sometimes remember. I wonder what's in your toolbox...
Namaste,
Sandy
Sandy Walden lost her son, Mike, to suicide in 2010. She now serves as a forum moderator for the Alliance of Hope for Suicide Survivors. On the forums and through her professional work as a Reiki Master/Teacher, Hypnotist, and Life Coach, she reaches out to others and uses what she has learned to help ease pain. For more about Sandy, visit her website.
