Our Children are Killing Themselves, and it Needs to Stop.

I started working on this post a few weeks ago, before our community suffered two more deaths by suicide. Some of my writing has changed to reflect that.

Reflecting.

I know most people measure time by their age. This year I am thirty-six. I married Mike when I was thirty-three. Five years ago I was thirty-one. I was nineteen when I had my first child. And so on.

People who have suffered loss, great loss, the kind that takes a piece of you with them, measure time differently. My husband has never said it out loud, but I know every morning he opens his eyes is bittersweet, because it’s one more day without his daughter. Every breath he inhales, the air that fills his lungs, is another breath she doesn’t get to take. I know, because those thoughts are mine as well. That kind of pain stays with you for ever, haunting and tormenting you at such random times.

I am coming up on twenty years without my mom, Terry. Twenty years since she committed suicide. The blessing here, I suppose, is that for her is that she will always be thirty-nine in my mind. She is frozen there, just as Samshel is frozen at fourteen.

No more growing, no more experiences, no more love, or time with family. What a sad eternity they have chosen.

I stopped counting my mom’s age, because I don’t know who she would be now. Would she love being a grandmother? Would we be close? Wondering only makes me angry that she’s not here to show me. So to keep the peace in my mind, she’s just thirty-nine. Same with Samshel. She will always be fourteen.

Now.

I know quite a few of my readers are local, and most of us are reeling from yet another teenage suicide this past weekend.

Maddie. Maddie was 17 when she took her own life. And that’s all I know of her story. How unfair is that?

I know she was loved. I know she was loved because the day after she passed, our community gathered for a candlelight vigil at her school. Adults and families and children came together in unity to remember Maddie. To laugh and cry, to share memories because that’s all they have left of her now.

Two weeks ago, a man I went to high school took his life. Jared too left his friends, his family, and his young daughter with just memories. He took with him his daughters hope of him walking her down the isle on her wedding day. He took away his parents chance of having a loved one care for them as they age. He took away every moment he could’ve showed up for his friends.

I can’t imagine the immense amount of emotional pain one goes through before a person decides to commit suicide. But, those people are gone now, and those of us left have no other option than to carry the pain and suffering, because there is nowhere else for it to go. Suffering doesn’t end when someone kills themself; it transfers to those around them.

We’re scared to talk about suicide. We’re scared that saying the word might plant the idea in someone’s head. Let me tell you, someone who has never spent half a second contemplating suicide will not suddenly say “hmm, I should try that” after reading about suicide or hearing it on tv, or discussed in the lunch room or even classroom.

Our kids don’t know how to cope any more. They are growing up seeing perfect lives on instagram and competing for their own version and no one is stepping in and telling them that’s not what life looks like.

We’ve created a fake society where we’re all living our best live on the outside because that’s what we’re supposed to do, right?

How Can We Fix It?

We have one chance to parent these kids. My husband and I have already lost one child to suicide. Do you think we don’t feel like failures? But we still wake up and SHOW UP for our kids every. single. day. If Mike and I can do it, you can also. We can all be there and show up for these kids. Remember, it takes a village. We have to be there for each other. Step in, offer rides to practices and games and church and birthday parties.

We need to teach our kids that the world isn’t rainbows and unicorns. We need to teach them to take care of themselves on the outside and the inside.

We need to take back our parental rights from the schools and the governments, because they sure as hell don’t know how to raise our babies. They won’t even tell them if they’re a boy or girl anymore, or which bathroom they can use. They have empowered our children to take charge of their medical and mental health at the age of fourteen, and removed our authority as parents.

We were not allowed to know when Samshel’s counseling appointments were scheduled, even though she had no way to provide transportation for herself to get there. They didn’t think that through, did they? Two years later, we are still denied access to her medical records because she was responsible for her care. If this isn’t proof enough that fourteen year olds are not mature enough to manage that responsibility, I don’t know what is. And still, no one will listen to us.

We need to teach them that it’s okay to ask for help. And to the kids who are being raised by absent parents, by grandparents doing their best because their children can’t raise their own, to the ones in foster care and the ones that are homeless.. They need to know they matter and have value.

If we step in and teach these kids from the beginning that it’s okay to cry and be frustrated, give them the tools to verbalize their feelings, how to be responsible for their emotions, and how they can acknowledge and reconcile them, then we have given them the tools they need to be healthy and whole and successful. This is how we do our best. This is how we teach them. Why are we not doing this anymore? This is how we keep them from dying by their own hands.

Clinical depression is a disease, just like diabetes or high blood pressure. We need to treat it as such. Treat it with medication, healthy diet, exercise, and regular checkups. That’s how we recover from any disease or illness. We don’t ignore it because then what happens? It gets worse. It may kill you. This isn’t rocket science.

7 Tips We Can Try to Keep Our Kids From Taking Their Own Lives

1. Talk to them. Talk about what they’re going through, discuss their relationships, their dreams, their frustrations. We all reach a point where our teens will huff and roll their eyes, but imagine the pain they feel when they’re ignored by the ones closest to them? Show up. Make it awkward. Be there. They notice, and it means the world to them.
2. Give them words to use for their feelings. That will empower them and give them the skills that they need to work through their emotions. Be understanding. Telling them to not be emotional is telling them that their feelings do not matter, that they are not valid, and they should not be addressed.
3. Teach them to say when they’re not okay, and teach them that asking for help is the strongest thing they can do.
4. Give them tools. Teach them to journal. Teach them how to be grateful. We do a nightly gratitude session at dinner and our kids love it.
5. Go to therapy. Talk so OPENLY that they think everyone else is the weirdo for not addressing their mental health!
6. Model mental wellness. Let them know when you are sad or depressed, and let them know what you do to work through it. Let them see you be grateful.
7. Love them unconditionally. Kids can be difficult, I know. They are selfish, messy, and they don’t even know how to wipe their butts until they’re at least five. We pick them up, we clean them, and we love them. Over and over and over. If you are ever in doubt how to handle a parenting situation, choose love. Withholding that love is the most painful, destructive thing you can do to them so don’t do that, no matter what. Sometimes we need to love them with boundaries in place, but we still love them.

I am not a mental health professional. I am a nurse, I am a mother, and I have lost too many people in my life to suicide. I am not naive enough to think I can save the world, or eradicate suicide. And I am in no way placing blame on anyone. Suicide is a choice that we often don’t know about until it’s too late. My only hope is help others that have suffered loss, to love those who don’t feel loved, and to give our children the tools to take care of their mind as well as their body.

Today, I am grateful that Mike and I have become stronger than our grief. I am grateful that I have been given the ability to use my words, write them down, and reach others. I am grateful for the hope that overcomes.

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Everyone… Thank you from the bottom of my heart. This message has reached SO MANY PEOPLE in less than a day. Please, please, please keep sharing. I am so humbled to have touched so many, but this message needs to KEEP GOING! We need to keep talking about it! ❤️

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